Greetings. I'm Tara Brock and I'd like to welcome you to these podcasts. While the talks

and meditations are offered freely, we'd very much appreciate your support. To make

a donation or learn more about my schedule, please visit tarabrock.com and our IMCW.org.

Thank you.

As you settle, you might sense your intention towards presence, that that sincerity of choosing

to be here. And with that, just reflecting for a moment on really the attitude that can

hold our practice of bringing genuine interest to what's going on right here and now. And

a friendliness, interest, friendliness, and then just relaxing with what's happening.

Really the heart of our practice is recognizing what's going on right here and really allowing

it.

So in this morning's guidance will be a bit of that kind of scanning and arriving more

fully. And then some simple instructions just to begin the broader instructions that

will unfold through the week. We often like to begin since the portal of presence really

is waking up in the spotty, being awake right here in the spotty. So to scan down through

the body with awareness, relaxing, waking up, and I often begin with the area of the eyes.

It's very easy when we're thinking a lot to collect tension and tightness around the eyes.

So I just soften consciously and I often use the image of a smile letting a smile spread

through the eyes, letting the outside corners of the eyes just sensing a kind of lifting

up there, softening around the eyes, letting the brow be smooth. So that whole region eases

out some. In a similar way, a slight smile at the mouth tends to undo some of the tension

in the whole body. You might sense the inside of the mouth smiling, relaxing the tongue

right down to the root of the tongue. See if you can feel that. Feeling the sensations

...