Embodied Presence - Portal to the Sacred, Part 1

Tara Brach

Tara, Dharma, Selfhelp, Talks, Spiritual, Buddhist, Insight, Audio, Tarabrach, Mindfulness, Rain, Psychology, Compassion, Vipassana, Health & Fitness, Mental Health, Meditation, Guided, Brach, Buddhism, Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 10.6K Ratings

🗓️ 7 August 2025

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This two part series explores how we regularly leave our body and skim life’s surface in a mental trance, and the ways we can train our attention to come home again. We look at working with physical and emotional pain, and the gifts of love, wisdom, creativity and aliveness that arise as we learn to fully inhabit these living forms and all our senses with awareness.

In part 1, Tara explores:

how embodied presence is the gateway to healing, love, and spiritual connection.
the four common trances—obsessive thinking, judgment, distraction, and rushing—and how they block presence.
how disconnection from the body fuels suffering, while mindful awareness restores empathy and wholeness.
practical ways to return to the body throughout daily life and expand our capacity for presence.
how slowing down, reconnecting with nature, and sensing the body open us to the sacred mystery of life.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference.
0:06.0	To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. Namaste, welcome friends.
0:30.2	In some way we're all searching, whether we think of it as for truth or for presence or for love or for
0:40.2	peace, we're in some way searching for meaning.
0:43.5	And the more stressed we get, the more we search for relief by speeding up, by incessant
0:52.3	thinking and moving and activity doings. So it's like we're on a bicycle
0:56.6	and we're pedaling faster and faster away from the present moment. And yet what most will
1:04.7	heal us, what we're really longing for can only be found right here, this moment, in this lived experience.
1:14.2	I want to share a poem. This is by Robert Hall. Within the body you are wearing now, inside the
1:23.0	bones and beating in the heart, lives the one you have been searching for so long.
1:29.7	But you must stop running away and shake hands.
1:33.5	The meeting doesn't happen without your presence, your participation.
1:38.5	The same one waiting for you there is moving in the trees, glistening on the water,
1:44.0	growing in the grasses and lurking in the trees, glistening on the water, growing in the grasses,
1:45.4	and lurking in the shadows you create, you have nowhere to go.
1:50.0	The marriage happened long ago.
1:53.1	Behold your mate.
1:58.2	Friends, I often think of it as the real sickness, the real suffering that we have is home sickness.
2:05.6	And this is society-wide that we get stressed and we get reactive and we're peddling away from here and now, from home.
2:14.6	When what's most needed is our embodied presence, being here.
2:20.3	It's really the gateway to wisdom and love and being able to respond to our hurting world.
2:27.3	You might just even this moment, take a few full breaths. Invite yourself right here into this living, breathing body.
	...

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