From Head to Heart

Tara Brach

Buddhism, Religion & Spirituality, Health & Fitness, Mental Health

4.8 • 10.6K Ratings

🗓️ 21 August 2025

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If we are suffering, we are believing an interpretation of reality that is limiting and untrue. At these times we are imprisoned in a painful looping of fear-driven thoughts and feelings. This talk explores the ways our practices of mindfulness, compassion and loving presence can guide us from addictive thinking to perceiving life with a wise heart.

In this talk, Tara explores:

* how fear-based thoughts create suffering and keep us locked in cycles of insecurity and separation.
* the pathway of moving from the prison of looping thoughts to the freedom of open-hearted presence.
* Ihow recognizing thoughts as “real but not true” opens the door to compassion and release.
* three pathways—returning to presence, awakening the heart, and resting in awareness—that guide us from head to heart.
* how mindfulness and loving awareness reconnect us with our wholeness and the joy of simply being.

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.
0:29.6	One of my all-time favorite cartoons has an image of a man who's driving and he's about to enter a desert and there's a big sign
0:41.1	that says you and your own tedious thoughts next 200 miles. I love it because we know it.
0:49.8	We know the kind of thoughts that keep rolling through and And the challenge is, they're not just tedious.
0:56.9	Most of our thoughts are fear thoughts and they're arising from fearful beliefs about ourselves
1:03.0	and the world. And I'm not talking about fear thoughts in the sense of the thoughts that are
1:09.2	calling us to pay intelligent attention to real
1:12.0	threats.
1:13.4	I'm talking about the chronic worry, the chronic anticipation of things going wrong.
1:20.0	What Mark Twain was pointing to when he said the worst things in my life never actually happened.
1:26.4	It's the fear of thinking that really doesn't serve, that causes more suffering.
1:31.9	You might remember Gandhi's words that belief create thoughts, thoughts become words, words
1:38.9	become our actions, our actions become our habits, our habits become our character, and our character becomes
1:47.3	our destiny.
1:50.7	What this means is that when we're living in our heads, when we're living inside the circling
1:56.0	of fear beliefs and thoughts, that's what shapes our experience and our destiny. And it separates us from
2:04.3	others, from our own heart, really from a sense of wonder, of love, really from the wholeness
2:12.3	of who we are. So I've been meditating now for over 50 years, you know, really training in the art of waking
2:21.9	up from thoughts.
2:24.2	And it's important to acknowledge that thoughts, the thinking process is still quite active
2:30.1	in this mind and includes worry thoughts.
	...

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