The following meditation is led by Tara Brock.

To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit TaraBrock.com.

Let's begin together with that beautiful ritual of coming into presence, intentionally arriving.

And the invitation is to allow yourself to settle right here, right now, bringing perhaps a attention to the simple movement of the breath.

Take some moments to check your sitting posture and you can do it really with your eyes closed from the inside out, making whatever subtle adjustments help you to feel aligned so that you're sitting upright, sitting tall but not stiff, balanced,

sense what wants to let go a little bit right now, just right at the beginning. Let go.

You might become aware of the movement of the breath, gently feel the breath in the area of the heart.

We begin with the simple reflection on aspiration.

What is your intention for this meditation sitting, for this gathering?

What is it that really brings you here that matters to you?

Letting yourself sense what you sincerely care about, what your heart longs for.

We can bring that quality of gentleness and receptivity into our whole body and being as we scan through the body and just relax,

helpful to use the image and felt sense of a smile. You might sense a smile spreading through the eyes, lifting the outer corners of the eyes, letting the brow be smooth.

The eyes are soft.

The slight smile of the mouth. You might sense the inside of the mouth smiling.

Let the tongue fill the lower jaw, relaxing down to the root of the tongue,

widen the attention to feel the tingling and aliveness through the whole face.

Feeling the skull, sensing that smile and aliveness, it fills the brain.

Sense of openness, brutality.

Let yourself feel your shoulders and allow them to drop away from the ears.

From the inside out, if you can sense the aliveness in the shoulders.

Perhaps imagining and feeling a kind of dissolving or melting sensation there.

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