The following meditation is led by Tara Brock.

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

In the stillness to feel your body breathing, and bringing a gentle attention to the area of

the heart, to ask yourself, what is it that really brings me to practice right now?

What matters to me?

What is it this heart longs for?

See if you can listen in to where you feel most sincere about your intention for being here.

You're by taking your attention right here, making yourself at home in the moment.

You can deepen that presence with a gentle scan through the body, using the image of a smile,

which really helps the whole nervous system to relax, fight, fight, freeze, to sense a quality of benign presence.

She might sense a smile spreading through the eyes, let the outside corners of the eyes be lifted slightly.

You can see if there's a softening of the flesh around the eyes.

A slight smile at the mouth, let the inside of the mouth smile a bit.

That sense, if you can relax the tongue, right down to the root of the tongue, let the tongue kind of fill the lower palate.

Be aware of the sensations to fill the whole region of the mouth.

The eyes are smiling, soft, the mouth.

You can visualize and feel a sense of a smile through the throat, and have a curve, receptivity that allows it to be a bit more openness and flow.

Visualizing and sensing the felt experience of a smile spreading through the chest and the heart area.

Not to cover over, but to make room for what's here.

Sensing a widening space of openness and flow so that the shoulders can gently relax away from the ears, relax back and down a bit.

Feeling from the inside out, the sense and the aliveness inside the shoulders.

See if it's possible to soften and let go of it.

...