Tara Brach

How can we stay open-hearted amid fear, anger, injustice and division? This talk explores courageous compassion, the vulnerability beneath reactivity, and the balance of a “strong back and soft front.” It also features a guided RAIN practice for turning toward difficult emotions, widening compassion, and responding to conflict with both firm boundaries and tenderness.

A guided meditation for meeting fear, vulnerability, and separation with compassionate attention. Explore the heart’s deepest longings for love, safety, and belonging, then imagine a trusted presence, person, animal, or natural source offering unconditional care. Through breath, receptivity, and gentle awareness, discover a tender path from longing to refuge and connection.

How can we stay open-hearted amid fear, anger, violence and uncertainty? This talk explores meeting reactivity mindfully, uncovering the vulnerability beneath anger, and responding without hatred. Through the “strong back, soft front” practice, difficult emotions become doorways to compassion, wisdom and love. A moving invitation to cultivate courage, grounded presence and wholehearted care.

A guided meditation journey through breath, body awareness, and the release of habitual tension. Explore how thoughts, emotions, sounds, and sensations move like waves through a larger field of presence. The practice turns toward fear, sadness, anger, and vulnerability with openness, inviting every experience to belong.

Explore spiritual imagination as a force for healing, awakening, and social change. Stories and reflections reveal how presence can soften judgment, deepen empathy, and help us see beyond fear-based narratives. The conversation moves from compassionate relationships and wise boundaries to collective resilience, moral courage, and imagining a more peaceful, connected world.

A guided meditation moves from the receptive warmth of a smile through the body and into a boundless field of sensation. Explore the contrast between shifting thoughts, sounds, and feelings and the alert stillness beneath them. The practice returns to relaxed awareness, non-doing, and a heartfelt wish for wellbeing shared with all beings.

Explore how fear and old narratives constrict imagination, while mindful presence opens pathways to healing, belonging and change. Through stories, prayer and guided reflections, this talk considers basic goodness, self-forgiveness, compassionate relationships and wise hope. It also examines how embodied imagination can loosen self-judgment, challenge limiting beliefs and help us envision a more loving future.

A guided meditation in embodied loving-kindness, beginning with a gentle smile and softening through the face, heart, and whole body. The practice explores bringing warmth and acceptance to wounded or blocked places, resting in tender presence, and extending care outward to every being.

Explore the hidden goodness beneath fear, striving, and stories of unworthiness. This talk examines how early experiences shape self-trust, why we lose touch with belonging, and how mindfulness, compassion, and RAIN can guide a return to vulnerability. Discover the two U-turns: caring for emotional pain, then resting in the loving awareness beneath it.

A guided meditation journey through breath, bodily sensations, sounds, and spacious awareness. Move from a gentle body scan into the heart, belly, and pelvis, then open to the boundless field of experience. The practice also explores meeting difficult emotions with kindness, returning from wandering thoughts, and extending loving-kindness to all beings.