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Tara Brach

What is the role of spirituality in mental therapy? And what roles do therapy and mental health play in spiritual growth? What's the overlap, where are they distinct, and how can both work together to help us face the challenges of this world? In this special episode honoring World Mental Health Day in October, Tami Simon and Tara Brach sit down for a wonderfully open-hearted discussion at the intersection of spirituality and mental health.
 
As a clinical psychologist and renowned meditation teacher, Tara Brach brings forward what it takes to truly meet someone in pain, the spontaneous nature of loving awareness, and the power of imagining connection. And together, Tami and Tara delve into how we handle overwhelm, the importance of integrating spirituality into daily life, and working through grief with a psycho-spiritual approach. In essence, how we show up for each other. Whether that's spiritual, psychological, emotional, or an interweaving of all those aspects of support.
 
**This episode was originally featured on the Insights at the Edge podcast with host, Tami Simon.

Showing Up For Each Other | Tami Simon & Tara Brach on the Intersection of Spirituality & Therapy

Our conditioned mind is filled with distractions, including worry-thoughts that continually create anxiety in the body. This meditation guides us in relaxing the body, and then establishing the breath as a home base. By gathering and collecting the attention, the mind can settle and allow for a relaxed, wakeful presence.

Meditation: Collecting and Quieting the Mind (17:02 min.)

Meditation: Loving What Is (2020-09-12) - While we might not directly love what is, there is a pathway to this inner freedom. As we explore in this meditation, we begin with allowing the changing sensations and emotions to move through us, just as they are. As this allowing presence deepens, it becomes suffused with the tenderness of love.

Meditation: Loving What Is (2020-09-12)

In just a few minutes, this practice guides us to pause, deepen attention and reconnect with the spaciousness, presence and of caring of our awakening heart.

Meditation: The Sacred Pause — Clearing to remember Heartspace (6:56 min)

When we remember our deep belonging to this world, a fierce and tender courage begins to move through us. In this talk, we'll explore "spiritual audacity" as a sacred, embodied boldness—the lion's roar of the awakened heart. Through personal and collective lenses, we'll reflect on what it means to live true to our essence: grounded in love, guided by truth, and called to serve the freedom and healing of all beings.

Spiritual Audacity: The Lion's Roar of the Heart

Most people get depressed at times, and many suffer greatly from bouts of major depression. At the heart of the suffering is the experience of severed belonging—of being imprisoned in the pain of separation, unworthiness, unlovability and hopelessness. These two talks explore several meditation practices that reconnect us with our natural aliveness, openheartedness and awareness. They empower us to develop our inner resources, energize us to awaken, free us from rumination and remind us that we are not our depressive thoughts and feelings. The growing realization of the loving awareness that is our home heals the very roots of depression.
 
 In this talk, we'll look at:
 
 - how depression and anxiety mirror our collective disconnection, and how mindful awareness can begin to heal both body and spirit.
 - how ungrieved loss turns into depression, and how opening to sorrow with compassion reconnects us to love and aliveness.
 - the "logjam" of depression, showing how small mindful shifts can restore flow, energy, and a sense of possibility.
 - how reconnecting with our heart's deep intention awakens hope and invites a renewed capacity for presence and joy.
 - how meditation helps us move from ruminating thoughts to embodied presence, revealing the awareness that frees us.

Part 2: Healing Depression with Meditation

No matter how far you've wandered, this heartspace – this awake tender awareness – is only a half-breath of remembrance away. This meditation awakens attention to the space of awareness…

Meditation: The Heartspace That is Home (21:49 min)

Most people get depressed at times, and many suffer greatly from bouts of major depression. At the heart of the suffering is the experience of severed belonging—of being imprisoned in the pain of separation, unworthiness, unlovability and hopelessness.
 These two talks explore several meditation practices that reconnect us with our natural aliveness, openheartedness and awareness. They empower us to develop our inner resources, energize us to awaken, free us from rumination and remind us that we are not our depressive thoughts and feelings. The growing realization of the loving awareness that is our home heals the very roots of depression.

Part 1: Healing Depression with Meditation

In the midst of difficulty we need access to our deepest wisdom and love. This guided meditation calls forth this loving presence by opening to the heart and spirit of whatever being in our life we most experience as calm, wise and compassionate.

Meditation: Calling on Your Awakened Heart (23:52 min.)

In this rich and heartful conversation, I join two dear Buddhist monks — Ajahn Kovilo and Ajahn Nisabho — who are in the process of founding Clear Mountain Monastery, a new Buddhist community in the Seattle area. Their bright, warm spirit brings a lighthearted and sincere presence to our dialogue, making this exchange a true joy to share.
 
Together, we explore many dimensions of the spiritual path — including my own journey of finding refuge during a dark time, the teachers who've inspired me, and the teachings that most deeply call to my heart. We also reflect on the practice of RAIN, the dance between directing attention and opening to what's here, and how compassion and equanimity intertwine to support us in these challenging times.
 
 Along the way, we touch into the Pali word sanook — meaning fun or lightheartedness — which beautifully captures the spirit of our time together.
 
May this conversation nourish your own trust in the path and remind you of the goodness and joy that are always here, waiting to be discovered.
 
 In this talk, we'll look at:
 - how trusting our basic goodness becomes the foundation for intimacy, creativity, and awakening compassion in a suffering world.
 - Tara's own journey through illness and fear, and how softening around pain opens the heart to freedom and love.
 - the power of the RAIN meditation to transform judgment and reactivity into mindful presence and self-acceptance.
 - how taking a sacred pause helps us step out of the virtual trance and re-enter embodied awareness and connection
 - trusting Buddha-nature — the radiant goodness that shines through all beings — as the ultimate refuge in an unraveling world.
 
 Ajahn Kovilo and Ajahn Nisabho are part of Clear Mountain Monastery Project, an aspiring Buddhist forest monastery in the Seattle area. 
 
 Website: https://www.clearmountainmonastery.org/
 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ClearMountainMonastery

Trusting the Path: A Conversation on Refuge & Compassion | Tara Brach, Ajahn Kovilo & Ajahn Nisabho

While it's natural to try to control our life experience, our chronic controlling cuts us off from presence and obscures the loving awareness that is our essence. This series of talks explores how we can let go in four key domains of controlling: clinging to thoughts, resisting feelings, holding tight to beliefs and armoring our heart. We look at how egoic controlling manifests individually and as a society; the process of awakening from exclusive identification with a separate ego/self; what it means to die into a larger reality and the similarities of psychedelics and meditation in the process of letting go. The gift of releasing the grip of controlling is true freedom; inhabiting the intrinsic beauty of our beings, and having our lives be an expression of creativity, wisdom and love.

Letting Go of Controlling – Part 2: The Path of Freedom

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