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But this revolutionary act of treating ourselves tenderly can begin to undo the aversive messages of a lifetime.
Tara Brach
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Tara Brach
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: May 17
Peace Activist
Psychologist
Teacher
Tenderly
Undo
Treating
Revolutionary
Messages
Lifetime
Begin
More quotes by Tara Brach
If there's a demand of being together in a certain way, those expectations and judgements take away from that space and create an edginess and a cramped-ness to the relationship.
Tara Brach
If our hearts are ready for anything, we can open to our inevitable losses, and to the depths of our sorrow. We can grieve our lost loves, our lost youth, our lost health, our lost capacities. This is part of our humanness, part of the expression of our love for life.
Tara Brach
I think it's possible to have experiences of love without attachment, but I think part of our conditioning is to grasp at times, especially when there are unmet needs. It's part of our nervous system to hold on to where we think those needs will be met.
Tara Brach
With the first out breath, you are releasing worries, plans, mental tensions. With the second out breath, you are releasing physical tightness and tension. With the third out breath, you are releasing difficult emotions.
Tara Brach
I speak a lot about what I call the trance of unworthiness which is really epidemic in our culture, this sense of I'm not enough, or something's wrong with me. Most of us have some level of it because our culture has all these standards (handed down through our families) of what it means to be okay.
Tara Brach
Most of us grew up with a very damaging story that something is wrong with us. Gradually - or as in my case, suddenly - we become resolved not to believe this anymore. It takes a dedicated practice to follow up on that resolution, because the conditioning is very strong to keep generating self-demeaning stories.
Tara Brach
If attachment then carries forward in a way that's not healthy, we need to let it be there without making it wrong and bring as compassionate and honest attention to it as possible. Honor that this is part of being human, but it's important to know when it's getting in the way.
Tara Brach
Perhaps the biggest tragedy of our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns.
Tara Brach
The muscles used to make a smile actually send a biochemical message to our nervous system that it is safe to relax the flight of freeze response.
Tara Brach
The intimacy that arises in listening and speaking truth is only possible if we can open to the vulnerability of our own hearts. Breathing in, contacting the life that is right here, is our first step. Once we have held ourselves with kindness, we can touch others in a vital and healing way.
Tara Brach
Through the sacred art of pausing, we develop the capacity to stop hiding, to stop running away from our experience. We begin to trust in our natural intelligence, in our naturally wise heart, in our capacity to open to whatever arises.
Tara Brach
Pain is not wrong. Reacting to pain as wrong initiates the trance of unworthiness. The moment we believe something is wrong, our world shrinks and we lose ourselves in the effort to combat the pain.
Tara Brach
We wait for things to be different in order to feel okay with life. As long as we keep attaching our happiness to the external events of our lives, which are ever changing, we’ll always be left waiting for it.
Tara Brach
If [kids] get into loving relationships, they're afraid they'll be found wanting, won't have the looks or body shape our culture deems worthy. Many of us feel we're falling short and if we start feeling close to another person, that we'll be found out and rejected.
Tara Brach
When desire for a certain person's attention becomes an I have to have kind of grasping, then identity gets organized around needing that and it becomes very solid and sticky. That causes suffering because we're not inhabiting the fullness of who we are, we're fixated and contracted on life being a certain way.
Tara Brach
Observing desire without acting on it enlarges our freedom to choose how we live.
Tara Brach
Just come into stillness. Have your intention be to relax with the breath. That will begin to set in motion a habit that will start to train the mind.
Tara Brach
In the process of deeply accepting our own inner experience, instead of being identified with a story of a limited self, we realize the compassion and wakefulness that is our essence.
Tara Brach
The renowned seventh-century Zen master Seng-tsan taught that true freedom is being without anxiety about imperfection.
Tara Brach
By regarding ourselves with kindness, we begin to dissolve the identity of an isolated, deficient self. This creates the grounds for including others in an unconditionally loving heart.
Tara Brach