Tara Brach's teachings blend Western psychology and Eastern spiritual practices, mindful attention to our inner life, and a full, compassionate engagement with our world. 

The result is a distinctive voice in Western Buddhism, one that offers a wise and caring approach to freeing ourselves and society from suffering.

Tara Brach

Insights and Practices for Finding Sanctuary in Any Circumstance

When the difficulties and losses of life feel overwhelming, is there someplace we can turn for the safety, nurturing, and peace that we long for? 

Most of us are strongly conditioned to react with fear and confusion, falling back on strategies of judgment, control, addictive behaviors, and anger.  Yet there is another way. “In any moment, no matter how lost we feel, we can take refuge in presence and love,” teaches Tara Brach. 

On Finding True Refuge, this renowned psychologist and meditation teacher offers you three sessions of spiritual teachings and practices for finding your way home to the inner sanctuary that is always available. 

Tara reveals how the three gateways of refuge—truth, love, and awareness—allow us to draw on our own deepest wisdom, and offers eight guided meditations that include:

• Mindful awareness, cultivating a non-judging, present-centered attention

• Using the therapeutic RAIN process for releasing fear and healing through self-compassion

• Letting go of our desire for control and certainty

• Cultivating a forgiving heart for ourselves and others

When we seek comfort and relief from stress, Tara Brach teaches, we often unconsciously turn to false refuges such as material wealth, approval from others, or a preoccupation with the past and future. 

Yet by cultivating true refuge in this moment, we not only find reliable and trustworthy shelter from the storms of life, we also open ourselves up to fully experiencing joy and fulfillment. 

With Finding True Refuge, Tara brings you essential practices for awakening to the aliveness within you, and discovering that you can love this life—no matter what.

False Refuge

True Refuge

Connecting with Your Aspiration

The Gateway of Truth

Mindful Awareness Practice

R.A.I.N.

Using R.A.I.N. to Work with Difficulty

Session 1

Cultivating the Gateway of Truth

Heart Medicine for Fear

Taking Refuge in Love

The Practice of Forgiving Ourselves

The Gateway of Love

Cultivating a Forgiving Heart

The Importance of Compassion

Awakening the Heart of Compassion

Taking Refuge in Pure Awareness

Letting Go of Control

The Three Fundamental Qualities of Our Being

Finding Refuge: Resting Your Heart in What is True

Session 2

Find your way home to the inner sanctuary that is always available. 

Finding True Refuge

Despite our best intentions, we often have trouble dealing effectively with strong emotions. 

What if you had a conscious, skillful way to respond in times of anger, fear, jealousy, shame, and other powerful emotions? 

Meditations for Emotional Healing gives us a collection of insights and practices for bringing compassion, clarity, and understanding to our emotional lives—instead of expressing or repressing them in unhealthy ways.

Leading meditation teacher and clinical psychologist Tara Brach guides us through a transformative series of exercises to cultivate greater self-acceptance and emotional liberation.

Meditations include:

• How to work with trauma, fear, and shame

• Forgiveness meditation

• Compassion meditation

• Invoking loving presence in the face of difficulty

• The power of yes

As Tara puts it, “When we touch what is painful with awareness, the armoring around our heart melts and we become more tender and kind.” 

Meditations for Emotional Healing is an invitation to return to our natural state—at peace with what is energetically whole and spiritually free.

Intention and Attention

Lost in Trance

The Basic Elements of Presence

Arriving in Natural Presence

Space Suit Strategies

The Path of Homecoming

The “Yes” Meditation

Imprisoned by Thought

Deepening Natural Presence

Guided “RAIN” Meditation

The Alchemy of Healing

Finding our True Refuge

Calling on Love

The Evolutionary Story

Learn to bring compassion, clarity, and understanding to your daily life.

Meditations for Emotional Healing 

Mindfulness Meditations for Healing, Presence, and Clarity

A profound transformation can occur just by training your attention in awareness—a practice sweeping schools, workplaces, and institutions across the country with its capacity to decrease stress, cultivate inner calm and expand wisdom and creativity. 

Clinical psychologist and meditation teacher Tara Brach has been at the forefront of mindfulness-based therapy since its inception, successfully bringing principles of mindfulness to alleviate depression, chronic pain, and more. 

Now, with Mindfulness Meditation, she offers nine of her most effective guided sessions, perfect for beginning or deepening your mindfulness practice:

• A Pause for Presence
A short, basic practice that can be used daily to feel at home with mindfulness

• Developing Self-Compassion
A meditation that cultivates a forgiving and caring heart towards yourself and others

• Presence with Everyday Fears
A practice to help you address fear and other emotions in order to find greater freedom and choice

• Mindfulness of Pain
A meditation to release you from physical suffering

• Contacting Our Inner Wisdom
A practice to help you avoid constant reactivity in difficult situations

“It's only in the actual experience of here and now that we can experience our full aliveness,” teaches Dr. Brach. “The practice of mindfulness helps to open a heart that is ready for anything.” 

With Mindfulness Meditation, find the tools to walk the path of mindful awareness—and connect with your innate capacity for love, clarity, and inner peace.

The Mindfulness Revolution

A Pause for Presence

Lost in Thought

Coming Back

Mindful Presence

Being Here

Pain as an Obstacle to Presence

Mindfulness of Pain

Fear as an Obstacle to Presence

Presence with Everyday Fears

Lovingkindness for Self and Others

Developing Self-Compassion

Pausing in the Midst of Difficult Situations

Contacting Our Inner Wisdom

Developing the Power of Forgiveness

The Heart of Forgiveness

Effortless Presence

Walking the Path of Mindfulness

Connect with your innate capacity for love, clarity, and inner peace.

Mindfulness Meditation

How would your life change if you genuinely accepted yourself, just the way you are? 

According to Dr. Tara Brach, feelings of shame and unworthiness are the source of many problems we experience with our relationships, careers, creative endeavors, and most fundamentally, our spiritual unfolding. 

Course objectives:

• Explain how feelings of shame and unworthiness are the source of many problems we experience with our relationships, careers, creative endeavors, and most fundamentally, our spiritual unfolding.

• Discuss Radical Self-Acceptance and how to free yourself from the grip of your insecurities about being good enough.

• Practice Radical Self-Acceptance as a way to discover the freedom that comes with kindness and true appreciation of yourself and others.

• Utilize insights from both Eastern contemplative traditions and Western psychotherapies to guide you through a full program of meditations and skills you need to become more compassionate toward the unforgivable parts of your Self.

Relating to the Anxiety of Imperfection

The Root of Suffering

Fleeing From the Face of Shame

Strategies of Judgment and Conformity

Awakening from Your Substitute Life

Mindfulness and Love

A Meditation on Welcoming the Guests

Taking a Sacred Pause

A Meditation on Beginner’s Mind

The Gradual Process of Intimacy

Recognizing Your Mental Stories

A Meditation on Relaxing Resistance

Saying Yes to Your Feelings

Embodied Awareness

A Meditation on Befriending Experience

Facing the Demons Wisely

The Two Qualities of Awareness

Sensing Space and Connecting with Experience

Remembering Love

Tonglen: Extending the Circle of Compassion

The Essence of Spiritual Reparenting

A Meditation on Caring Presence

Session 3

Belonging to the Whole World

Healing with Our Fellow Beings

The Power of Connectedness

The Love You Long For is Everywhere

A Meditation on Touching the Ground

The Bodhisattva Path

A Meditation on Being with What is True

Session 4

Accept yourself just the way you are and discover the freedom it brings.

Radical Self-Acceptance

Tara Brach leads a short guided meditation she calls A Pause for Presence in which we use the body and our sense perceptions as an entryway into the moment as it is.

Experience Tara Brach's "Yes" meditation, a liberating way to give space to the actuality of a situation and foster emotional healing.

The "Yes" Meditation

In Mindfulness of Pain Tara Brach presents a guided practice for releasing the suffering we create through resistance to physical discomfort and pain.

Created especially for use when things get overwhelming, here is a heart-opening meditation for taking refuge in the unconditional love that is always available.

Tara Brach leads you in a practice to help you address fear and other emotions in order to find greater freedom and choice.

In Developing Self-Compassion Tara Brach explains how the practice of lovingkindness toward oneself can be achieved by seeing your virtues through the eyes of someone who cares for you.

Being Here is an exercise of mindful presence. When recognising and allowing you open up to a quality of beingness, which gives profound inner freedom and choice.

Our capacity to joy is related to our capacity to forgive. 

Injury and blame hurts ourselves. Forgiveness helps us to move forward in our lives. 

We forgive for the freedom of our hearts to see truth and live with an open heart. 

Bring mindfulness to the places where we felt hurt or injured or afraid and with that mindfulness freeing up the armouring that surrounds our heart. 

In Contacting Our Inner Wisdom Tara Brach guides you in a practice to help you avoid constant reactivity in difficult situations. It will help you to connect with your natural wisdom and compassion.

In Coming Back Tara Brach invites you to explore the natural rhythm of the breath as a gateway to the present moment.

In Mindful Awareness Practice, Tara Brach helps you to stabilise yourself in presence with the breath and then to be open to whatever is arising.

In Arriving in Natural Presence, Tara Brach invites you to arrive back home to the present moment, to establish a sense of being right here with our senses awake.

In this meditation, Tara Brach invites us to connect with what's true for us at this moment.

Beginner’s Mind

Discover that clarity and opening of awareness is really what we are. 

A practice in resting our natural awareness. 

Letting go of controlling and just experience life as it is.

In the RAIN meditation, Tara Brach guides you in the steps of Recognizing, Allowing, and Investigating difficult emotions leading to a natural presence.

Guided RAIN Meditation

In this practice we learn how to apply RAIN - the steps of Recognizing, Allowing, and Investigating difficult emotions leading to a Natural presence - to work with difficulty.

Using RAIN to Work with Difficulty

In Heart Medicine for Fear Tara Brach guides you in how to find your way to loving presence in the face of fear.

In The Practice of Forgiving Ourselves we learn to develop a loving attitude to those aspects of ourselves that we usually want to avoid.

In Cultivating a Forgiving Heart Tara Brach leads us in a practice where we ask for forgiveness from others, offer forgiveness to ourselves and finally to those that have caused us harm.

In Resting Your Heart in What Is True Tara Brach guides you in a reflection on the three gateways of awareness, truth and love.

Resting Your Heart in What is True

In a Meditation on Welcoming the Guests, Tara Brach invites us to recognise those places in ourselves that want attention so that they can become a beautiful way to freedom in our lives. 

Welcoming the Guests

Tara Brach guides us in an exercise to explore how it would be if we released our resistance to difficult experiences and instead bring the spirit of "yes" to them.

Relaxing Resistance

In this short meditation Tara Brach invites you to befriend your experience as it is, with a warm and welcoming attitude.

Befriending Experience

In this meditation, Tara Brach invites us to bring a caring presence to an area of difficulty, working with mindfulness and compassion techniques.

Caring Presence

In this practice, Tara Brach invites us to see ourselves through the eyes of wisdom, care and compassion, discovering that we are able to hold the deepest kind of pain.

Touching the Ground

In this meditation, Tara Brach guides us to be with that which is within ourselves and within all other beings.

Being With What is True

Kristin Neff Ph.D. is widely recognized as one of the world's leading experts on self-compassion, being the first one to operationally define and measure the construct over a decade ago.

In addition to her pioneering research into self-compassion, she has developed an eight-week program to teach self-compassion skills in daily life, co-created with her colleague Dr. Chris Germer, called Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC). 

Kristin Neff

Chris Johnson, PsyD is as an executive coach. She is passionate about embodied learning and leadership, and leveraging it to cultivate strong business and community leaders, healthy workplaces, and engaged, thriving communities.

She is the author of "The Leadership Pause - Sharpen Your Attention, Deepen Your Presence and Navigate the Future"

Chris is the Founder and CEO of Q4 Consulting.

Chris Johnson

Anna Wikfalk is a Mindfulness, yoga teacher, author and lecturer and Sexual health - Pleasure coach. She runs a yoga and mindfulness studio, Bara Yoga, in Stockholm and  digital coaching on sexual health and pleasure, www.annawikfalk.com

Anna Wikfalk

Dr. Siegel is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and the founding co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center. 

He studies family interactions with an emphasis on how attachment experiences influence emotions, behaviour, autobiographical memory and narrative.

Daniel Siegel

Eckhart Tolle is a spiritual teacher and author who was born in Germany and educated at the Universities of London and Cambridge. 

At the age of 29, a profound inner transformation radically changed the course of his life. The next few years were devoted to understanding, integrating and deepening that transformation, which marked the beginning of an intense inward journey. 

Later, he began to work in London with individuals and small groups as a counsellor and spiritual teacher. Eckhart shares his time between British Columbia, Canada and California

Eckhart Tolle

Catherine Polan Orzech, has worked in the field of mind body wellness for almost two decades and has taught Mindfulness since 2000. 

She received her initial training in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction at the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center and her professional training under the direction of Jon Kabat-Zinn in 2003. 

She has taught and lectured on the subject of mindfulness internationally and was founder and co-director of the Montreal Center for Mindfulness.

Catherine Polan Orzech

Mark Williams is Emeritus Professor of Clinical Psychology and Emeritus Fellow of Linacre College, University of Oxford, and was Founding Director of the Oxford Mindfulness Centre (2008-2013). 

The main focus of his work has been to understand how best to prevent serious clinical depression and suicide. His books include Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy for Depression: A new approach to preventing relapse with Z. Segal and J.D. Teasdale

Mark Williams

Stephan Pende Wormland was born in Germany in 1965 and practiced in different spiritual traditions before he became a student of Lama Zopa Rinpoche in 1995. 

He studied psychology and worked in a psychiatric hospital. He has done solitary retreat and led many retreats and introductory courses in different centres in Europe.  

Stephan Pende Wormland

Richard Mendius, MD, is a neurologist and co-founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom. He trained at UCLA as an epileptologist and neurobehaviorist. He has been on the teaching faculty of UCLA, Oregon Health Sciences University, and Stanford University. 

His meditation practice began in the 1980s with Shinzen Young and continues at Spirit Rock Meditation Center with Jack Kornfield and Ajahn Amaro. He teaches a weekly meditation class at San Quentin. 

His daughters, Courtney and Taryn, and his son, Ian, are three of his main teachers and companions on the path.

Richard Mendius

Michael Stone was a psychotherapist, yoga teacher, Buddhist teacher, and author committed to the integration of traditional teachings with contemporary psychological understanding. 

The components of his practice include Yoga postures, breathing techniques, meditation and the study of traditional texts. He passed away on July 16, 2017. 

Michael Stone

Veronika Ryd är beteendevetare, samtalsterapeut i KBT, författare och mindfulnessinstruktör. Hon driver terapimottagningen Kognitiva kliniken i Stockholm

Veronika Ryd

Adyashanti is an American spiritual teacher and author. He studied Zen Buddhism under the guidance of his teacher for about 14 years. At 31, Adyashanti had an experience of awakening that put to rest all his questions and doubt. 

He first started giving talks to small gatherings, in a room above his aunt's garage, which grew over years. Today he offers talks, online study courses, and retreats in the United States and abroad. 

Adyashanti

Jack Kornfield trained as a Buddhist monk in the monasteries of Thailand, India and Burma. He has taught meditation internationally since 1974 and is one of the key teachers to introduce Buddhist mindfulness practice to the West. 

After graduating from Dartmouth College in Asian Studies in 1967 he joined the Peace Corps and worked on tropical medicine teams in the Mekong River valley. 

Over the years, Jack has taught in centers and universities worldwide, led International Buddhist Teacher meetings, and worked with many of the great teachers of our time. 

Jack Kornfield

Sally Kempton has been studying and teaching the wisdom of yoga for 40 years. 

A highly regarded teacher of meditation and spiritual philosophy, she writes the popular Yoga Journal column “Wisdom.” Known for her gift of making yogic wisdom relevant to daily life and for transmitting deep states of meditation, she teaches retreats and teleclasses internationally. 

Sally Kempton

Jon Kabat-Zinn is an American professor of medicine and the creator of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. 

Kabat-Zinn was a student of Buddist teachers such as Thich Nhat Hanh and a founding member of Cambridge Zen Center. His practice of yoga and studies with Buddhist teachers led him to integrate their teachings with scientific findings. 

He teaches mindfulness, which he says can help people cope with stress, anxiety, pain, and illness. The stress reduction program created by Kabat-Zinn, mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), is offered by medical centers, hospitals, and health maintenance organizations.

Jon Kabat-Zinn

Joseph Goldstein, is one of the first American vipassana teachers, co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) with Jack Kornfield and Sharon Salzberg. 

Contemporary author of numerous popular books on Buddhism, resident guiding teacher at IMS, and leader of retreats worldwide on insight (vipassana) and lovingkindness meditation.

Joseph Goldstein

Kelly McGonigal is a health psychologist who is known for her work in the field of "science help" as it relates to achieving personal goals despite inner conflict. 

She is a longtime advocate of self-compassion and mindfulness as stress-coping strategies as she was the chief editor of the International Journal of Yoga Therapy from 2005 to 2012 and advocated yoga and similar mindfulness practices as a way to re-charge and direct attention and mental resources so as to achieve desired outcomes.

Kelly McGonigal

Björn "Natthiko" Lindeblad erbjöds att bli den yngste ekonomichefen någonsin inom AGA-koncernen. Istället sade han upp sig, gav bort allt han ägde och levde som buddhistisk skogsmunk i 17 år. 

2008 återvände Björn till Sverige. Natthiko betyder den som växer i visdom och detta är fortfarande hans ledstjärna. 

Sommaren 2020 höll han sitt andra "Sommar i P1" som blev ett av årets mest lyssnade.

Han avslutade sitt liv 17 januari 2022 efter att han levt tre och ett halvt år med den obotliga sjukdomen ALS.



Björn Natthiko Lindeblad

Ali Katz is a Coach, Author and Speaker. She is a certified meditation teacher, life-coach and parenting coach. 

Ali is the best-selling author of  “Hot Mess to Mindful Mom: 40 Ways to Find Balance and Joy in Your Every Day”.

Ali Katz

Pema Chodron became a novice nun in 1974 while studying with Lama Chime in London. His Holiness the Sixteenth Karmapa came to England at that time, and Pema received her ordination from him. 

Pema first met her root teacher, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, in 1972. Lama Chime encouraged her to work with Rinpoche, and it was with him that she ultimately made her most profound connection, studying with him from 1974 until his death in 1987. 

At the request of the Sixteenth Karmapa, she received the full monastic ordination in the Chinese lineage of Buddhism in 1981 in Hong Kong.

Pema Chödrön

Rick Hanson is a psychologist, Senior Fellow of the Greater Good Center at UC Berkeley, and New York Times best-selling author. 

He's been an invited speaker at NASA, Oxford, Stanford, Harvard, and other major universities, and taught in meditation centers worldwide. 

Rick Hanson

Sharon Salzberg is a New York Time Bestselling author and teacher of Buddist meditation practices in the West. 

In 1974, she co-founded the Insight Meditation Society at Barre, Massachusetts with Jack Kornfield and Joseph Goldstein. 

Her emphasis is on vipassana and loving-kindness methods, and has been leading meditation retreats around the world for over three decades.

Sharon Salzberg

Bjarne Nybo is an expert and consultant in mindfulness and emotional intelligence. 

Bjarne holds a Master of Science degree in International Communication, certification for Meditation from The Chopra Center in California, where he was personally trained by Deepak Chopra, and he holds certification for Emotional Intelligence from Multi Health Systems in Canada.

Bjarne Nybo

Candra Karlholm är mindfulnessintruktör, coach och kursledare. Hon har utforskat och praktiserat metoder för självkännedom och medveten närvaro i mer än 20 år med framstående lärare. 

Tillsammans med Mikael Karlholm driver hon Spread the Word som ordnar evenemang med några av de största inom personlig och andlig utveckling.

Candra arbetar med systemiskt konstellationsarbete och är också seminariehandledare utbildad av Family-Lab.

Candra Karlholm

Ronald de Caluwé is mindfulness- en compassietrainer, Tai Chi- en Qigong leraar en lichaamsgericht traumatherapeut. 

Verschillende invalshoeken om lichaam en geest beter te leren kennen en verbinden. Vanuit verbinding kan verzachting plaatsvinden, bijvoorbeeld naar oude pijn of (chronische) klachten. 

Je zult dit terughoren in zijn meditaties.

Ronald de Caluwé

Directora del programa de Afiliación con el Center For Mindfulness (CFM) de la Universidad de Massachusetts (UMASS) y de la Formación de Profesores de MBSR. 

Licenciada en Informática (UPM), Experta en Inteligencia Emocional (UCJC). Profesora Certificada y Supervisora avalada por el CFM de la UMASS. Docente de Intervenciones basadas en Mindfulness.

Ana Arrabé

Gonzalo Brito es psicologo clinic y doctor en psicologia. Es co-autor del programa Mindfulness-Based Emotional Balance (MBEB) y es director de la formacion de instructors en espanol del programa Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT). 

Gonzalo Brito

Director de Nirakara Institute, Físico Teórico (UAM). Máster en Neurociencia (UAB). TDI en el Center for Mindfulness de la Universidad de Massachusetts. 

Codirector del MBSR (Mindfulness based Stress Reduction) de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid y Codirector del Experto Universitario EUMCS (Mindfulness en Contextos de Salud). Investigador y docente de Intervenciones basadas en Mindfulness.

Gustavo G. Diex

Bente Nybo er uddannet sygeplejerske og certificeret i Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy. 

Hun har undervist private og virksomheder i mindfulness og får gode tilbagemeldinger fra deltagere på hendes undervisning og metoder.

Bente Nybo

Marc Loewer ist Arzt für Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie mit mehr als 20 Jahren persönlicher Erfahrung in der Anwendung der Achtsamkeitspraxis. 

Zu seinen prägenden Wegbegleitern und Lehrern zählen Nyanaponika Mahathera, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche und Willigis Jäger. Marc leitet seit vielen Jahren Kurse im Bereich der Achtsamkeitsbasierten Stressbewältigung (MBSR) und Achtsamkeitsbasierter Kognitiver Therapie (MBCT). 

Er ist seiner Praxis für integrative Psychotherapie in Freiburg im Breisgau tätig

Marc Loewer

Director General del Instituto Mexicano de Mindfulness, dedicado a la impartición de intervenciones e investigación basados en atención plena, así como a la formación de profesionales.

Practicante de mindfulness desde 1999.

Investigador posdoctoral en el Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology en UCLA.

Eric Lopez

Karolinska Institutet is one of the world’s leading medical universities. Our vision is to advance knowledge about life and strive towards better health for all.  As a university, KI is Sweden’s single largest centre of medical academic research and offers the country’s widest range of medical courses and programmes.  Since 1901 the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has selected the Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine.

Karolinska Institutet

Nancy Bardacke is a meditation teacher and nurse-midwife who developed the Mindfulness-Based Childbirth and Parenting program in the US. 

She has many years of both meditation experience and experience helping women and their families through pregnancy and childbirth. 

Nancy teaches the Mindfulness-Based Childbirth and Parenting Program at the University of California San Francisco Osher Center for Integrative Medicine. 

The Mindfulness App

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