Week 28 · modern

Tara Brach

Tara Brach spent years feeling like she wasn't enough. As a young meditation student, she'd sit on the cushion judging herself for not meditating well enough (which is a special kind of trap). She eventually realized that the self-judgment was the problem, not the symptom. She became a clinical psychologist, a Buddhist teacher, and the creator of RAIN, a method for working with difficult emotions that has helped millions of people stop being at war with themselves.

“"The boundary to what we can accept is the boundary to our freedom." She says that to people who think acceptance means giving up. It doesn't. It means stopping the exhausting war against reality so you have energy for the things you can actually change.”