10% Happier with Dan Harris Folgen

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- These days, the word mindfulness has become a buzz phrase but very often people don’t know what the word actually means, much less how to practice it. One simple definition of mindfulness is the ability to see what’s happening in your mind without getting carried away by it. The benefits of doing so are vast and profound— from decreased emotional reactivity to being more awake to what’s actually happening in your life. Today's guest Joseph Goldstein talks about a classic Buddhist list called the four foundations of mindfulness, which lays out various techniques for developing mindfulness within your practice. Goldstein is one of the premier western proponents of Mindfulness. He co-founded the legendary Insight Meditation Society alongside Sharon Salzberg and Jack Kornfield. He also wrote a book called Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening. In this episode we talk about: The historical context for the four foundations of mindfulness  Why he thinks the Buddha loved lists Why the Buddha placed mindfulness of the body first on the list The steps to mastering mindfulness of the body The meaning of the word embodied and how that’s different from our usual mode of being in the world How and why to do walking meditations What are feeling tones and why are they important Practices for cultivating mindfulness of mind And we talk about some of the mantras that Joseph uses when teaching  Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/joseph-goldstein-483

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- There are so many benefits to mindfulness with one of the biggest being the cultivation of more self-awareness. This cultivation can lead to identifying the unhelpful mental habits that can develop over the years. Today we’re going to talk to Carol Wilson who offers very clear and practical ways that Buddhist meditation can help us turn down the volume on our unproductive mental habits and be less reactive. Wilson is a guiding teacher at the Insight Meditation Society, where for many years she has taught their annual three-month retreat. She began her insight meditation practice in 1971 in India and in the 1980s she spent a year in Thailand as a Buddhist nun.  In this episode we talk about: How to be mindful throughout the day The concept of 360 degree awareness Noticing when one experiences wanting or aversion  Why Wilson believes that the root of suffering comes from making it all about us How seeing torment can help us experience freedom from the self The benefits of reflecting on your past acts of generosity  Bringing awareness to your motivations And doing a gratitude practice regularly to change the weather pattern in your mind Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/carol-wilson-481

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers. --- Many of us may have a reflexive reaction when we notice we’re feeling down: we want it to go away. Maybe we think something is wrong with us and we automatically self medicate in any number of ways. But how do we square this with the fact that many of us may also really like sad movies and music? And making things even more complex, how do we compute the fact that the universe is constantly handing us opportunities to feel awe, gratitude, and joy, often at the exact same moment that sadness arises? What’s going on with this complex and conflicted relationship we have with a perfectly normal human emotion? Our guest today Susan Cain has written a whole book about this called Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole. In this book, she explores how the capacity to tune in to the inherent joy and sadness of the human situation can be a superpower for connection. In this episode we talk about: Whether bittersweetness is a skill you can hone The relationship between bittersweetness and the Buddhist concept of impermanence Why we feel embarrassed about discussing sorrow and longing  How sadness can be transmuted into creativity, and how that creativity can lead us out of sadness And how America, a country founded on so much heartache, turned into, in her words, “a culture of normative smiles” Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/susan-cain-480