A Simple Guided Meditation from Dan | Live from the Renegade Sangha
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This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey, everybody. Happy Friday. We asked not too long ago in the chat over on our Substack community, which you can find at danharris.com, we asked in the chat about what kinds of things people want us to drop on Fridays as bonus episodes. And one of the things we heard very consistently was more guided meditations, please.

So today, we're going to oblige with a short meditation led by me. My name is Dan. Nice to meet you. This is a meditation that comes from one of the semi-regular live gatherings that

that I host over on Substack. Twice a month, paid subscribers are invited to join me live for a little guided meditation. Then I take your questions. I love these sessions. They're really easy and fun for me, and people seem to be enjoying them. In fact, all this week, every day this week, I've been doing a live series focusing on the Brahma Viharas.

These are four qualities of mind, four accompanying styles of meditation that are designed to help you cultivate these qualities of mind.

They are loving kindness, compassion, equanimity, and sympathetic joy. I've loved doing these live meditations this week, and we're working on doing much more live stuff online in the near future. So let us know what you think. Anyway, today's guided meditation is taken from one of our Sangha gatherings back on April 23rd. It's very simple. It's good for both beginners and experienced meditators.

And stay with me after the meditation for some information on what we've got planned for June, including some guided meditations from a very special guest teacher. Around my house these days, we're starting to think very seriously about our summer travel plans.

We may be a little bit behind the eight ball on this, but every summer we go out to the beach. We particularly love Montauk on the eastern tip of Long Island. I have nothing against hotels. There are some beautiful hotels out there that we've stayed at and really enjoyed. But for me, especially on a beach vacation, it's always great to get an Airbnb. A couple reasons for this, in my opinion. One, it's nice to be able to cook for yourself. Two, it's

It's nice to be able to get a place with other families. One of my favorite parts of life is being at the beach or really being anywhere with the people I love. It's so much more intimate and personal. When you're sharing a house with someone, you're really getting to spend time with them. And I find this irreplaceable, frankly.

It's great for the kids. Kids really get to, you know, entertain each other. And then the parents really get to talk in depth and do stuff together. You can put your home on Airbnb and make some extra cash when you're out vacationing. You get paid to vacation. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.com slash host.

You've heard me talk about Quince before, and I'm going to do it again because just the other day, and maybe this is TMI, but I needed some socks and underwear, and I went to Quince. Just to be clear, Quince is an advertiser on this show, so sometimes I get free stuff, but other times I go there and pay just because I like their stuff so much. So yeah, I ordered some underwear and some socks. The socks are great, really comfortable. They're the socks that you can wear with like low-top Nikes, and you don't see the socks, which I know is not the Gen Z thing these days, but...

I'm a man of a certain age and I like those kinds of socks. And the underwear, the boxer briefs. One of the big problems with boxer briefs in my long history of being alive is that they can bunch up on the leg. But somebody over at Quince figured out new technologies so that doesn't happen with the underwear I bought over there. Again, I know, a little bit of

extra information you don't need. But if you're in the market for underwear, or if you're not a male and you've got a male in your life who needs some underwear, I highly recommend it. Anyway, they've got stuff for all genders at really low prices. As I mentioned before in this show, there are days when Quince is all I'm wearing, head to toe. Quince has all the things you actually want to wear, like organic cotton silk polos, European linen beach shorts, and comfortable pants that work for everything from backyard hangs to nice dinners. The best part, everything from Quince is

is priced 50 to 80% less than what you'd find at similar brands. By working directly with top artisans and cutting out the middlemen, Quince gives you luxury pieces without the crazy markups. And Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical, and responsible manufacturing processes and premium fabrics and finishes. Elevate your closet with Quince. Go to quince.com slash happier for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash happier to get free shipping now.

and 365-day returns, quids.com slash happier. For now, though, settle in. Okay, assume the position, everybody. Sitting comfortably or lying down, standing up if you're tired and you're worried that you might fall asleep, just taking a comfortable position, spine reasonably straight. And let's do three deep breaths just to kick things off. So deep, deep, deep inhale, and then try to extend the exhale so it's three or four times as long.

Feels good. Get the body and the mind ready to do some meditation. When you're done with the three deep breaths, settle into your chair or whatever position you're in. And let's use this phrase from Joseph Goldstein who got it from the Buddha. There is a body. This is right out of a classic Buddhist discourse or discourse of the Buddha called the Satipatthana Sutta, which is

Another way of saying the four ways of being mindful, the four foundations of mindfulness. One of the foundations of mindfulness, one of the ways to get mindful is pay attention to what's happening in the body. Mindfulness that there is a body. And so that little phrase, there is a body, which comes right out of the Buddhist texts and which I have often joked sounds like something you say at a crime scene. You just drop that into your mind. There is a body.

direct your attention to all the sensations that are happening right now because there's no sensation in the body that happens at any other time, unlike the mind. It's not casting into the future or the past. It may store memories from the past, but everything's happening right now. So just drop that phrase into the mind, "There is a body," and see what you notice. If there's any trouble staying concentrated, just know that's completely normal.

It's totally fine to get distracted and start again. You cannot hear that enough. And one little technique that might help some of you stay with the sensations in the body with a little bit more, in a little bit of a stickier way, one little technique is mental noting. So you can note hearing, seeing, and by seeing, most of us probably have our eyes closed, so it could be the colors you're seeing behind the eyes. It could be

Another mental note might be pressure, tingling, itching, tension. Just use a little mental note, which is the skillful use of thinking to connect you to the direct sensation. I'm going to be quiet for a couple minutes and let you do this. There is a body. Such a useful phrase. A little clunky, but useful just to remind you to tune into the sensations in your body. And when you get distracted, not a problem. Just...

Gently escort your attention back to the body. You might feel the breath within the body. That's fine. If you want to hone in on the breath and ignore the instructions du jour, that's also fine. Joseph calls mental notes a little whisper in your mind. Like I said earlier, using thought to direct you to your sensations. Tightness, pressure, numbness, tension.

You don't have to thumb through your mental thesaurus, just a good enough note is fine. You don't have to note everything. Drop it in as a way to keep you in the game. Then every once in a while, you can also drop in the words there is a body. You do a great, just a couple more minutes. Let's try something. This may not work for everybody, but see if you can locate where you feel yourself.

Where's the spot where it feels like, oh yeah, this is me here. For me, it's like in my face somewhere, maybe around my mouth. And then just check out what are the sensations that make up this feeling of, oh yeah, this is me, Dan or Liz or whoever, Tony sitting in this chair. Where's that sense of the me that's holding it all together? For me, I find when I look at what feels like the locus of the self, the place where I'm

on my face where it feels like oh yeah this is dan looking out i see it's just a bunch of shifting sensations i can't find any core dan-ness there all right good job everybody

Thanks for meditating with me. If you enjoyed that and would like more opportunities to meditate together, here's what we've got coming up for you in June. Here on the podcast, we're bringing back our series Get Fit Sanely, where we talk about how to take care of your body without losing your mind. You'll hear about nutrition, exercise, rest, and more, all with a contemplative focus.

and self-compassionate lens. We're also super excited about this. A friend of the pod and ACE meditation teacher, Cara Lai, will be creating a month of bespoke meditations, each one tailored to an episode of the podcast.

So every Get Fit Sanely episode will come with a guided meditation from Cara. And this is exclusively for paid subscribers over on danharris.com. This is something I've been wanting to do for a long time. I'm really excited that we are finally getting around to it. Check out danharris.com for all the details.

In the meantime, thank you to everybody who works so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our production manager. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Kashmir is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our themes.