A Simple Guided Meditation from Dan | Live from the Renegade Sangha

We asked not too long ago in the chat on our Substack community – which you can find at DanHarris.com http://danharris.com – about what kinds of things you'd find useful as Friday bonus episodes, and one of the things we heard was: more guided meditations, please. So today, we are happy to oblige with this short meditation that I led, as part of our semi-regular live gatherings of the Renegade Sangha on Substack. Twice a month, paid subscribers are invited to join me, live, for a little guided meditation, then I take your questions. It's been so much fun to hear from you, and to help you hear from each other. Today's guided meditation is taken from our sangha gathering on April 23. It's super simple and good for both beginners and experienced meditators alike. If you enjoyed that and would like more opportunities to meditate together, here's what we've got coming up for you in June: 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 lens of self-compassion and we're super excited about this: 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, exclusively for paid subscribers at DanHarris.com. This is something we've been wanting to offer for a long time and I'm thrilled that we're finally doing it. Visit DanHarris.com http://danharris.com for all the details

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Dan Harris?

  This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

• 0:19Dan 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 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

• 1:04Dan Harris?

  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 for 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 23. It's very simple.

• 1:45Dan Harris?

  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.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  Hey Chicago listeners. We shop for everything at home now. Why can't we shop for blinds at home too? That's why I love Three Dan Blinds. Instead of wandering around a store, Three Dan Blind sends a professional design consultant straight to you. They bring all the samples, help you see what actually works in your space, take expert measurements, and even handle the installation. We've all bought something that looked great in a store and looked terrible once we got home. With Three Dan Blinds, you see everything in your actual light with your actual furniture before you commit. Plus, whether you're home or away, you can control your window treatments with the Three Day Blinds app. So for a free, no charge, no obligation consultation, head to three day blinds.com/chicago50

• 2:41Speaker 01

  for our buy one get one 50% off deal. That's the number three D A Y blinds.com/chicago50.

• 2:50Speaker 02

  Hot flashes, rage crying, forgetting words mid-senten. Yeah, we know. Menopause is a lot. Midi Health gets it. That's why Midi offers virtual healthcare specially tailored to women's needs. Built for women by women. Every symptom, every stage, every question. Visit joinmidi.com to get started today. That's join M I D I dot com. Individual results and coverage varies. Check with your plan for coverage.

• 3:20Dan Harris?

  For now, though, settle in.

• 3:25Dan Harris?

  Okay, assume the position, everybody.

• 3:29Dan Harris?

  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.

• 3:41Dan Harris?

  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.

• 4:07Dan Harris?

  Feels good?

• 4:10Dan Harris?

  Get the body and the mind ready to do some meditation.

• 4:17Dan Harris?

  When you're done with the three deep breaths, settle into your chair, whatever position you're in.

• 4:26Dan Harris?

  And let's use this phrase from Joseph Goldstein, who got it from the Buddha.

• 4:34Dan Harris?

  "There is a body." This is right out of a classic Buddhist discourse, or discourse of the Buddha called the Sativatana Sutta, which is

• 4:48Dan Harris?

  another way of saying the four ways of being mindful, the four foundations of mindfulness. And one of the foundations of mindfulness, one of the ways to get mindful is

• 5:02Dan Harris?

  pay attention to what's happening in the body.

• 5:06Dan Harris?

  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.

• 5:26Dan Harris?

  "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.

• 5:52Dan Harris?

  So just drop that phrase into the mind, "There is a body," and see what you notice.

• 6:15Dan Harris?

  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.

• 6:28Dan Harris?

  And one little technique that might help some of you stay with the sensations in the body with a little bit more,

• 6:40Dan Harris?

  in a little bit of a stickier way. One little technique is mental noting. So you can note hearing, seeing. By seeing, most of us probably have our eyes closed. So it could be the colors you're seeing behind the eyes. It can be another mental note might be pressure, tingling, itching,

• 7:05Dan Harris?

  tension. Just use a little mental note, which is the skillful use of thinking to connect you to the direct sensation.

• 7:17Dan Harris?

  I'm going to be quiet for a couple of minutes and let you do this.

• 8:11Dan Harris?

  There is a body.

• 8:15Dan Harris?

  Such a useful phrase. A little clunky, but useful just to

• 8:21Dan Harris?

  remind you to tune into the sensations in your body.

• 8:26Dan Harris?

  And when you get distracted, not a problem.

• 8:32Dan Harris?

  Just gently escort your attention back to the body.

• 8:38Dan Harris?

  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.

• 9:31Dan Harris?

  Joseph calls mental notes a little whisper in your mind.

• 9:40Dan Harris?

  Like I said earlier, using thought to direct you to your sensations.

• 9:49Dan Harris?

  Ignorance,

• 9:51Dan Harris?

  pressure,

• 9:53Dan Harris?

  numbness.

• 9:58Dan Harris?

  You don't have to thumb through your mental thesaurus, just a good enough note is fine.

• 10:05Dan Harris?

  And you don't have to note everything.

• 10:09Dan Harris?

  So drop it in as a way to keep you in the game.

• 10:17Dan Harris?

  And then every once in a while, you can also drop in the words "there is a body."

• 10:57Dan Harris?

  You're doing great. Just a couple more minutes. Let's try something. This may not work for everybody, but

• 11:04Dan Harris?

  see if you can locate where you feel yourself. Where's the spot where it feels like, oh yeah, this is me here?

• 11:18Dan Harris?

  For me, it's like in my face somewhere, maybe around my mouth.

• 11:24Dan Harris?

  And then just check out what are the sensations that make up this feeling of, oh yeah, this is me, Dan, or

• 11:33Dan Harris?

  Liz, or whoever, Tony, sitting in this chair.

• 11:41Dan Harris?

  Where's that sense of the me that's holding it all together?

• 12:24Dan Harris?

  For me, I find when I look at

• 12:29Dan Harris?

  what feels like the locus of the self,

• 12:34Dan Harris?

  the place where

• 12:38Dan Harris?

  on my face where it feels like, oh yeah, this is Dan looking out.

• 12:43Dan Harris?

  I see it's just a bunch of shifting sensations. I can't find any core Dan-ness there.

• 12:59Dan Harris?

  All right. Good job, everybody.

• 13:05Dan Harris?

  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 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

• 13:49Dan Harris?

  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 Podpeople. Lauren Smith is our production manager. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.

• 14:29Speaker 03

  I'm Jake Stauk, co-founder and CEO of Serval. Your IT team is full of builders who understand how your company works, but too much of their day goes to password resets, app access, and repetitive tickets. We built Serval to give them that time back. It's the AI-native enterprise service management platform that automates the work legacy tools only track. Tell Serval what you want automated in plain English, and its AI agent builds it. No drag and drop workflow builders, consultants, or lengthy implementations. Then, our help desk agent resolves employee requests using the tools IT has approved. Your team stays in control, and you're building. Get to build. Companies including Fox, Live Nation, Notion, Ramp, and Lucid Motors run on Serval. Whether you have 200 employees or 20,000,

• 15:14Speaker 03

  your team should be building what's next. Start a free pilot and we guarantee you can automate 50% of your IT tickets during it. Go to serval.com/listen. That's S-E-R-V-A-L dot com slash listen. Serval.com/listen.

• 15:29Speaker 04

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of 5-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.