Meditate on the Breath (Without Driving Yourself Nuts) | Bonus Meditation with Joseph Goldstein

You don't have to focus too maniacally on your breath; your body is part of the process, too. Our good buddy Joseph Goldstein shows you how to balance. Joseph Goldstein https://www.dharma.org/teacher/joseph-goldstein/ is a cofounder of the Insight Meditation Society https://www.dharma.org/ and the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/, both in Barre, Massachusetts. He is the author of many books including, most recently, Dreamscapes of the Mind http://give.dharma.org/JGpoetry. This meditation is part of a new series on the Eightfold Path. The rest of the series is available on Waking Up, a top-notch meditation app with amazing teachers and a ton of courses for all levels. If you subscribe via this link: wakingup.com/tenpercent http://wakingup.com/tenpercent, you'll get a 30-day free trial—and you'll be supporting the 10% Happier team, too. Full and partial scholarships are available. Sign up for Dan's newsletter here http://www.danharris.com Follow Dan on social: Instagram https://bit.ly/3tGigG5, TikTok https://bit.ly/3FOA84J Subscribe to our YouTube Channel https://bit.ly/3FybRzD

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.

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• 1:20Dan Harris?

  Hello, everybody. Happy Friday. Time for a guided meditation. As you may know, we're just wrapping up an April's worth of episodes featuring some of our friends over at the Waking Up app. Lots of great teachers over there, including Henry Shookman, Diane Musho-Hamilton, and of course, Sam Harris. Also on the app, you can now hear a lengthy series, an eight-hour series, all about the Buddha's noble Eightfold Path, featuring Sam and me and today's guided meditation teacher, Joseph Goldstein. Today, we're going to bring you one of the guided meditations that Joseph recorded as part of the Eightfold Path series. This meditation focuses on how not to concentrate so much on your breathing that you basically

• 2:03Dan Harris?

  forget to breathe, which is a real thing that really does happen to some people. So let's settle in now with Joseph. And after the meditation is over, I'll tell you about how to get a 30-day free trial over on the Waking Up app.

• 2:16Speaker 03

  The beginning practice of many meditations is calming the mind and collecting the attention as the first step.

• 2:29Speaker 03

  And very often, very convenient object of awareness, as we are first beginning to calm the mind and collect the attention, is to work with the breath. It's a very natural process. Everybody's breathing. You don't have to particularly look for it. So settling into the awareness of the breath, we can see as a foundational meditative exercise. But sometimes people find that by focusing on the breath too much, they sometimes find it difficult not to control it in some way or influence the breathing process.

• 3:13Speaker 03

  And in this particular practice of Vipassana, it's not a breathing exercise. It's an exercise in awareness. And so we want to let the breath find its own natural rhythm. There's no such thing as a wrong breath.

• 3:32Speaker 03

  One way that helps allow the breath to find its own natural rhythm is instead of initially zeroing in on the breath, wherever we may be watching it, whether it's the air passing the nostrils or the movement of the chest or the abdomen, instead of zeroing in on the sensations of the body breathing, for many people it's helpful to use as the frame for this, the awareness of the whole body. And a phrase that is actually found in the discourse the Buddha gave on mindfulness of breathing,

• 4:17Speaker 03

  mindfulness of the body, there's a phrase in which he says, "Be mindful." And then in the equivalent of quotes, "There is a body." So it's almost as if that phrase, "There is a body," could be used something as a mental node or a mental label or gentle reminder, "There is a body." Settling into the awareness of your body sitting.

• 4:49Speaker 03

  Sitting and perhaps occasionally repeating that phrase, "There is a body."

• 4:58Speaker 03

  And then within that larger frame, simply become aware of the sensations of the body breathing. Not necessarily narrowing the attention,

• 5:14Speaker 03

  but letting the awareness of those sensations happen within the larger frame, the awareness of the whole body.

• 5:32Speaker 03

  It's sometimes helpful to make a very soft mental note or mental label with each breath, in, out, or rise and fall, if you're feeling the sensations of the abdomen or the chest moving as the body breathes.

• 5:56Speaker 03

  The noting is a way of helping to connect the attention to the breath

• 6:06Speaker 03

  and sustaining the attention for the entire duration of the breath.

• 6:22Speaker 03

  Resting in the larger frame, "There is a body."

• 6:26Speaker 03

  And then within that, simply be aware of the sensations of the body breathing,

• 6:36Speaker 03

  perhaps with a soft mental note, in, out, rising, falling.

• 6:50Speaker 03

  Si est-ce que vous utilisez le notaire,

• 6:53Speaker 03

  rappelez-vous de le garder très doux. C'est presque comme un cri dans la tête.

• 7:00Speaker 03

  L'attention principale devrait être sur le sentiment des sensations de la respiration, où que vous en soyez.

• 7:57Speaker 03

  Et parfois, répéter cette phrase "il y a un corps" est une façon de vous rappeler de revenir à une conscience de corps entier dans laquelle se produisent les sensations de la respiration.

• 9:00Speaker 03

  你可能有时会注意到 脑子开始游离，迷失在思想中

• 9:07Speaker 03

  当你意识到 脑子被某物体带走时 简单地注意到这一点 并很轻地回到呼吸中

• 9:20Speaker 03

  这是一个问题的重新开始

• 10:12Speaker 03

  带入呼吸中 发展心灵的稳定性 需要两个特定的特质 第一， 将注意力或意识 和呼吸的开始相连接

• 10:33Speaker 03

  然后维持注意力

• 10:37Speaker 03

  这半呼吸的持续时间

• 10:41Speaker 03

  所以连接 然后维持注意力

• 10:47Speaker 03

  连接呼吸的开始 然后维持注意力 对这半呼吸的持续时间

• 11:04Speaker 03

  Relaxation is an important part of the practice.

• 11:10Speaker 03

  So we want to relax into the awareness of the whole body. There is a body.

• 11:16Speaker 03

  The body will be breathing naturally by itself. So there's nothing we have to do in order to breathe.

• 11:27Speaker 03

  Simply be in the awareness of the whole body and feel the sensations of the body breathing, connecting with the beginning of the breath, sustaining the attention

• 11:44Speaker 03

  until the end of that half breath,

• 11:49Speaker 03

  connecting with the out breath, sustaining the attention.

• 12:12Speaker 03

  And when you're enlightened, you can open your eyes

• 12:17Speaker 03

  and reconnect with everyone around you.

• 12:26Dan Harris?

  Thank you to Joseph. Again, the meditation you just heard is part of a series that I was part of producing over on the Waking Up app, all about the Noble Eightfold Path. Joseph, Sam and I spent a work week together in Maine recording that series, and it's just been posted. If you're interested in a full-on app experience, which I cannot yet provide over on danharris.com, you can sign up for the Waking Up app at wakingup.com/tenpercent. That's wakingup.com/tenpercent, and you'll get a free 30-day trial. I'll put a link in the show notes. Just so you know, if you buy a subscription via that URL, you will be supporting me and my new little venture because Sam and I have a profit-sharing deal. And if you can't afford the app,

• 13:10Dan Harris?

  just let them know over at Waking Up. They'll hook you up for free, which is, of course, the same policy I have on my Substack.

• 13:17Dan Harris?

  Before I go, I just want to thank everybody who worked 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. Welcome back to Lauren. She just got back from maternity leave. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.

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