Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 474: Next-Level Meditation | Bonus Meditation with Diana Winston

Episode Date: July 15, 2022

Expand and strengthen your understanding of awareness through an exploration of focused, investigative, and flexible awareness.About Diana Winston:Diana Winston is the Director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA's Mindful Awareness Research Center and the author of The Little Book of Being: Practices and Guidance for Uncovering Your Natural Awareness. She has taught mindfulness since 1999 at hospitals, universities, corporations, nonprofits, and schools in the US and Asia. She developed the evidence-based Mindful Awareness Practices (MAPS) curriculum and the Training in Mindfulness Facilitation, which trains mindfulness teachers worldwide. She is also a founding board member of the International Mindfulness Teachers Association. To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “Exploring Awareness Three Ways,” or click here: https://10percenthappier.app.link/content?meditation=0445dec7-d4dc-4358-ad9f-87a7058eb4a6.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

What does it even mean to live a good life? Is it about happiness, purpose, love, health, or wealth? What really matters in the pursuit of a life well lived? These are the questions award-winning author, founder, and interviewer Jonathan Fields asks his guests on the Top Ranked Good Life Project podcast. Every week, Jonathan sits down with world renowned thinkers and doers, people like Glenn and Doyle, Adam Grant,

Young Pueblo, Jonathan Height, and hundreds more. Start listening right now. Look for the Good Life Project on your favorite podcast app. This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Happy Friday. Let's do a bonus meditation. Often, when we're practicing meditation, we're told to focus on something specific, like the breath, sensations in the body, or loving kindness phrases.

Today, we're going to throw open the doors a little bit and do something called choiceless awareness. You can think of this as a kind of next level meditation. And your guide is Diana Winston. She's the director of mindfulness education at UCLA's Mindful Awareness Research Center and the author of the little book of being. Here we go now with Diana Winston.

Hi, this is Diana. As you find a comfortable posture, closing your eyes if you wish, notice how you're doing in this moment. Be curious about your body and mind. Take some breath. Try to maintain an attitude of kindness, of settling into your own sense of being. It's right here for you in every moment, this your attention to your meditation anchor, that which you always return to. If your anchor is your breath, receive your breath in your abdomen, chest or nose.

Feeling the sensations of breathing. One breath ends, the next begins. One breath ends, the next breath begins. One breath ends. The next breath begins. Just the natural breath in and clarity to our mind. We focus on just one area and continue to return there over and over in order to build stability. Try this on your own for a bit. Now we're going to shift into having a more flexible awareness called investigative awareness. In this type of practice when a new object, such as emotions or a sensation, becomes very obvious, calling out to you.

Let go of your anchor and turn your attention to whatever this new object is. Feel the emotion or sensation in your body. Turn your attention to whatever this new object is. Feel the emotion or sensation in your body. Notice what happens to you as you pay attention to it. Stay with this new aspect of experience until it no longer holds your attention, until it stops, or until something else grabs your attention. Another way to play with this is when you find yourself suddenly aware that you're lost in thought, instead of immediately jumping your attention back to your anchor. Notice what it is that's pulled you away. Become curious about the experience and really notice sense or feel it. When ever the object has stopped or stopped grabbing your attention, return to your anchor,

to your breath. In this way, your attention has become more flexible. Now we're going to shift into a fully flexible awareness that's often called We can try it now by noticing different domains of things to be aware of. Let's turn our attention to our body sensations. Heaviness, lightness, softness, hardness, warmth, coolness, comfort, discomfort. What grabs your attention? Explore this on your own. How about emotions? Anything obvious to you in this domain? Happiness, sadness, anxiety, frustration, joy, or perhaps nothing in particular? What can you be aware of? Yn yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw Now, let's put it all together.

Noticing but not in any particular order. For this type of awareness, this choiceless awareness, we are open, spacious, and we focus on any object that comes. Let your experience dictate what to notice. So it's more like the objects choose us. Let go of your anchor and follow your experience by paying attention to whatever arises moment after moment in any domain. Setle back and notice whatever is obvious to you as it arises and passes. If it starts to feel a little overwhelming or too much is happening, at any point feel Let's end the meditation by checking in with ourselves. What do you can open your eyes if they've been closed. Thank you to Diana Winston and we'll be back here on Monday for a brand new episode

of Freshy with the actress and director Sarah Polly who's written a book all about confronting her own difficult and very very interesting past as a child star and she's got a lot of thoughts about how we can all do that. Hey, hey prime members, you can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.

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