Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 557: A Meditation to Help You Listen to Your Gut | Bonus Meditation with Sharon Salzberg

Episode Date: February 10, 2023

Sharon expertly guides you through a body scan to help you feel relaxed and at home in your body.About Sharon Salzberg:Sharon Salzberg is a meditation pioneer, world-renowned teacher, and New York Times bestselling author. She is one of the first to bring mindfulness and lovingkindness meditation to mainstream American culture over 45 years ago, inspiring generations of meditation teachers and wellness influencers. Sharon is a co-founder of The Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA, and the author of twelve books, including the New York Times bestseller, Real Happiness, now in its second edition, and her seminal work, Lovingkindness. To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “Basic Body Scan” or click here: https://10percenthappier.app.link/content?meditation=c637cfaa-665c-4a37-9c03-af3ef321d17dSee 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, everybody. It's bonus meditation time. On the show this week, we talked about the art and science of intuition. One of the things we learned is that it's hard to tap into your intuition or your gut instincts

if you're completely disconnected from the signals your body is trying to send to your brain. So today we've got a meditation that will help you tune in. It comes from the great Sharon Salisberg who is a founding teacher over on the 10% happier app and one of the co-founders of the legendary insight meditation society in Barry Massachusetts. She's also written a bunch of books, including Real Happiness and Real Love. Here we go now with Sharon Salzburg. Hi, this is Sharon. A body scan meditation helps us relax,

and also helps us experience pleasant sensations in our bodies without clinging, painful sensations without any tension and fear, and neutral sensations without numbing out or getting bored. It opens the door for new insights, but how our bodies are always changing. And it is a way of getting centered, a reminder that we can be at home in our body.

Start by sitting or lying down in a comfortable spot with your arms by your sides and your eyes closed or slightly open. Breathe naturally and let your attention rest on the place where you feel the breath most clearly, the nostrils,, or abdomen. Bring your attention to the top of your head. Simply feel whatever sensations are there, perhaps tingling or itching, pulsing. Maybe you notice an absence of sensation. That's fine too. Just stay with whatever you encounter. If what you discover is pleasant, you might feel an urge to hang on to it, to cling. It's so relaxed, open up, and see if you can simply be with the sensation of pleasure.

If I you discover it's unpleasant or painful, you might find you're trying to push it away. If you spot any of these reactions, see if you can release them. Come back to the direct experience of the moment. What's the actual sensation of pain or pleasure? Feel it directly without interpretation or judgment. Bring your attention to to the ribcage, the abdomen. Now bring your attention into the pelvic area and see what sensations you feel there. Slowly move your awareness down your thighs, your knees into your feet. As you observe the different sensations, notice you're also observing how they're constantly changing. And so we arrive at a fundamental insight about the body and about our lives. When you feel ready, you can open your eyes or lift your gaze and end the session.

Thank you for your practice. Thank you again to Sharon Salisberg. We'll see you right back here on Monday for the first installment of our two-week series, which we're calling Valentine's Day counter-programming. We're going to be trying to come up with something way different from your usual Valentine's Day fair. We're gonna talk about the science of heartbreak. We're gonna talk about family drama, how to make and keep friends, and of course we will talk about romantic relationships. In fact, our first guest coming up on Monday is gonna talk about how to be happy and romantic relationships and she's gonna do a lot of myth-busting against the kind of

stuff we're taught about love and rom-coms. We'll see you all on Monday for Maisha Battle. 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 add free with 1-3-plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself

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