Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 605: For When You're Overwhelmed | Bonus Meditation with Jeff Warren

Episode Date: June 2, 2023

Be like a robot and try this light-hearted noting practice. Give your anxiety a break by immersing yourself fully in your external senses.About Jeff Warren:Jeff is an incredibly gifted meditation teacher. He's trained in multiple traditions, including with renowned teacher Shinzen Young. Jeff is the co-author of NY Times Bestseller "Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics," and the founder of the Consciousness Explorers Club, a meditation adventure group in Toronto. He has a knack for surfacing the exact meditation that will help everyone he meets. "I have a meditation for that" is regularly heard from Jeff, so we've dubbed him the "Meditation MacGyver."More info on the Meditation Party retreat: In-person at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NYOnlineTo find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “Robots Don’t Freak Out.”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. Hey, happy Friday, everybody. If you listen to the episodes this week, you know that anxiety was a big theme. Rain Wilson, who played Dwight on the office, talked about freaking out whenever he had to go on a late night talk show.

And anxiety expert, Lewandah Marquez came on to talk about how to get comfortable with discomfort. Today, a meditation specifically for when you're freaking out, and this one gets delightfully weird. Our teacher, DuJour, is the delightfully weird Jeff Warren, my co-author on meditation for fidgety skeptics, and the founder of the Consciousness Explorers Club, which is a meditation adventure group in Toronto. Jeff has also been part of our meditation party series of episodes with Seven Aselassi. We just dropped another meditation party episode last week. So go back and check that out in the meantime. Here we go now with Jeff Warren. Hi, this is Jeff. And this is your break only in case of emergencies meditation.

It's meant for situations where you're feeling massively overwhelmed and you need to reset. We're going to shift the ratio of our attention out. And we're going to do it by pretending to be robots. Because robots don't freak out. Let's go. The first thing to do is to take a couple of deep breaths. I recommend having the eyes open because we're gonna try to use seeing here. As you breathe in, you're stretching up your spine.

As you breathe out a nice long exhale. One, two, three, four. Then an inhale, one, two, three, exhale. One, two, three, four. Okay, so we're going to do a noting practice. That means every time you hear a sound or see a sight or feel a body sensation, you say, either out loud or silently to yourself, here or see or feel. And make your voice a bit robotic like here. So the instruction is you are a calm, unflappable robot and you are noting in metronome. The key is in the rhythmicity and the steady robotic,

unemotional metronome noting. Now, see, here, feel, initiate your noting sequence. It's like you're pouring your attention out of you into the external world of sights and sounds and neutral bodies and stations. See, feel, see, here, except that a pace that works for you. Nice long exhale now. Really let the exhales be long. Maybe even yoke you're noting to the end of each exhale if that helps.

Noticing one thing at a time and a steady voice that isn't rushed because robots don't get rushed. Here. See. Feel. Keep the rhythm going. So So, either keep going, or when you're ready, you can wind the noting down and open your eyes and check in with how you feel. How are things different right now? This meditation is dedicated to my teacher, Shenzhen Yang, a very magic robot, many years

ago, skillfully taught me to work with my overwhelm. Thank you. I'm Jeff. Enjoy your day. Thank you to Jeff. You can find many more meditations like that one over on the 10% happier app. Just download the app wherever you get your apps to get started. And I should say if you want to meditate with Jeff and me and Seb and Aselessi in person,

come to our meditation party retreat in October at Omega, which is a few hours outside of New York City. We'll put a link in the show notes. If you can't come in person, you can attend virtually. The same link will work for that. We'll see you right back here on Monday for a brand new episode. We're going to talk time management for very busy busy people with Laura Vandercam, who has an astonishing amount of wisdom on this score. 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 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.