Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - A Deep Breathing Exercise for Stress | Bonus Meditation with Jeff Warren

Episode Date: February 9, 2024

This four-part breathing technique calms the nervous system, relaxes the body, and is an effective antidote to obsessive over-thinking.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."To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “Breath Stressbuster.” See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Maybe you've stayed in an Airbnb before and thought to yourself, this actually seems pretty doable. Maybe my place could be an Airbnb. Could be as simple as starting with a spare room or your whole place when you're away. You could be sitting on an Airbnb and not even know it. I personally love Airbnbs. My friend Glenn and I just rented an Airbnb in Fort Lauderdale. We're going to bring our families down to see Inter Miami play some soccer.

Glenn and I both have boys. Our boys really wanna see messy play. So anyway, I'm really looking forward to all staying in the same place instead of being in hotels where we maybe run into each other once in a while. I love the intimacy of all being in the same house. It's really cool. Maybe you're planning a ski getaway this winter

or you've decided to go someplace warm while you're away. You could Airbnb your home and make some extra money toward the trip. It's a smart and simple way to use what you already have. Whether you could use extra money to cover some bills or for something a little more fun, your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello everybody. Happy Friday. Time for a bonus meditation. Earlier this week we posted an interview with James Nester who wrote a book called Breath, the new science of a lost art. If you heard that conversation, you know that breathing turns out to be quite a bit more complicated and nuanced than you might have thought. And today's bonus meditation

is going to teach you a simple and quick technique for four-part breathing, which can help you calm down in a stressful moment. Our meditation teacher, Du jour, is one of my favorite humans, definitely my favorite Canadian. His name is Jeff Warren. He's the co-author with me of a bestselling book called Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics. And he's the founder of the Consciousness Explorers Club

based in Toronto, and he's a great friend. Here we go now with Jeff Warren. Hi, I'm Jeff, and this meditation is a stress buster. An intervention I use to check my propensity for obsessive overthinking that makes my stress much worse. It's intended to both calm the nervous system and to suck up some of the bandwidth of neurotic thinking. The technique is based on a form of breathing sometimes called box breathing, other times

called four-part breathing. This particular version was taught to me by my friend and teacher, Therese Jornlin, who teaches an excellent breath as medicine course. We start by closing the eyes or having them open at half-mast if that's more comfortable. So we start this practice by noticing the body, noticing the hard structure of the body, the bones even. And I don't mean this in a conceptual way. I mean, really try to feel into this. Where are the bones in your shoulders and in your chest and your arms?

And noticing now, can you feel the structure of the spine? once the whole skeleton. Good, so your attention is on the full structure of the body. And the next step here is to notice how the breath enters this structure. What is the breath's effect? Okay, now we're going to start our four part breathing. Go ahead and just breathe in. Nice even in breath, natural breath. And then stop at the top. So before you exhale, stop at the top and deliberately pause. And then deliberately breathe out and take an in breath, natural breathing in. Pause at the top.

Now breathe out. Long exhale. Pause at the bottom. And so on. That's our rhythm. Four parts. The in breath, the pause, the out breath, the pause. Take some time to explore this on your own. Now Now, bring your attention back to the bones, to the structure of your body. And see if you can notice how in the background, in the most natural way, the breath just comes in and gently moves the bones, inspires the body, fills it with life, but not in a dramatic way, just this subtle, modest way.

Let's see if you can find some appreciation for the breath. This is a really good technique. Even just doing it for two or three minutes can create a bit of a state shift in what's happening inside. When you're ready, you can open your eyes and rejoin your day. I hope you enjoyed this practice and found it effective. Thank you, I'm Jeff. Thank you, Jeff. You can find more meditations like this one over on the 10%

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