Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - A Meditation for Emotional Agility | Bonus Meditation with Sharon Salzberg

Episode Date: December 15, 2024

Bring an open minded curiosity to your big emotions and get to know yourself more fully, developing resilience to deal with all the feels.About Sharon Salzberg:Sharon Salzberg is a meditation pioneer, world-renowned teacher, and New York Times bestselling author. She is among the first to bring mindfulness & lovingkindness meditation to mainstream American culture fifty years ago, inspiring generations of meditation teachers and wellness influencers.A co-founder of The Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA, Sharon is the author of thirteen books, including the New York Times bestseller, Real Happiness, now in its second edition, and her seminal work, Lovingkindess.To find this meditation in the Happier Meditation app, you can search for “Being With Big Emotions.”See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to 10% happier early and ad free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Hey, Dan here. If you want to continue unlocking your potential to live your best life, then I think you should check out Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. Whether you're working on a wedding toast or planning a big meeting at work, strong speaking skills are critical in life. Every Tuesday, host and Stanford lecturer Matt Matt Abrahams, sits down with experts to discuss

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and on YouTube. And you can find additional content at fastestmarter.io. It's the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Happy weekend, everybody. Time for a bonus meditation. It can be really easy to let your emotions run away with you, especially when you're having big feelings about something, but meditation can help us do

what we think we can't do, which is to sit with what we might consider unbearable and to watch that emotion come and go. It's incredibly powerful. Our meditation teacher Du Jour is the great Sharon Salzberg, one of the pioneers of Buddhist meditation in the West. She's the author of a number of great books, including Love and Kindness and Real Love. Here we go now with Sharon Salzberg.

Hi, this is Sharon. Whatever emotion we are experiencing, our key effort is to have an open-minded, open-hearted awareness of our experience in the moment without being lost in judgments, preconceptions, or immediate reactions. Sit or lie down on the floor in a relaxed, comfortable posture. Your eyes can be open or closed. Take a couple of deep breaths, and then allow the breath to become natural, so you're not trying to make it deeper or different. Now bring to mind a pleasurable experience you had recently, one that carries a positive emotion,

such as happiness, contentment, or gratitude. or gratitude. Notice what emotions come up as you bring this pleasurable experience to mind. You may feel moments of excitement, moments of hope, moments of fear, moments of wanting more. Just watch these emotions rise and pass away. Where in your body do you feel sensations associated with the emotion arising? What are they? How do they change? Stay with the awareness of your physical sensations, opening up to them and accepting them. Now we'll look at more difficulty motions.

You can begin this part of the practice by bringing to mind a difficult or troubling thought or situation, something that carries intense emotion for you, such as sadness, fear, shame, or anger. See where you feel it in your body. What does it feel like? Where do you feel sensations arising? How are these sensations changing? Once your attention has moved to the bodily sensations, perhaps say to yourself, it's okay. Whatever it is, it's okay. Letting them be softening and opening to them. You can close the meditation session.

Thank you for your practice. Thank you, Sharon. You can find more meditations like this one over on the Happier app. Download the app wherever you get your apps to get started. If you like 10% happier, and I hope you do, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.