Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - A Non-Obvious Way to Relax | Bonus Meditation with Anushka Fernandopulle

Episode Date: May 7, 2021

Using the practice of gratitude, you can learn to relax your body and settle your mind. About Anushka Fernandopulle: Anushka teaches meditation, works as an organizational consultant, and does leadership coaching with individuals and teams. She has practiced meditation for over 25 years, including four years in full-time intensive training in monasteries and retreat centers in the US, India and Sri Lanka. Her work is informed by a BA in anthropology/religion from Harvard University, an MBA from Yale focused on leadership and organizational behavior, and certification in coaching from the Coaches Training Institute. To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “Unwind with Gratitude,” or click here: https://10percenthappier.app.link/content?meditation=be9f6e9c-3b3b-4a1b-bdd5-5ef516879189. We want to deeply thank and recognize mental health professionals for your support. For a year's FREE access to the app and hundreds of meditations and resources visit: https://www.tenpercent.com/mentalhealth. 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. Hey y'all, it's your girl, Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur. On my new podcast, Baby This is Kiki Palmer. I'm asking friends, family, and experts the questions that are in my head. Like, it's only fans only bad.

Where did memes come from? And where's Tom from MySpace? Listen to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Today we've got a guided meditation that is designed to help you cultivate gratitude in order to decrease stress. Now, gratitude is one of these things that can seem like kind of an empty bromide, but there is a ton of science that strongly suggests that cultivating the skill of not taking things for granted can have all sorts of interesting psychological benefits.

Our teacher today is Anushka Fernanda Puli. She's a fascinating person and a, has an enormous amount of practice under her belt. She's been meditating for 25 years. She also works as an organizational consultant and does leadership coaching with individuals and teams. She got degrees from Harvard and Yale. Also say she's highly qualified to guide you in this practice.

So here we go now with Anushka. Hi, this is Anushka. In this meditation, we'll be cultivating gratitude to decrease stress and bring some ease to your mind. It can be easy to get overwhelmed by the stresses of life and get caught up in everything that's not going our way. We can forget to notice anything that's actually going well in the midst of all this. If we can remember some of the things we have to be grateful for, it can help restore some balance and peace to the mind. So let's get started. Take a moment to settle into the body wherever you are.

Feel the sense of the whole body in its posture, whether you're standing, sitting or lying down. Feel the sensations of contact with the floor or chair or cushion. Gently close your eyes if you feel comfortable, or you can keep them open with the gaze down a little bit. Feel yourself taking a breath in and out. On the exhale you can practice letting yourself release some of the tension that may be there in your jaw, in your face, in your shoulders. Breathe in and out a few more times deeply like this, and then allow yourself to breathe First, just notice that you're breathing. This is something that it's easy to take for granted.

There are so many ways that our body works that we don't notice while things are going well. But you can certainly notice when it's difficult to breathe, like when you're congested or if you have asthma or any other obstruction of breathing. However, you're breathing today, connect with the sense of gratitude for this and for being alive, which you can notice through your breathing. Let's take a moment to think about any aspect of relationship you have to be grateful for. This could be in family, friendship, co-workers, neighbors, even pets. Think of one positive relationship you have, or even one positive interaction you've had with someone recently.

Reflect with gratitude on this relationship or encounter. I'm grateful for this connection. Feel free to use your own words that convey your gratitude for this, sincerely. See how it feels to rest in this experience of gratitude. Try this on your own for a while. Notice where you feel this gratitude in your body. Check in with the heart area, in the chest, and allow yourself to rest in the sensations of gratitude. You can return to this gratitude practice whenever you find yourself getting overwhelmed or unbalanced. As we bring this meditation to an end, you can open your eyes if they've been closed.

You may even see something else in your environment to be grateful for as well. Wishing you well as you continue your day. Thank you, Anushka. One quick order of business before we go here, as you may know, May is mental health awareness month. Over the past year, mental health professionals have been doing heroic work to help people in the middle of so much upheaval. So we want to, first of all, thank all of you for doing heroic work to help people in the middle of so much upheaval.

So we want to, first of all, thank all of you for doing the work you do. And then also to offer some support in the form of a one-year free subscription to the 10% happier app. If you fall in the category of a mental health professional or if you know somebody who does, go to 10%.com slash mental health. That's it for today. We'll see you back here on Monday with a brand new episode about habit change, how to make or break habits. It's incredibly

hard, but we've got an expert who has a ton of ideas. We'll see you then. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and add 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 by completing a short survey at Wondery.com-survey. Hey, I'm Aresha and I'm Brooke. And where the hosts of Wondery'scom slash survey. Hey, I'm Arisha, and I'm Brooke. And we're the hosts of Wondery's podcast, Even the Rich, where we bring you absolutely true and absolutely shocking stories about the most famous families

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