Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - Bonus Meditation with Sebene Selassie, "Stress Better"

Episode Date: July 20, 2019

It kind of blows my mind to consider the fact that we're up to nearly 600 episodes of this podcast, the 10% happier podcast. That's a lot of conversations. I like to think of it as a great compendium of, and I know this is a bit of a grandiose term, but wisdom. The only downside of having this vast library of audio is that it can be hard to know where to start. So we're launching a new feature here, playlists, just like you put together a playlist of your favorite songs.

Back in the day, we used to call those mix tapes. Just like you do that with music, you can do it with podcasts. So if you're looking for episodes about anxiety, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes. Or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes, or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist for that. We've even put together a playlist of some of my personal favorite episodes. That was a hard list to make. Check out our playlists at 10%.com slash playlist. That's 10% all one word spelled out..com slash playlist singular.

Let us know what you think. We're always open to tweaking how we do things and maybe there's a playlist we haven't thought of. Hit me up on Twitter or submit a comment through the website. Hey y'all, it's your girl, Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur. I'm a 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 my space? Listen to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. Hey guys, we've got a bonus for you today. We're dropping a bonus meditation into the feed. This is a meditation from a new course that we just put up on the 10% happier app. It's about stress. The course is called stress better. The basic thesis is, you can't change the fact

that life has stressors. You can, however, change how you respond to those stressors. This meditation is from one of the experts we use in the course. Her name is Sevena Celassi. If you wanna hear more about her personal story, you can go back and listen to episode 42 when she was a guest.

But for now, this is a meditation called sensing into stress. So here's Sebinet. Hi, this is Sebinet. In this meditation, we'll build our awareness of how stress feels in the body. Recognizing our stress response is all about feeling our stress. You might be thinking, but I don't want to feel my stress. Feeling stress is not about getting swept up in the emotions of stress. It's about feeling the sensations of the body. Building this capacity to feel our sensory experience

helps us separate what's actually happening from the stories we tell ourselves about it. This takes a little practice, but once you get the hang of it, it's like a superpower. Because rather than being taken over by stress, we can learn to be with it. And being with it will help lessen it. I know it sounds paradoxical. It kind of is. Accepting the felt sensations of stress in the body helps us be less caught in the stress.

Feel the stress, don't be the stress. Let's try it. Find a comfortable posture and if you like, close your eyes or keep them open with a soft focus on the floor. Remember, you want to be upright but relaxed. So make sure your chest is open, not collapsed, and see if you can soften the belly. Take a few deep breaths in and out through the nose. Now see if you can notice what's going on in your body. Sometimes this is called the felt sense. You're not thinking about the body.

You were trying to feel the sensations within the body. Let's start with the feet on the floor or your butt in the seat. Feel the contact and the pressure there. Those grounded touch points are always a good place to start because gravity works. You can always feel where you're connected to the earth as a sensory experience. Now let's notice if there's any obvious holding in the body. Tension in various muscles or body parts is one of the ways stress manifests in the body. Sometimes we have habits of holding that lead to tightness or even pain. or around the eyes. Perhaps there's tension in the shoulders or lower back or hips. If it's really painful, you can always move your attention away to something less triggering.

But once you can stay with it, give your full attention to one area of holding or tightness even if it's minor. Notice how it feels. Does it cover a large area or is it pointed? Is it sharp or diffuse? Does it have any vibration or pulsing, or does it feel static or dull? Tune into your body for a few moments and if you do find stress or tension, really pay attention to it. You don't need to push anything away or make it change. Just know it.

See if you can stay curious about what's happening, not needing things to be a certain way, and letting whatever is happening just be. Sometimes, simply bringing this kind of curious and relaxed awareness to tension can make it disappear. And that's okay. Other times, paying attention to tension can increase it. That's okay too. Just continue to notice what's holding or stays the same. If it gets intense, bringing awareness to the breath can give the stress some space. You can shift awareness back and forth between and out through the nose to bring some relaxation within the body are always changing. Even the tension you always feel in your jaw or back, it doesn't stay the same forever.

When you open to the sensation, you might realize it's not that bad. It's just, well, sensation. Whatever is happening, can you connect to the body as a way to know what's going on internally. And you can stay with this sensation, the felt sense, rather than run a story about it. Our physical stress responses are normal, and when we actually feel them, we realize they're not that bad. We're practicing this capacity to feel what's going on within the body, so that when you do feel stress, you remember how to feel the stress, not be the stress.

Feel free to open your eyes and reconnect to where you are. I hope you enjoyed this meditation. Thanks for your practice and I'll see you next time. Big thanks to Seb for that meditation. And if you wanna go check out the course, which again is called Stress Better, you can, if you're not a app subscriber, go to 10%.com forward slash stress, and you can get a little taste for free and if you are an app subscriber just go to the courses tab and click on the course called stress better

Big thanks again to to Seb and we'll be back on Wednesday with a brand new episode. 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 Wondry.com-slave Survey. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday, parenting is unbearable.

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