Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - High-Fiving Your Anxiety Demon | Bonus Meditation with Leslie Booker

Episode Date: January 26, 2024

Gently opening to the full sensations of anxiety and even making friends with it can actually create more calm and peace in your body.About Leslie Booker:After training as a yoga teacher in 2007, Booker was drawn to Spirit Rock Meditation Center’s Mindful Yoga and Meditation training which she completed in 2012. She is a co-founder of the Yoga Service Council at Omega Institute and the Meditation Working Group of Occupy Wall Street. In 2020 she was invited to be a Sojourner Truth Leadership Fellow through Auburn Seminary and was voted by her peers as one of the 12 Powerful Women in the Mindfulness Movement. She currently lives in Philadelphia with her partner and pup and is the Co-Guiding Teacher of New York Insight.To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “Making Friends with Your Anxiety.”See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

When you visit Audible, there are endless ways to ignite your imagination. With over 750,000 titles, including bestsellers, there's a listen for every type of listener. One of my favorite types of audiobook is a memoir read by the author. So I'm currently enjoying Walking in My Joy in These Streets, written and narrated by the one and only Jennifer Lewis. Discover all the best in audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, featuring authentic Canadian voices and celebrity talent. You might want to try some new audible Canadian originals like the downloaded, a sci-fi adventure

featuring Brendan Fraser and Luke Kirby, or Mistletoe Murders 2, a cozy mystery featuring Kobe Smulders. A first listen is waiting for you when you start your free trial at audible.ca. This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey everybody, happy Friday. Time for a bonus meditation. Today we're talking about anxiety. I suspect that's a feeling many of you, if not all of you, intimately understand. For many of us, if not all of you, intimately understand. For many of us, the reflex in the face of anxiety

is to ignore it or avoid it. Common band-aids include alcohol, drugs, shopping, food, gambling, et cetera. Our teacher du jour, however, has another suggestion. Instead of suppressing it, ignoring it or avoiding it, pay attention to it. Make friends with it even or avoiding it, pay attention to it. Make friends with it even. Of course, you have to do this carefully and in small doses.

I'll leave the actual tactical advice to the aforementioned teacher, Leslie Booker. She prefers to go by just Booker. She is one of the featured teachers in the Taming Anxiety Challenge, which you can find over on the 10% Happier app. Booker has a background in yoga and was trained in meditation at Spirit Rock. She currently lives in Philadelphia and is also spending a lot of time in New York, where she is the co-guiding teacher of the amazing New York Insight Meditation Center. Here we go now with Booker.

Hey folks, this is Booker. The human body is wired to respond when it perceives a threat. Anxiety can mislead the body into thinking there's something menacing just around the corner when there isn't. It's integral for us to be tuned into our bodies to understand what is actually happening. Let's practice moving towards the sensations of anxiety and seeing what they're made of. Find a posture that brings a sense of ease and comfort to the body. Begin to orient yourself by turning your head from side to side, noticing colors, shapes, textures. The feeling of titration, of opening to our anxiety in small intervals, knowing we can

return to a sense of safety when we need to, is actually an experience in the body. As you breathe in, open the arms wide, lifting the chest up. And as you breathe out, wrap the arms around the body, rounding the back. It was comfortable to do so and dropping the chin down towards the heart. Can you feel the sense of ease and flow? This is what titration feels like. We don't need to stay frozen. We can choose to open up

and we can choose to close back up. When you're ready, bring your body to a place of relative stillness. Remember, you are in the driver's seat. Sometimes just acknowledging your anxiety is all it takes for it to get smaller, even dissipate, as it sees that you're not trying to avoid it. When you feel ready, begin to move towards your anxiety. Intentionally bring to mind whatever was your personal anxiety monster.

Continue to track your body as you do this. Can you notice where there is still to regulate as you return to see your anxiety as not necessarily an enemy. Maybe you can even begin to understand that its intention is to protect you. It's just gotten a little out of control. From a place of knowing who is actually in charge here, can you extend some appreciation and warmth towards your anxiety? If this feels difficult or even impossible, can you extend some appreciation towards yourself for the effort you put in today. When you're ready, begin to slowly open your eyes if they are closed, and take a moment

to check out your environment, orienting yourself back to your space. Be well, dear ones. Thanks again to Booker. And a reminder, you can find more meditations like this one over on the 10% happier app. Just download the app wherever you get your apps to get started. Where can I get help hiring people with disabilities? There are hundreds of thousands of Canadians with disabilities who are ready to work. And many local organizations are available to help you find qualified candidates and make your workplace more accessible and inclusive.

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