Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - How To Cut Yourself Some Slack Meditation With Vinny Ferraro

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

Guess what: you don't have to fix yourself.  All this month, we're sharing custom guided meditations from our teacher of the month, Vinny Ferraro, exclusively available at DanHarris.com. Like any good drug dealer, the first taste is free – so today, we're giving you a sample of what you can expect for the rest of the month. Related Episodes: You Can't Hate Yourself Into Becoming a Better Person | Vinny Ferraro On Sunday, September 21st from 1-5pm ET, join Dan and Leslie Booker at the New York Insight Meditation Center in NYC as they lead a workshop titled, "Heavily Meditated – The Dharma of Depression + Anxiety." This event is both in-person and online. Sign up here! Get ready for another Meditation Party at Omega Institute! This in-person workshop brings together Dan with his friends and meditation teachers, Sebene Selassie, Jeff Warren, and for the first time, Ofosu Jones-Quartey. The event runs October 24th-26th. Sign up and learn more at eomega.org/workshops/meditation-party-2025.   Join Dan's online community here Follow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTok Subscribe to our YouTube Channel   To advertise on the show, contact [e-mail] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris

This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello there. Happy Sunday. Hope you're having a good weekend. Today we've got a guided meditation for people who kick their own ass, which is probably everybody. It comes from Vinnie Ferraro, who's our teacher of the month over at Dan Harris.com. That means he is creating custom guided meditations for all of our Monday and Wednesday episodes on the podcast, but only for paid subscribers. Also for paid subscribers, he'll be doing in the month of September live, guided meditation and Q&A sessions, some of them with me. If you sign up, you'll get all of that stuff. However, today we're giving you a little teaser. This is one of the meditations he produced for the episodes

that we have put behind the paywall, but actually we're going to take this one here and drop it for free. Hopefully, as a way to entice you to join us over at Dan Harris.com. Before we jump into the meditation. I just want to quickly say that if you want to meditate with me in person, I've got a couple of events coming up. One is on September 21st at the New York Insight Meditation Center. It's a half-day thing. The other is a weekend-long thing at the end of October. It's called Meditation Party. I don't want to say too much right now because I want to let you start meditating, but I put some links in the show notes if you want to sign up for either or both. Okay, we'll get started with Vinnie Ferraro right after this. I think many of us are taught to and

improve ourselves, fix ourselves, or at the very least hide the parts that feel too messy, too needy, too much. But this practice isn't about self-improvement, it's about self-inclusion. So today we're going to try to meet ourselves with kindness, not because we earned it, because we did something spectacular, but because we can be so hard on ourselves. Sometimes it can feel like, don't gang up on me, with me, against me. You know that feeling? So we have to balance that out a bit. And let me just say, you don't have to feel any great surge of love. You don't have to fake anything. You just have to be willing to turn toward yourself.

with even a little less judgment and a little more care. Okay, let's begin. Find the position that allows your body to feel supported and grounded, relaxed, but alert. And if it feels okay, you may close your eyes. It can help you turn your attention inward or maybe just soften your gaze. And as you welcome yourself to the present moment, see if you can ease. any demand you have on this being a certain way. And allow the breath to find its natural rhythm.

And you don't have to do this right. There's no role to play here. There's no version of you to live up to. Let's just rest in this living, breathing, presence. And we start with the body. Feeling all the points of contact, the chair, the cushion, the floor. or the body in many ways is our home base.

Bring to mind the part of yourself you usually overlook. Maybe it's something small or something quiet. Some part of you that doesn't get thanked. A part that's just doing its best. Maybe it's your feet or your breath. Maybe your perseverance. Offer that part a little appreciation, a little thank you for a whole little.

you this whole time. Again, it doesn't have to feel like a flood of love. Just a gesture of kindness. You've made it through things no one else may fully know. You've kept going. You've grown. You've cared. Let yourself receive that acknowledgement. This isn't self-indulgent or ego. This is honesty. This is the heart recognizing the beauty of its own effort because we're still here. So without forcing it, offer your nervous system a new message.

Thank you for carrying me. Thank you, heart, for carrying so much. Thank you breath for always bringing me back. And maybe you can feel the warmth of that appreciation in your chest. Let it spread outward into the shoulders, the arms, the belly. Sometimes we can't really feel that much, or there's parts of us that may resist it. They think maybe you don't deserve kindness or gratitude. That's okay.

You don't have to force it. You're just offering an invitation. We allow ourselves a new message. It's okay to be kind to myself. It's okay to recognize there's goodness here. Let the breath move through you into all the corners of your being that may feel forgotten or tense. Bringing that warp there, each breath as an offering that this is enough. I don't have to be more than I am right now.

I'm glad to be here. Let yourself rest in that sentiment. Even for just a few breaths, nothing to push away, nothing to fix, only the sweetness of being here with yourself. I've awake and worthy of appreciating, not for what you're doing,

but for who you are, exactly as you are right now, See if you can notice even the tiniest shift, maybe something softens. Sometimes it's just appreciating yourself for showing up today. So when the critic shows up again, and it will, you get to remember there's another voice in here too, one that doesn't need you to be more, better, or different. And slowly start to come out of the message. meditation, let your eyes crack if you had them closed.

And as you move through your day, see if you can walk with that voice beside you. As you feel the breath in your chest, let it remind you that you're here, kind, caring, on your side. Thank you for your practice. Thank you to Vinny. Thank you for meditating with us today. You can get more great meditations from Vinny that are linked to our our podcast episodes over on Dan Harris.com. And you can, if you sign up, get access to our weekly live video, guided meditation

and Q&A sessions. We do them on Tuesdays at 4 o'clock Eastern. The next one is on Tuesday, September 16th with Vinny. And as I mentioned earlier, I've got some in-person events coming up. One is at the New York Insight Meditation Center on September 21st. The other is at the Omega Institute in upstate New York. the weekend of October 24th, links in the show notes. And finally, as always, big thank you to everybody who works so hard on this show.

Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vassili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our production manager. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Kashmir is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands World Hard.