Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - How to Handle Restlessness | Bonus Meditation with Joseph Goldstein

Episode Date: April 9, 2021

In this guided meditation, Joseph unpacks what restless energy is all about, showing you how to go from restless to restful. About Joseph Goldstein: Joseph is one of the most respected meditation teachers in the world -- a key architect of the rise of mindfulness in our modern society -- with a sense of humor to boot. In the 1970's, he co-founded the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) alongside Sharon Salzberg and Jack Kornfield. Since its founding, thousands of people from around the world have come to IMS to learn mindfulness from leaders in the field. Joseph has been a teacher there since its founding and continues as the resident guiding teacher. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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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.

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I don't know about you, but for me, one of the most difficult hindrances in meditation is restlessness. Restlessness can come in at least two forms. There's psychological restlessness where you just kind of have this go-go-go mentality. But for me, what's even more difficult is physical restlessness. Just, I think my Jewish grandmother would have called it, spielkiss, ants and the pants. It'll kind of reminds me of that. For me, at least my experience is not dissimilar to what I imagine that torture device in

that movie, the princess bride was like, I just, it just kind of crawling out of my own skin. Anyway, to the rescue, Rides Joseph Goldstein, the great meditation teacher and my good friend, and he's gonna do a guided meditation now on how to deal with the hindrance of restlessness on the cushion. So here we go.

Hello, this is Joseph. Restlessness or agitation is one of the most common obstacles in our meditation practice. We might feel it as an agitated energy in the body, and we can't sit still. There are also obvious restless states in the mind, getting lost in different types of thoughts, feeling them perhaps as an inner turmoil or a whirlwind. If we can become mindful of these experiences, however, then they simply become another object of our meditation.

So let's give it a try. Settle into a comfortable sitting posture, gently close your eyes, relax the shoulders, sit and know your sitting. As you settle into the awareness of the body, become aware of the sensations of the body breathing. Breathing in, know you breathing in. Breathing out, know you breathing out. We practice working with restlessness itself. Here, a soft mental note of restless, restless can be helpful. We can open to the physical energies, the physical sensations in the body, the direct sensations of restlessness. We might perhaps also notice a kind of scatteredness in the mind. As we become mindful of restlessness rather than lost in it or caught up in it, the mindfulness itself starts to bring the factors of concentration

and energy into balance. We can settle back, be aware of the whole body, and simply feel and notice the whole whirlwind of physical and mental energy. As the scattered dispersed mind begins to settle on our present moment experience, we go from restlessness to restfulness, and our practice continues to deepen. When you're ready, you can slowly open your eyes and reconnect with the world around you, wishing you much ease in your body and ease in your mind. Thank you for your practice. See you next time. Thanks, Joseph. If you're thinking, you know, I could have done that meditation for

another 5 or 10 minutes. Why not check out the 10% happier app where you will find this very same meditation in different lengths to suit your practice. Your subscription cost directly supports our wonderful teachers and allows them to dedicate all of their time to teaching meditation. We'll see you back here on Monday with a brand new episode. We're launching a series on hope. We're talking about hope as a skill in these still tenuous times and my first guess in this series will be the amazing George Mumford. See you then.

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