Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - When You Don’t Feel Like Meditating | Bonus Meditation with Matthew Hepburn

Episode Date: January 7, 2024

Is meditation the last thing you want to do right now? This one's for when closing your eyes and watching your breath sounds like torture.About Matthew Hepburn:Matthew is a meditation and dharma teacher with more than a decade of teaching experience and a passion for getting real about what it means to live well. Beyond Ten Percent Happier, Matthew has taught in prisons, schools, corporate events and continues to teach across North America in buddhist centers offering intensive silent retreats and dharma for urban daily life. To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “I Don’t Want to Meditate.” 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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Happy Sunday, everybody. Time for a bonus meditation. Hope your new year is getting off to a good start. I'm curious, are you still sticking with whatever resolution you may have set a few days ago? Many of us are already off the wagon by the time February rolls around and all of a sudden something we did setting the resolution that is in order to feel better ends up making us feel guilty. In that spirit today's meditation is about those times when you don't feel like meditating, but hopefully you're doing it anyway. Our teacher, Du jour, is Matthew Hepburn, who has taught in prison schools and corporations all over North America. And he is the host of a free challenge

that we are running over on the 10% happier app, which is called the Imperfect Meditation Challenge. It kicks off on January 8th, and it features Matthew and several other teachers, Carlisle and Don Mauricio. You can sign up for the challenge right now over on the app. Here we go now with Matthew Hepburn. Hi, this is Matthew. Thanks for joining me. Sometimes, maybe a lot of the time, the last thing you want to do is meditate. Sit in one spot, sit still, pay attention to something inane and boring, like breathing

sounds, feeling the belly moving around Life is full of really important things to do to think about a people relationships that we care about and Sitting in one spot and doing something that we might feel like we're really bad at and That doesn't seem to be serving anybody else. Sometimes doesn't sound like the best use of our time well Sometimes it doesn't sound like the best use of our time. Well, this next couple of minutes is designed for what to do in exactly these moments. So, sit comfortably in a full lotus position, or run as fast as you can until you get tired and are panting. But, hang with me and we'll see if we can practice mindfulness through whatever mindset you got going.

Notice the resistance to the idea of meditating or of appreciating whatever is going on right now. You can feel it. It probably sucks. But it's here and it's real. It might be worth it just to acknowledge it one moment at a time. So check in, the shoulder's tension, just appreciate it. We don't need to get mushy and try and become a bowl of jello. But we want to see what's going on and what's happening, acknowledging the present moment as it is. As you're aware of this moment, checking in with the body, see if there's any circular thinking going on. Now, it may be a painful thought or a useless thought.

If that's the case, it has some energy behind it, it's going to keep going for a while and eventually it will settle down. So acknowledge it, see that it's happening, and feel wherever its footprint is in the The most important thing to remember in meditation is nothing is the wrong way to be. We can be worked up, we can be anxious, we can be pissed it, to acknowledge it with a sense of interest and curiosity. So, when you're ready, take another breath, So when you're ready, take another breath. Open your eyes. Come back to this moment. Thanks for tuning in.

And good luck out there. Thank you, Matthew. 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. If you like 10% happier, I hope you do. You can listen early and add free right now by joining 1-3 Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen to-free on Amazon music. Before you go, tell us about yourself

by filling out a short survey at Wondry.com slash survey.