Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - You Can’t Always Get What You Want: A Guided Meditation On Frustration | Bonus Meditation with JoAnna Hardy

Episode Date: September 29, 2024

This practice is an opportunity to take a break from *thinking* about frustration and feel a little bit of balance, ease, and patience.About JoAnna Hardy:JoAnna Hardy can talk about meditation to pretty much anybody. She not only teaches in traditional environments like retreat centers, but also in both schools and jails. JoAnna has been studying meditation for nearly two decades and she's done some amazing work ensuring that the practice is available to people who might not otherwise have access to it. JoAnna teaches at the Insight Meditation Society, at Spirit Rock, and is a Founding Member of The Meditation Coalition.To find this meditation in the Happier app, you can search for “When You’re Frustrated.”See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to 10% happier early and ad free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. It's the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey, hey, time for a bonus meditation. Today we're going to look at frustration, a very common feeling. And our meditation teacher du jour is Joanna Hardy. I spent some time with her.

She's very much not a frustrating person, and her background is fascinating. She teaches in traditional retreat center environments, but also in schools and in jails. And if you have an Apple Fitness membership, you can find her leading meditations there as well. Here we go now with Joanna Hardy. Hi, this is Joanna. Welcome to this meditation session

where we'll be working with difficult emotions, namely frustration. So let's begin. Settle into a comfortable yet upright and attentive sitting posture. Allow yourself to orient to the room and get a sense of sitting in the body. Once you feel settled in your posture and the body,

pay specific attention to where you might be holding tension. Take a few moments to breathe into those places. Oftentimes the shoulders, the neck, the jaw, arms hold this tension. And with each breath, see if you can find a bit more ease, a bit more welcoming into this meditation practice. If it feels comfortable to you, close your eyes. This practice period is an opportunity for you to take a break from thinking about frustration and move into the immediate feeling in the body of frustration. When we do this, the opportunity to see the arising and passing of our emotions is much more clear. We don't get as stuck.

When the mind gets overly involved with the story, we can get stuck. So while sitting, pay close attention to the body, looking at where the frustration is in your body. Allow yourself to feel the possible tenseness in the belly, tightness in the face, or wherever you might feel this frustration, all the while continuing to breathe. And with each breath, think about creating a lot of space, limitless space for these bodily sensations. Remembering the patience and lots of space. So again, breathing into these parts of ourselves, breathing into these parts of our bodies, Allowing for a lot of patience and kindness to see our way to a close. Reorient to the room.

Allow yourself to take time with the transition from this meditation into whatever your next activity is. Very nice work. See you next time. Thank you, Joanna. You can find more meditations like this one over on the Happier app. Just download it wherever you get your apps. If you like 10% Happier, and I hope you do, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts.

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