Am I Meditating Correctly? Am I Doing the Right Kind? | FAQ With Teacher-Of-The-Month Dawn Mauricio

0:04This is the 10 % Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

0:19Happy Sunday, everybody. Hope you're having a good weekend. Today, we are going to answer some very common meditation questions like, am I doing this right? What kind of meditation should I be doing at all, etc. Before we get into this, just a little bit of context. All this month, we're bringing you brand new guided meditations from our teacher of the month, Don Mauricio. And every meditation has been crafted to go along with one of our regular Monday or Wednesday episodes. The idea here is that you can, as I like to say, kind of pound the learnings from the conversation into your neurons in meditation practice.

0:56The only way to get those meditations is through a paid subscription over at danharris.com. Although we did give you a free meditation right here on the feed last Sunday, which is the classic drug dealer strategy. Anyway, you can go back into your podcast feed if you want to find that bonus episode. We also, though, wanted to give you another opportunity to hear from Don to answer some frequently asked questions. So our head of content, DJ Kashmir, sat down with Don recently for the little chat that we're going to play you right here. And just say, if you're a paying subscriber over on danharris.com, you'll get a chance to ask Don your own meditation questions during a live Q &A that's coming up on Wednesday, July 23rd at 4 p.m.

1:37Eastern. Check out danharris.com for details. Okay, quick break, and we'll be right back with DJ and Don. Hey, it's Dan. And I just want to tell you about something I'm really proud of, the new community we are building over on my new app, which is called 10 % with Dan Harris. Here's something I believe with no reservation. Taking care of your own mind is not selfish. It's actually essential if you want to show up for the world, if you want to deal with the various emergencies on the planet right now. There is, in fact, a geopolitical case for you to get your shit together. In other words, taking care of your own mind is good citizenship.

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4:19Don Mauricio, welcome back to the show. Hi, good to be back. It's good to have you back. I have a question for you. This is a question we get all the time. Dan gets all the time. And it's a question to help folks with their meditation practices, especially when they're meditating on their own at home or on the road. And the question is, how do we choose which kind of meditation to do on any given day at any given moment? So many of us who listen to the show know that there's more than one option. There's meta, there's open awareness, there's I can follow my breath, I can use sounds as an anchor.

4:58The list is endless. if I have managed to carve out five or 10 or 15 minutes to meditate, how do I not just get paralyzed by choice in that moment? How do I make a skillful decision about which meditation practice to engage in? Such a good question. And it really touches on something that I am excited about or passionate about with my own practice and what I try to encourage my own students to do, which is to bring life into their practice and as a little bit of a backstory for years I would do seated meditation mindfulness of the breath no matter what and some days that worked other days it felt like I was a round peg trying to fit in a square hole and it just felt forceful and not really helpful at all and then actually what I ended up leaving that meditation with was like more tension because of that forcefulness in a way.

5:55And so over the years, what I have started doing was that when I set myself up for my practice, I might just do quick check-ins, like, how does my body feel? Because sometimes I think it's going to be seated, which is my usual go-to practice. But sometimes there's like a new ache or something like that. And then actually, it's better that I lie down. Or maybe if I'm really sleepy and I just don't want to sleep for the 10 minutes I have to practice, then I might stand or something like that. So I do a quick check, how's the body, and then choose based on that. Sometimes if I'm like in high anxiety periods or high agitation, it's walking meditation even.

6:36So just to remember that's an option. Then after that quick check-in, I do like an internal check-in, just what's going on internally or emotionally or maybe with my mind? Is it like a really busy mind right now? Am I caught in some sort of thought obsession about something? Am I feeling sad or tender? And so based on that, then I choose a style of meditation. And so sometimes if I'm feeling like pretty emotional or tender, it could be loving kindness practice or rain practice, which is a way that we can work with emotions. Sometimes if I'm feeling pretty calm already, then jumping into open awareness is really accessible and easy for me.

7:21Other times if I'm agitated, it's like walking practice or mental noting or something like that. So I kind of bring in my life so that my practice can respond to my life versus just like having it be the separate entity that lives on its own outside of my life. And then I recognize as well that even though I say, oh yeah, it could be loving kindness practice if you're feeling maybe a little tender, but there's so many ways we can even practice loving kindness practice. So that could even be overwhelming. But what I would say for folks who might be saving meditations on their device to just save or bookmark a few favorites of different styles.

8:02And then once you figure out, okay, I'm going to do loving kindness practice today, just choose one and then stick to it. Instead of being like, this one, maybe not, no, oh, let me change, or I regret this choice. But it's like, okay, choose one, stick to it for the duration of practice. One, so that you don't spend all your time just going between meditations or being frozen with choice, but also so that we can develop this capacity of living with the consequences of our actions or like getting comfortable with like discomfort and knowing that it's only going to last 10 minutes anyway. I think what gets us sometimes frozen is trying to find the perfect thing, but can we aim for good enough?

8:48Knowing that even if it's good enough and not perfect, that there's still qualities like patience and compassion and equanimity that are getting cultivated anyway. So I think I'm hearing a few really helpful tips there. Let me just try to repeat some of them back and see if I've got it. So I think part of what I'm hearing there is that something that you do is at the very beginning, you just check in, how's your body doing? And that helps you determine whether you should be sitting, standing, walking, lying down. And then you also go inside, like, how's my mind doing? What does it need right now?

9:25And that helps you choose from the menu. And then there's this other set of recommendations that's also, if you want to access guided meditations, this idea of cultivating a sort of varied library, a favorites list so that you have access to different options in that moment when you're deciding what you need. But then if you do use a guided meditation and you hit play, don't hit pause and bail out 30 seconds in. Make a choice and stick with it. Yeah, exactly. And I feel like when we are cultivating that curated library, it's like instead of, say, doom scrolling, the next time we're waiting for something and we pick up our phone, we can maybe at least use that tech connection time in a way that's helpful for our future self, for example.

10:13Just to say for our listeners who are listening on Apple Podcasts, for example, if you are a paid subscriber of danharris.com and you have access to the ad-free feed where Dawn's meditations are dropping every Monday and Wednesday, there's actually a pretty easy way to favorite those meditations as favorite episodes so that you have a list of these to go back to. Just picking up on your specific point about curating that library. I also want to say, though, that as you were talking about sitting down and checking in with how your body's doing and how your mind's doing, there was a part of my mind that was thinking, oh, yes, this makes perfect sense.

10:51This is the most logical possible answer. Of course, you should see how you're doing and make a choice from there. And there was another part of me that was like, I don't want to do that. That sounds harder than the meditation. I don't want to know how I'm doing. What if the answer is something that I don't want to face? Yeah, just curious what that brings up for you. If I have some resistance to checking in with myself, maybe that's the thing I need to check in with more. But anyway, just curious how that lands for you. I love that. And I think that's so real and very possible for so many of us.

11:27What I would say to that is just, well, yeah, we can try to be with that resistance. But I feel like if there's resistance, being with the resistance might bring up only more resistance. And so in which case, we might instead revert to our go-to style of practice. For me, for example, it's mindfulness of the breath, as I mentioned. And so if I don't feel like doing the check-in, that's what I'll do. But I might adjust how I practice in accordance to what would feel helpful. And I feel like it's pretty clear early on if there's enough mindfulness, if it's helpful or not, or whether it's helpful or not.

12:06So for example, if I'm feeling like a lot of tension, the helpful thing would be to practice in a way that can be more friendly, that brings in the quality of kindness, so that it can balance out the tension that we're starting our practice with. But we might not tune into that right away. And so I think if we make it a practice to just ask ourselves, how am I practicing in our practices, just to drop that question in every now and then, that could be enough of a pause for us to readjust. So if I am feeling tense, I start my mindfulness of breath, but I'm just like noticing the whole thing with a lot of tension, like inhaling, exhaling, inhale or something like that intensity.

12:51If I remember or cultivate the habit of asking, how am I practicing? Then I might start tuning into the tension that is still present or maybe even exacerbated in my practice. And so then I might be like, okay, take a few deep breaths, see if that can release some tension, and then there might be more space to be with my breath in a kinder way. And the thing is, it's like I'm using this example of kindness as an antidote or support to tension. We might think that we have to then flip the switch and be completely kind in order to then have a fruitful practice. But I think it's more, can there be even just a smidge of a little bit more kindness than what there was a few moments ago?

13:36And that would still be incredibly helpful. So all that to say is to tune into maybe how we're practicing instead. And if we don't want to do that full check-in. I'm curious for you in this moment, you're recovering from a torn ACL. How is that impacting how you choose to practice and what you do and don't want to face with how your body's doing and how your practice is going? Yeah, gosh, you know, it's so funny because when I didn't have the limited mobility, I never wanted to do walking practice. And that was all I want to do. And so it's just a lot of my practice these days is, of course, seated, sometimes lying down, but it's mostly seated these days because of my injury.

14:26And I think a lot of times what comes up is just like wanting things to be different. Because I could be paying attention to my breath, but then I'm suddenly tuned into the leg that I can't move right now. And then suddenly my mind will go into like thinking of my recovery plan. Can I rush it or can I stuff like that? And so how can I then bring my attention back to this moment? And then instead, be with the desire for things to be different, but with tenderness and be like, of course you want this to be different. It's finally summer in Montreal and you can't really go outside or whatever. And so just to be like, of course.

15:06And this is what it's like right now. So not even trying to change it or gaslight myself into accepting it, but just meaning that resistance with some kindness. It's so transformative. It's something small, but it's huge at the same time. One last question. You said, I believe if I heard you correctly, you said that for you, mindfulness of the breath is your sort of core practice. You know, when in doubt, if you need a default, that's your default. How did that come about for you? And is this a thing that you recommend that listeners, practitioners try to establish for themselves? Is this a thing?

15:43Should we all have a foundational practice that's our default if we need it? Yeah, I've never been asked that question. And I think that's a great question because as I was listening to you, I thought that's my experience. My experience was that for the first few years of practice, that's all I did. because that's what I was taught when I was on that monastery doing my first retreat. And then I practiced in that style or with those teachers for years. So it's all I knew. But I'm not sure if people have that same experience where they have this one go-to. I would say it would be helpful to have one or two go-tos.

16:25It doesn't have to be the one. I would say even three go-to practices, just so that we can remove the guesswork out of our practice time. As we mentioned earlier, we can get frozen into trying to choose the perfect meditation. And so if we have these two or three go-to styles of practice, then it could act as like this net that will hold us no matter what. So that it can show up not just when we're trying to choose a practice, but like when we're stuck in traffic. and someone cuts us off or doesn't let us merge, then it'll be more natural because we've been training for them to be more part of our second nature or our systems that it'll show up in those moments too.

17:10Yeah, I love that question. And I would say, go for it. Get a couple in the bank. Awesome. Something you just said sparked one last question. So I promise this is really the last question. But you said, we don't want to get frozen into trying to choose the perfect kind of meditation. And something that's been sort of running through my mind through this whole conversation over these last 10 minutes is I think one of the reasons it feels a little bit scary to me to start by checking in with my body and checking in with my mind and seeing what I need right now and picking what I need right now is that there is still after all these years a part of me that thinks that there's a right way to do it, that thinks I need to maintain a streak, that thinks that sitting counts and other kinds don't count.

17:57All these sort of ideas. You know, Dan talks all the time about wanting the gold star. And I'm just curious how that sort of perfectionism, how you see that playing into these questions of how we choose what we do when we sit. I love that. The short answer, none of it matters.

18:20You mean there's nobody like keeping score? in the sky? The slightly fleshed out response is that it's not what we're doing that makes the difference. The main factor is the quality of attention we're bringing to whatever it is we're doing. So it doesn't matter if it's the breath, if it's emotions, if it's thoughts, if it's walking, lying down, seated, whatever. None of that matters. But it's just the quality of attention you're bringing to whatever it is you're choosing to do. So actually, someone listening could be like me spending all my time trying to choose the perfect meditation can then be my meditation.

19:04In a way, yes. I've worked with a lot of teens who would like catch on these little, like a little thing I'd say and then use it against me. So just in case there's anyone like that out there, I would say that's possible. But are you tuning into maybe how the phone feels or the device feels in your hand or beneath your fingertips, the actions of scrolling, your emotions or the sensations in your body. If you are tuning into all of that, then yeah, that could have been your practice for that day. So ultimately, yeah, none of it matters. You can go to the store and buy yourself all the gold stars if you'd like.

19:41But it's really just like the quality of attention that we bring is the transformative piece. The quality of attention. Okay, okay. Good news is that we're making a few choices for you this month. So you don't have to choose every day of the week throughout July. Mondays and Wednesdays, Don's got a meditation for you. But yeah, the hope is that this conversation will help guide the other days. And Don, you mentioned that your first monastery retreat a minute or two ago, and we talked about that at slightly greater length in a bonus episode a few weeks ago. So we'll drop a link to that in the show notes.

20:15Yeah. Thank you yet again for being here and for being our teacher of the month and for just showing up in such an open and easygoing way. This is a relatively new kind of workflow for us. And you've just been so chill and so flexible. And like so many of the meditation teachers we work with, just such a joy to collaborate with. So thank you. It's a joy working with you all too. So know that it's reciprocal. Glad to hear that. All right. Thank you so much. All right. Have a good one.

21:13DJ Kashmir is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.

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