The Best Way To Feel Calm (Is to Not Try To Feel Calm)

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

0:18Hello, everybody. How we doing? So today I'm going to talk about a bunch of stuff. How to meditate when you're dealing with serious emotional pain. The deeply unhelpful addiction that many of us have to feeling calm in meditation. Feeling calm is not the point. how to achieve focus and concentration without straining so hard that you give yourself a headache, what to do when you feel too physically restless to meditate, and much more. What you're about to hear is a recording of a live session where I take questions from subscribers to my new app, which is called 10 % with Dan Harris. We do these live sessions every Tuesday at 4.

0:52If you want to join us, you can sign up over at danharris.com. We always start these sessions with a guided meditation, but I'm going to cut the meditation out of this episode so we can get straight to the burning questions. One bit of context before we dive in here. At the very top, you're going to hear me reference something that I said during the guided meditation. It's a really interesting technique that I actually lifted from a great meditation teacher named Henry Shookman. Henry recommends that we look for the part of ourselves that's trying to hold it all together, the little CEO or inner hall monitor.

1:27it can be very poignant and powerful to look for this part of yourself. Anyway, keep that in mind when you hear me reference it. Okay, we'll get started with some Q &A right after this. Just to say a thing about what I did there at the end, I just kind of ad-libbed that, the Henry Shookman thing about looking for the sense of yourself, the part that's trying to keep our shit together all the time. It's very poignant, actually, when you think about it, or at least for me. This goes to a question that I get in pretty much every session, which is this idea of non-duality or the self being an illusion.

2:04It's breaking my brain, Dan, help me. And I always say, I get it. It's supposed to break your brain. And don't worry if you don't understand it at all. That's totally fine. I didn't for a long time, and even now only episodically. But I find Henry's idea of just looking for this sense, this inner sense of Dan to be really helpful because you won't find it. I've never found some core nugget of self. And as I've said to you before, and this is a quote from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, the not finding is the finding. The point is we walk around with this really solid sense of who we are that can be very limiting and it can be freeing to get a sense of, oh, no, actually who I am is really a mystery.

2:55It's not a solid thing. It's more like, as Joseph often says, like looking at a river. We call it a river, but that word, he says, is a designation we're putting on a flow. There is no solid thing. There's just a process. And that is true of us. Deeply counterintuitive, but helpful to play with, because then when new powerful emotions come along or powerful opinions come along, you can see them as much more transitory, impermanent, and therefore workable. And I should say impermanent and also impersonal. I apologize if none of that makes any sense. Don't worry if it doesn't make any sense. Just, I find just kind of sitting with these counterintuitive ideas over time, they can start to make sense.

3:48All right. So let me go to some of your questions. This is from Rose. I have a lot of sadness missing my adult son who is low contact. Trying to meditate because I know the research shows it can help, but I'm having a hard time just sitting for five minutes without ruminating about how alone I feel. And I volunteer. I have friends, but nothing takes the place of missing my son. Any tips for getting through this sadness that is situational? Well, first, I just want to, that sucks. I just want to validate that. That sounds awful. I have, as many of you know, an 11-year-old son and the thought of him being low contact at some point in the future is horrifying.

4:26So I think the first thing to say is, I'm sorry. And that sounds really difficult. I want to key in on something you say here. I'm having a hard time just sitting for five minutes without ruminating about how alone I feel. I'm not in your mind, but I do worry a little bit that you're trying to force something out of your mind that is a very natural thing to be in the mind. And very often when we slow down and take away our phone or activities, the stuff that's very powerful there really achieves greater salience. And so the point is not to try to push all of that out of your mind. The point is, as I understand it, is to learn to relate differently to our minds.

5:09So for example, when I'm experiencing a lot of rumination, and I want to distinguish between rumination, which is thinking and emotion, which is often very much in the body. And so I'll talk about both of those things. When I'm experiencing a lot of rumination, I find that mental noting can be very helpful. It's just noting thinking, thinking or planning, or just to create some distance so that I'm noticing the rumination or thinking as a process, and I'm not so engaged in the content of the thoughts. So I find that very helpful. And another thing to do is to bring your mindfulness to the emotion you're feeling, the sadness, the loneliness, the anger, maybe anxiety about how it's going to go.

5:52And to investigate what, as I said before, what are the constituent parts of this physiologically? Is it where is it showing up in my body? then you can get a sense of, and this in no way negates the pain and the power of the story. It just takes you out of it for this very brief period of time during your meditation. And then you can start over time to scale that up to the rest of your life. That doesn't mean you stop caring about contacting your son. It just means that you're navigating these very powerful, justifiably powerful emotions with a little bit more smoothness. So you're not so swamped by them As I often say, it's like the difference between drowning and surfing.

6:35And yeah, so I hope that makes sense. The point in meditation is not to try not to feel a certain way or to try to feel or to force some sort of emotion that we're not doing that. We're just being cool with what is here and to be mindful of it, which allows us to sit with this difficult stuff with a kind of non-judgmental, open, curious awareness? Rose, thank you for that question. I really appreciate it. This one's from Lisa. Two-part question, and this actually is related to Rose's question in my mind. I see a connection. We'll see if you see a connection. Lisa says, how do I work with the addiction to the calm felt in meditation?

7:19And how do I know if I'm actually craving it or if it's just happening? Second part of the question. Also, how do I navigate towards concentration that is easeful? My first silent retreat, I found myself actually having a headache from the quote unquote concentration. I was able to catch myself after a few days and lighten up. But is there a way to enter the meditative space with ease from the get go? It's difficult for me not to anticipate the breath. Damn, there's a lot in this question. It's a really good question, Lisa. The reason why it's

7:54And many of us, and myself included, can go into meditation with a conscious or subconscious agenda. I'm supposed to feel calm, but I don't feel calm. So that means I'm fucking this up or whatever. The point, I cannot say this strongly enough, is not to feel any kind of way. The point is to feel whatever you're feeling clearly, mindfully. And that mindful interest and kind of dissection of whatever you're feeling, in there, in my experience, lies freedom. You're not so swamped by it. You're not so entangled with the content. You're not claiming it as yours, misappropriating public property, as one great Buddhist teacher put it.

8:44You're just sitting with it. Here's a great expression from Joseph, and he mentioned this during the New Year's meditation challenge, and this is a good mantra to drop in your head. It's okay. It does not mean the situation is okay. It means it's okay to feel this thing. That is just a liberating idea. And so I wish for you, Lisa, that you can, if this is happening, not go into a meditation with this agenda to force or feel calm. The point is to focus on your breath or whatever you've chosen to focus on and let the meditation do its work. Your desire to feel a certain way is a hindrance. It gets in the way.

9:26And one way to work with desire is to do what you've already done here, which is to see it clearly. You can even label it. Oh, that's wanting. That's craving. And when you're labeling it, you're not in it. Okay, so the second part of the question was how do I navigate toward concentration that is easeful? And talked about getting a headache from trying too hard. The crazy thing about focus or concentration, non-distraction in meditation is unlike everything else in our life. you will not get there by trying harder. I often say meditation is like this video game where you can only move forward if you don't want to move forward.

10:10Of course, the wanting of certain things is going to be there. It's totally natural. You don't have to feel bad about wanting come or whatever. What you want is just to be mindful of the wanting and then you're not in it. And so the way I try to practice is, and I make mistakes all the time. I, I've spent many, many, many days on silent meditation retreats over efforting and operating under some unseen desire for a certain state of mind or an outcome to the meditation retreat, or frankly, for the end of the meditation retreat. And so the point really is just to hopefully at some point sooner rather than later, you just become aware of this agenda.

10:51One little phrase that can be helpful in spotting an unseen agenda that's blocking your meditation progress. One little phrase that can be really helpful is what's the attitude in the mind right now? Or you can just use attitude check. And I've often said it's like shining a black light on the sheets in a hotel room. You see lots of disgusting stuff, but it's really helpful because when you see that stuff, it's not owning you as much. You're not in it. You're not entangled with it. It's not driving the bus. You can't force calm or concentration. So what you want to do is just surrender to the basic logistics of the practice.

11:33And then just once in a while, check. Is the agenda sneakily trying to grab the steering wheel here and then just label it? Oh, yeah, that's desire. All right, I got it. Back to the breath. And then desire might come back up again. Boom. I see you. And then back to the breath. That's the practice. Concentration, in my experience, will emerge from the relaxing back into, I'm just going to stay committed to the breath. and then every time I get distracted, I'll start again or stay committed to the sensations in my body if I don't like the breath. And then every time I get distracted, I start again.

12:14Concentration comes out of just as calmly as possible doing that. Let me just check the comments here. All right, what else we got here? Jeanette says, I've had a meditation practice for 10 plus years and always use guided meditations. Is it considered keeping my training wheels on or should I move on to timer only? No, it's not training wheels because I'm the proprietor of a meditation app. You should take this with a grain of salt. But it is my strongly held belief that guided meditations are great. The best kind of meditation is the kind of meditation you actually do. And whether it's guided or unguided, in my opinion, doesn't really matter.

12:58It's about doing the meditation. And guided meditation can be extremely powerful based on the skill of the guider because they're delivering wisdom to you, especially in like a really sensitive space where you've shut down. So to have somebody in your ear who's saying wise stuff to you, it's really helpful and also reminds you of the point of the practice. It's OK to get distracted, start again, get distracted, start again. We really need to hear that a million times, more than a million times. So don't worry about it if all you're doing is guided meditations. You could experiment with unguided once in a while if you want.

13:34You don't have to get sweaty about it. I've had this question for a while now, and I posted it before. I apologize if I've missed a reply. In a few body scans during your meditation, so some of you may have heard me do body scan meditations. Sometimes when you do body scan meditations, you mention the space between your eyebrows, which in my early yoga practice was identified as the third eye. I use the third eye as a very helpful focal point, just like the breath, during meditation. I don't hear this term from you or others anymore. This is from Jamie. Yeah, this can be called the third eye. I'm just allergic to anything that comes off as some sort of spiritual cliche that I just say the space between your eyebrows.

14:12But also because I don't really know what the third eye refers to. I'm a little ignorant about the Hindu or Vedic tradition. So I just say the space between your eyebrows. But you're not wrong. If anybody's wrong here, it's me. So yeah, you're good. Let me check the chat. Okay, I love this question. Andra, I've fallen off the wagon with my meditation practice. It's so difficult to get back into it because of my inability to sit and relax. ADHD brain on full alert. Any ideas of what might help? Yeah. Well, first of all, Jeff Warren, go back and listen to any podcast episode. All the podcast episodes are in the app.

14:49Jeff Warren always talks about he's got quite significant ADHD and bipolar. And so he really is a great teacher for anybody who has neurodiversity. So a couple of things in your question. First, you just in the question, is this kind of clinging or craving to a certain outcome, sit and relax? Who says meditation needs to be relaxing? I mean, I think relaxation can be very helpful. That's why a few deep breaths can be helpful. But you may sit and meditate and just feel nothing but restlessness and anxiety and anger or whatever. And that could be a perfect meditation practice, because, again, the point is not to feel any kind of way.

15:29It's to feel your feelings clearly so that you have. Mindfulness and self-awareness that allows you not to be so owned by your feelings. So don't get too focused on being relaxed. And I want to recognize and I'm speaking as somebody who, to my knowledge, is not neurodiverse. I want to recognize that it can, my understanding from living with and being very close friends with a lot of people who have ADHD, can be very challenging to meditate, which is why Jeff often recommends a moving meditation, specifically walking meditation, which can be very, very helpful. I do a ton of walking meditation.

16:12Often it's my longest practice of the day. I often do 15 to 30, sometimes more minutes before bed. I'm not saying this is the right way to do it. I'm just telling you about my practice. So walking meditation would be really good for people who deal with restlessness. And just in case you haven't heard me describe it before very quickly, you're just walking. You can walk super, super slow, or you can walk somewhere between really, really, really artificially slow and normal walking. I walk at a kind of slow pace, but not super slow, just around the house. There's some funny, I've posted a few of these videos on my Instagram stories of me walking around wearing one of these full body blankets, the Snuggies.

16:56I look like a druid or something out of paranormal activity, kind of walking slowly. I posted them because I get picked up on the ring cams on our house sometimes. Walk really slowly and there are any number of ways to do it, but you just bring your attention to the physical sensations of the walking. And then every time you get distracted, you start again and again and again, repeat forever. and mental noting can be really helpful. So you can just note hot or cool when you feel it in the air or note hardness from when you put your foot down on the earth, tension, tingling, whatever. You can just use a little bit of mental noting to keep you in the game if that's helpful.

17:34Okay. What else we got here? Wearing a Snuggie is the number one sign of being neurodivergent. Yes, Olivia. I cop to that. All right. Let's see. Last question here. This is from Kevin. It's easy for me to, I think, get stuck in the eight to 10 minute range as my go-to meditation goal. Should we continue pushing to go longer? Just to kind of answer on two levels. The first is this answer is in the spirit of that great expression from a Zen teacher. You're perfect. And you could use a little improvement. So like what you're doing now is perfect. It's totally fine. And if you keep doing eight to 10 minutes for the rest of your days on the planet, you're good.

18:16So you don't need to stress about it. Eight to 10 minutes daily-ish is amazing. And this is the other level to the question. It's always good, in my experience, to push a little if you're up for it. If you feel like you're at the limits of your capacity, then just keep doing what you're it. But I find personally that I like to always push a little bit in my meditation practice, my exercise practice, in my creative practices, whatever. I also like to push the people around me by making fun of them a lot. That's a little bit less successful as a strategy than pushing myself in meditation. But yeah, so gently push yourself.

18:56I should cop to the fact that often And when I push myself at work or exercise or my meditation, I push too hard. So you really want to be careful with this. I am a classic over optimizer. I and the people around me have suffered as a result. So, Kevin, if you're up for it, you want to push to a 12 minute meditation or 15 minute meditation one day a week at the beginning. Go for it. But time we live in an era where of pervasive times starvation or at least the sense of it. so what you're already doing is great and if you want to try something new once in a while I think that's also great but you don't need to do it out of a sense of insufficiency okay it feels like good place to end it what else to say yeah thank you for doing this genuinely yeah as always love you guys thank you peace thank you for listening don't forget if you want to come to these sessions live.

19:53You can sign up at danharris.com for my new meditation app. We've got a growing library of guided meditations from amazing teachers. We also do these live sessions. There's a robust community function where you can talk to me, talk to my team, talk to one another, so you don't feel so alone in this whole meditation thing. Danharris.com. There's a free 14-day trial if you want to try before you buy. Finally, I just want to say thank you to everybody who worked so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People.

20:28Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Kashmir is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.