Dan Harris: 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works—A True Story

If I’m in physical pain, should I change position?

I know this stinks, but the advice is to sit still and investigate the discomfort. If you look closely, you’ll see the pain is constantly changing. Try to note it: “stabbing,” “throbbing,” “pulling,” etc. You may find that it’s not the pain that is intolerable, but instead your resistance to it. Of course, if you think you’re in real danger of injury, definitely shift position.

I keep falling asleep.

This is not a new problem. The Buddhists, perhaps unsurprisingly, have lists of things you can do to fight fatigue.

• Meditate with your eyes open. (Just enough to let a little light in. Try to fix your gaze on a neutral spot on the wall or the ground.)

• Do walking meditation. (More on this later.)

• Investigate the feeling of fatigue. Where do you feel it in your body? Is your head heavy? Your forehead buzzy?

• Do metta. (More on this later, too.)

• Pull your ears, or rub your hands, arms, legs, and face.

• Splash water on your face.

• If all else fails, go to bed.

• Also, consider the possibility that you’re constipated. (Seriously, they say that.)

This is so unbelievably boring.

Boredom: also not a new problem. The advice here is similar to how you should handle pain and fatigue: investigate. What does boredom feel like? How does it manifest in your body? Whatever comes up in your mind can be co-opted and turned into the object of meditation. It’s like in judo, where you use the force of your enemy against him.

Another trick for overcoming boredom is to increase the level of difficulty in your meditation. Try feeling the breath more closely. Can you catch the beginning and the end of an in- or out-breath? Can you see yourself subtly leaning forward into the next breath instead of being exactly where you are? Can you note the intervals between breaths? Maybe, if those periods are long enough, you can designate a few “touch points”—quickly bring your attention to your butt or your hands or your knees before the next breath resumes.

I keep trying to feel the breath as it naturally occurs, but every time I focus on it, I involuntarily start to control it, so it feels artificial.

Doesn’t matter. As Joseph Goldstein says, “This is not a breathing exercise.” You don’t have to breathe a certain way. If you want, you can even take sharper breaths so that it’s easier to feel them. What matters here is the mindfulness, not the breath.

What if I feel panicky and hyperventilate every time I try to watch my breath?

This is not uncommon. Fortunately, there are many variations of mindfulness meditation.

Body scan

1. Sit, stand, or lie down.

2. Start at one end of your body and work up or down. Bring your attention to your feet, your calves, your knees, your butt, and so on. When you get to your head, what can you feel? Anything? After reaching the top, work your way back down.

3. Every time your mind wanders, gently bring it back.

Walking meditation

1. Stake out a stretch of ground roughly ten yards long. (That’s somewhat arbitrary—whatever length you’ve got will work.)

2. Slowly pace back and forth, noting: lift, move, place with every stride. Try your best to feel each component of every stride. (Don’t look at your feet, just look at a neutral point in the distance.)

3. Every time your mind wanders, gently bring it back.

4. There is a temptation to denigrate walking meditation as less serious or rigorous than seated meditation, but this is wrong. Just because your legs are crossed doesn’t mean you’re meditating more effectively. As a noted teacher once said, “I’ve seen chickens sitting on their eggs for days on end.”

Compassion meditation (aka metta)

At first blush, most rational people find the below off-putting in the extreme. Trust me—or, better, trust the scientists—it works.

1. This practice involves picturing a series of people and sending them good vibes. Start with yourself. Generate as clear a mental image as possible.

2. Repeat the following phrases: May you be happy, May you be healthy, May you be safe, May you live with ease . Do this slowly. Let the sentiment land. You are not forcing your well-wishes on anyone; you’re just offering them up, just as you would a cool drink. Also, success is not measured by whether you generate any specific emotion. As Sharon says, you don’t need to feel “a surge of sentimental love accompanied by chirping birds.” The point is to try. Every time you do, you are exercising your compassion muscle. (By the way, if you don’t like the phrases above, you can make up your own.)

3. After you’ve sent the phrases to yourself, move on to: a benefactor (a teacher, mentor, relative), a close friend (can be a pet, too), a neutral person (someone you see often but don’t really ever notice), a difficult person, and, finally, “all beings.”

Open awareness

1. Sit, stand, or lie down. (You can actually do open awareness while walking, too.)

2. Instead of simply watching the breath, try to watch everything that arises. Set up a spy cam in your mind and just see what is there to see. To maintain your focus, try noting whatever comes up: burning, hearing, itching, breathing, etc.

3. Every time you lose your focus, just forgive yourself and come back. (It’s pretty easy to get distracted doing this type of meditation, so you might want to use your breath as an anchor that you return to when you get scattered. It’s like filling up the hot-air balloon of the mind with enough concentration so that you can fly.)

Isn’t noting just a form of thinking?

Yes, but it’s what the Buddhists call a “skillful” use of thinking, designed to direct the mind toward connecting with what is actually happening, as opposed to getting caught up in a storm of unproductive rumination. As with all thinking, it’s possible for noting to lapse into judgments. For example, I often find myself noting: You’re wandering again, you gigantic moron.

Is being mindful the same thing as being in the moment?

Being in the moment is necessary but not sufficient for mindfulness—which involves being in the moment, but also being aware of what’s going on. Joseph has a term I like: “black Lab conscious.” Black Labs are always in the moment, but they’re probably not nonjudgmentally aware of the contents of their consciousness as they eat sweat socks or take a dump on the rug.

I keep hearing about Transcendental Meditation. Lots of celebrities do it. What’s the difference between TM and the stuff you’re talking about here?

TM involves a mantra—a word or a phrase that you repeat silently to yourself. It’s a style of meditation that comes out of Hinduism and is focused mainly on generating a deep sense of concentration, which can feel terrific. The practices we’re discussing here come out of Buddhism and are focused more on developing mindfulness. (The dividing lines aren’t so neat. You definitely build up concentration in Buddhist meditation, and you can also develop some mindfulness in TM.) The two schools tend to look down their noses at each other. However, even though I’m in the Buddhist camp, I’ve done enough poking around in the TM world to be convinced the practice has plenty of benefits.

Is meditation good for everyone?

If you have severe depression or trauma, it might be best to practice in close consultation with a mental health professional or a very experienced teacher.