Sam Harris (5:11)

Okay, assume the position, everybody sitting comfortably or lying down standing up. If you're tired and you're worried that you might fall asleep, just picking a comfortable position, spine reasonably straight, and let's do three deep breaths just to kick things off. So deep, deep, deep. Inhale and then try to extend the exhale so it's three or four times as long.

Dan Harris (5:51)

As.

Sam Harris (5:53)

Feels good, get the body and the mind ready to do some meditation. When you're done with the three deep breaths, settle into your chair or whatever position you're in and let's use this phrase from Joseph Goldstein who got it from the Buddha, there is a body. This is right out of a classic Buddhist discourse or discourse of the Buddha called the Sativattana sutta, which is another way of saying the four ways of being mindful. The four foundations of mindfulness. One of the foundations of mindfulness, one of the ways to get mindful is pay attention to what's happening in the body. Mindfulness, that there is a body. And so that little phrase there is a body, which comes right out of the Buddhist text and which I have often joked, sounds like something you say at a crime scene. You just drop that into your mind, there is a body. Direct your attention to all the sensations that are happening right now. Because there's no sensation in the body that happens at any other time. Unlike the mind, it's not casting into the future or the past. It may store memories from the past, but everything's happening right now. So just drop that phrase into the mind, there is a body and see what you notice. If there's any trouble staying concentrated, just know that's completely normal. It's totally fine to get distracted and start again. You cannot hear that enough. And one little technique that might help some of you stay with the sensations in the body with a little bit more in a little bit of a stickier way. One little technique is mental noting, so you can note, hearing, seeing by seeing. Most of us probably have our eyes closed, so it could be the colors you're seeing behind the eyes. It can be. Another mental note might be pressure, tingling, itching, tension. Just use a little mental note, which is the skillful use of thinking to connect you to the direct sensation. I'm going to be quiet for a couple minutes and let you do this.

Dan Harris (9:20)

Sam.

Sam Harris (9:58)

There is a body. Such a useful phrase, a little clunky, but useful just to remind you to tune into the sensations in your body. And when you get distracted, not a problem. Just gently escort your attention back to the body. You might feel the breath within the body. That's fine. If you want to hone in on the breath and ignore the instructions du jour, that's also fine. Joseph calls mental notes a little whisper in your mind. Like I said earlier, using thought to direct you to your sensations. Lightness, pressure, numbness. You don't have to thumb through your mental thesaurus. Just a good enough note is fine. And you don't have to note everything just to drop it in as a way to keep you in the game. And then every once in a while, you can also drop in the words. There is a body. You do it. Great. Just a couple more minutes. Let's try something. This may not work for everybody, but see if you can locate where you feel yourself. Where's the spot where it feels like, oh yeah, this is me here for me, it's like in my face somewhere, maybe around my mouth. And then just check out what are the sensations that make up this feeling of oh yeah, this is me, Dan or Liz or whoever, Tony sitting in this chair. Where's that sense of the me that's holding it all together?

Dan Harris (13:37)

Sam?

Sam Harris (14:11)

For me, I find when I look at what feels like the locus of the self, the place where on my face where it feels like, oh yeah, this is Dan. Looking out, I see it's just a bunch of shifting sensations. I can't find any core damness there. All right, good job everybody.

Dan Harris (14:52)

Thanks for meditating with me. If you enjoyed that and would like more opportunities to meditate together, here's what we've got coming up for you in June. Here on the podcast, we're bringing back our series Get Fit Sanely where we talk about how to take care of your body without losing your mind. You'll hear about nutrition, exercise, rest and more, all with a contemplative and self compassionate lens. We're also super excited about this. A friend of the POD and ACE meditation teacher Cara Lai will be creating a month of bespoke meditations, each one tailored to an episode of the podcast. So every Get Fit Sanely episode will come with a guided meditation from Cara. And this is exclusively for paid subscribers over on danharris.com this is something I've been wanting to do for a long time. I'm really excited that we are finally getting around to it. Check out danharris.com for all the details. In the meantime, thank you to everybody who worked so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan and Eleanor Vasily. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at POD People. Lauren Smith is our production manager, Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer, DJ Cashmere is our executive producer and Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.

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