Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-to Book by Dan Harris (Englis

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THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER FROM THE AUTHOR OF 10% HAPPIERToo busy to meditate? Can't turn off your brain? Curious about mindfulness but more comfortable in the gym? This book is for you.You'll also get access to guided audio meditations on the 10% Happier app, to jumpstart your practice from day one.What exactly is meditation? ABC News anchor Dan Harris used to think that meditation was for people who collect crystals, play Ultimate Frisbee, and use the word "namaste" without irony. After he had a panic attack on live television, he went on a strange and circuitous journey that ultimately led him to become one of meditation's most vocal public proponents.Harris found that meditation made him more focused and less yanked around by his emotions. According to his wife, it also made him less annoying. Science suggests that the practice can lower your blood pressure, mitigate depression and anxiety, and literally rewire key parts of the brain. So what's holding you back?In Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics, Harris and Jeff Warren, a masterful teacher and "Meditation MacGyver," embark on a gonzo cross-country quest to tackle the myths, misconceptions, and self-deceptions that keep people from meditating. It is filled with game-changing and deeply practical meditation instructions—all of which are also available (for free) on the 10% Happier app. This book is a trip worth taking.Praise for Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics"If you're intrigued by meditation but don't know how to begin—or you've benefited from meditation in the past but need help to get started again—Dan Harris has written the book for you. Well researched, practical, and crammed with expert advice, it's also an irreverent, hilarious page-turner."—Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project"The ABC News anchor, a 'defender of worrying' who once had an anxiety attack on air, offers a hilarious and stirring account of his two-steps-forward-one-step-back campaign to sort 'useless rumination' from 'constructive anguish' via mindfulness, along with invaluable suggestions for following in his footsteps."—O: The Oprah Magazine

FORMATPaperback LANGUAGEEnglish CONDITIONBrand New Author Biography

Dan Harris is the co-anchor of ABC's Nightline and the weekend editions of Good Morning America. He wrote 10% Happier, a #1 New York Times bestseller, then launched the 10% Happier podcast and an app called 10% Happier: Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics. He lives in New York City.Jeff Warren is a writer, a meditation instructor, and the founder of the Consciousness Explorers Club, a meditation adventure group in Toronto. Carlye Adler is a journalist and co-author of many books, including three New York Times bestsellers.

Review

"If you're intrigued by meditation but don't know how to begin—or you've benefited from meditation in the past but need help to get started again, Dan Harris has written the book for you. Well researched, practical, and crammed with expert advice, it's also an irreverent, hilarious page-turner."—Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project"The ABC News anchor, a 'defender of worrying' who once had an anxiety attack on air, offers a hilarious and stirring account of his two-steps-forward-one-step-back campaign to sort 'useless rumination' from 'constructive anguish' via mindfulness, along with invaluable suggestions for following in his footsteps."—O: The Oprah Magazine"If your mind has a mind of its own, this is the book for you! With humor, generosity, and devastating candor, Dan Harris makes meditation make sense. This is news we can all use."—Mark Epstein, MD, author of Advice Not Given: A Guide to Getting Over Yourself and Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart"A gold mine of wise guidance for fidgety skeptics and experienced meditators alike . . .With Dan's humorous, self-revelatory style and incisive questioning and Jeff's down-to-earth, transforming wisdom, this book addresses the common obstacles people face as they begin and deepen their meditation practice. . . . Highly recommended."—Joseph Goldstein, author of Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening"Part romp, part travelogue, part meditation manual, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics takes us along for the journey as Dan Harris and meditation teacher Jeff Warren traverse the country. We discover meditating police officers, moms, media figures, and the meditator on the street (literally, as they open a pop-up meditation booth). Dan discovers some things about himself as well. This book is fun, instructive, timely, and immensely helpful."—Sharon Salzberg, author of Real Happiness and Real Love

Review Quote

"If you're intrigued by meditation but don't know how to begin--or you've benefited from meditation in the past but need help to get started again, Dan Harris has written the book for you. Well researched, practical, and crammed with expert advice, it's also an irreverent, hilarious page-turner." --Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project "The ABC News anchor, a 'defender of worrying' who once had an anxiety attack on air, offers a hilarious and stirring account of his two-steps-forward-one-step-back campaign to sort 'useless rumination' from 'constructive anguish' via mindfulness, along with invaluable suggestions for following in his footsteps." -- O: The Oprah Magazine "If your mind has a mind of its own, this is the book for you! With humor, generosity, and devastating candor, Dan Harris makes meditation make sense. This is news we can all use." --Mark Epstein, MD, author of Advice Not Given: A Guide to Getting Over Yourself and Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart "A gold mine of wise guidance for fidgety skeptics and experienced meditators alike . . .With Dan's humorous, self-revelatory style and incisive questioning and Jeff's down-to-earth, transforming wisdom, this book addresses the common obstacles people face as they begin and deepen their meditation practice. . . . Highly recommended." --Joseph Goldstein, author of Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening "Part romp, part travelogue, part meditation manual, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics takes us along for the journey as Dan Harris and meditation teacher Jeff Warren traverse the country. We discover meditating police officers, moms, media figures, and the meditator on the street (literally, as they open a pop-up meditation booth). Dan discovers some things about himself as well. This book is fun, instructive, timely, and immensely helpful." --Sharon Salzberg, author of Real Happiness and Real Love

Excerpt from Book

1 The Case for Meditation If you had told me as recently as a few years ago that I would someday become a traveling evangelist for meditation, I would have coughed my beer up through my nose. In 2004, I had a panic attack while delivering the news, live, on ABC''s Good Morning America. Being a masochist, I asked our research department to tell me exactly how many people were watching. They came back with the vastly reassuring number of 5.019 million. (If you are in the mood for a nice dose of schadenfreude, you can readily find the whole clip on YouTube. Just search for "panic attack on live TV," and it will pop right up. Which is awesome for me.) In the wake of my nationally televised freak-out, I learned something even more embarrassing: the entire episode had been caused by some phenomenally stupid behavior in my personal life. After spending years covering war zones for ABC News as an ambitious and idealistic young reporter, I had developed an undiagnosed depression. For months I was having trouble getting out of bed in the morning, and felt as if I had a permanent, low-grade fever. Out of desperation, I began self-medicating with recreational drugs, including cocaine and ecstasy. My drug use was short-lived and intermittent. If you''ve ever seen the movie The Wolf of Wall Street, in which the characters are pounding Quaaludes every five minutes--it was nothing like that. However, my consumption was enough, according to the doctor I consulted after the panic attack, to artificially raise the level of adrenaline in my brain, exacerbating my baseline anxiety and priming me to have my very public meltdown. Through a strange and circuitous series of events, the panic attack ultimately led me to embrace a practice I had always dismissed as ridiculous. For most of my life, to the extent that I''d ever even considered meditation, I ranked it right alongside aura readings, Enya, and the unironic use of the word "namaste." Further, I figured my racing, type-A mind was way too busy to ever be able to commune with the cosmos. And anyway, if I got too happy, it would probably render me completely ineffective at my hypercompetitive job. Two things changed my mind. The first was the science. In recent years, there has been an explosion of research into meditation, which has been shown to *Reduce blood pressure *Boost recovery after the release of the stress hormone cortisol *Improve immune system functioning and response *Slow age-related atrophy of the brain *Mitigate the symptoms of depression and anxiety Studies also show meditation can reduce violence in prisons, boost productivity in the workplace, and improve both behavior and grades for school children. Things really get interesting when you look at the neuroscience. In recent years, neuroscientists have been peering into the heads of meditators, and they''ve found that the practice can rewire key parts of the brain involved with self-awareness, compassion, and resiliency. One study from the Harvard Gazette found that just eight weeks of meditation resulted in measurable decreases in gray matter density in the area of the brain associated with stress. The science is still in its early stages and the findings are preliminary. I worry that it has provoked a certain amount of irrational exuberance in the media. ("Meditation can cure halitosis and enable you to dunk on a regulation hoop!") However, when you aggregate the most rigorous studies, they strongly suggest that daily meditation can deliver a long list of health benefits. The research has catalyzed a fascinating public health revolution, with the ancient practice of meditation catching on among corporate executives, athletes, U.S. marines, and entertainers, including the rapper 50 Cent. That man got shot nine times; I believe he deserves some peace of mind. The second thing I learned that changed my mind about meditation is that it does not necessarily entail a lot of the weird stuff I feared it might. Contrary to popular belief, meditation does not involve folding yourself into a pretzel, joining a group, or wearing special outfits. The word "meditation" is a little bit like the word "sports"; there are hundreds of varieties. The type of meditation we''ll be teaching here is called "mindfulness meditation," which is derived from Buddhism but does not require adopting a belief system or declaring oneself to be a Buddhist. (In defense of Buddhism, by the way, it is often practiced not as a faith but as a set of tools to help people lead more fulfilled lives in a universe characterized by impermanence and entropy. One of my favorite quotes on the matter is "Buddhism is not something to believe in, but rather something to do.") In any event, what we''re teaching here is simple, secular exercise for your brain. To give you a sense of exactly how simple it is, here are the three-step instructions for beginning meditation. You don''t actually have to do this right now; I''ll bring in a ringer soon. 1. Sit comfortably. It''s best to have your spine reasonably straight, which may help prevent an involuntary nap. If you want to sit on the floor in the lotus position, go for it. If not, just sit in a chair, as I do. You can close your eyes or, if you prefer, you can leave them open and adjust your gaze to a neutral point on the ground. 2. Bring your full attention to the feeling of your breath coming in and out. Pick a spot where it''s most prominent: your chest, your belly, or your nostrils. You''re not thinking about your breath, you''re just feeling the raw data of the physical sensations. To help maintain focus, you can make a quiet mental note on the in-breath and out-breath, like in and out. 3. The third step is the key. As soon as you try to do this, your mind is almost certainly going to mutiny. You''ll start having all sorts of random thoughts, such as: What''s for lunch? Do I need a haircut? What was Casper the Friendly Ghost before he died? Who was the Susan after whom they named the lazy Susan, and how did she feel about it? No big deal. This is totally normal. The whole game is simply to notice when you are distracted, and begin again. And again. And again. Every time you catch yourself wandering and escort your attention back to the breath, it is like a biceps curl for the brain. It is also a radical act: you''re breaking a lifetime''s habit of walking around in a fog of rumination and projection, and you are actually focusing on what''s happening right now. I have heard from countless people who assume that they could never meditate because they can''t stop thinking. I cannot say this frequently enough: the goal is not to clear your mind but to focus your mind--for a few nanoseconds at a time--and whenever you become distracted, just start again. Getting lost and starting over is not failing at meditation, it is succeeding. I think this pernicious clear-the-mind misconception stems in part from the fact that meditation has been the victim of the worst marketing campaign for anything ever. The traditional art depicting meditation, while often beautiful, can be badly misleading. It usually shows practitioners with beatific looks on their faces. Examples abound in Buddhist temples, airport spas, and in this picture of a man in a loincloth I found on the Internet. Based on my own practice, this image better captures the experience of meditation: Meditation can be difficult, especially at the beginning. It''s like going to the gym. If you work out and you''re not panting or sweating, you''re probably cheating. Likewise, if you start meditating and find yourself in a thought-free field of bliss, either you have rocketed to enlightenment or you have died. The practice does get easier the longer you keep at it, but even after doing it for years, I get lost all the time. Here''s a random sample of my mental chatter during a typical meditation session: In Out Man, I am feeling antsy. What''s the Yiddish term my grandmother used to use for that? Shpilkes. Right. Words that always make me giggle: "ointment," "pianist." Wait, what? Come on, man. Back to the breath. In Out Likes: baked goods. Dislikes: fedoras, dream sequences, that part in techno songs where the French accordion kicks in. Dude. Come. On. In Out In Alternative jobs: papal nuncio, interpretive dancer, working double time on the seduction line . . . You get the idea. So why put yourself through this? Meditation forces you into a direct collision with a fundamental fact of life that is not often pointed out to us: we all have a voice in our heads. (The reason the above looks amateurish and slightly creepy is that I drew it, but bear with me.) When I talk about the voice in your head, I''m not referring to schizophrenia or anything like that; I''m talking about your internal narrator. It''s sometimes called your "ego." The Buddha had a cool name for it: "the monkey mind." Here are some key attributes of the voice in my head. I suspect they will sound familiar. *It''s often fixated on the past and future, at the expense of whatever is happening right now. The voice loves to plan, plot, and scheme. It''s always making lists or rehearsing arguments or drafting tweets. One moment it has you fantasizing about some halcyon past or Elysian future. Another moment you''re ruing old mistakes or catastrophizing about some not-

Details ISBN0399588965 Author Carlye Adler Short Title MEDITATION FOR FIDGETY SKEPTIC Pages 304 Language English ISBN-10 0399588965 ISBN-13 9780399588969 Format Paperback DEWEY 158.12 Year 2018 Country of Publication United States AU Release Date 2018-12-31 NZ Release Date 2018-12-31 US Release Date 2018-12-31 UK Release Date 1900-01-01 Illustrations 9 B/W PHOTOS & 9 LINE DRAWINGS THROUGHOUT Publisher Potter/Ten Speed/Harmony/Rodale Publication Date 2018-12-31 Imprint Harmony Books Subtitle A 10% Happier How-to Book Audience General We've got this

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