Appendix: Instructions

There are a lot of bad reasons not to meditate. Here are my top three:

1. “It’s bullshit.” I get it. As you may remember, I used to feel this way, too. But there’s a reason why businesspeople, lawyers, and marines have embraced meditation. There’s no magic or mysticism required—it’s just exercise. If you do the right amount of reps, certain things will happen, reliably and predictably. One of those things, according to the research, is that your brain will change in positive ways. You will get better at not being carried away by your passing emotional squalls; you will learn—maybe 10% of the time, maybe more—to respond, not react. We now know that happiness, resilience, and compassion are skills, susceptible to training. You don’t have to resign yourself to your current level of well-being, or wait for your life circumstances to change; you can take the reins yourself. You brush your teeth, you take the meds your doctor prescribes, you eat healthfully—and if you don’t, you probably feel guilty about it. Given everything modern science is telling us, I think it’s now safe to put meditation in this category.
2. “It’s too hard for me.” I call this the “fallacy of uniqueness” argument. People often tell me, “I know I should meditate, but you don’t understand: my mind just moves too fast. I can’t possibly do this.” News flash: Welcome to the human condition. Everybody’s mind is out of control. Even experienced meditators struggle with distraction. Moreover, the idea that meditation requires you to “clear your mind” is a myth. (More on this misapprehension below.)
3. “I don’t have the time.” Everybody has five minutes. My advice is to start with five minutes a day and to tell yourself you’ll never do more. If you increase your time gradually and organically, great. If not, totally fine.

Using the Meditations in the Appendix

Since booting up a meditation habit can be tricky, I’ve included a range of guided meditation instructions in this appendix from some of my favorite teachers, including Joseph Goldstein and Spring Washam. (Yes, that’s the same Spring whom I met on my meditation retreat. She forgave me for all that stuff I wrote about her, and we’ve become friends; she’s awesome.)

All of the meditations included here are also available for free on the 10% Happier app, so you have the option of listening to a teacher walk you through the meditation you choose. My advice is to experiment with both guided and unguided meditations and see what works.

My colleagues at the 10% Happier app have also unlocked our flagship beginning meditation course for you. It’s called The Basics. And we’ve found that people who take this course are literally ten times more likely to establish an abiding meditation practice. Each session in The Basics includes a quick video lesson followed by a guided audio meditation from Joseph.

Go to 10percenthappier.com/unlock to download the app and unlock this content. (If you already have the app, use the same URL to get these meditations and The Basics.)

Basic Mindfulness Meditation

1. Sit comfortably. You don’t have to twist yourself into a cross-legged position—unless you want to, of course. You can just sit in a chair. (You can also stand up or lie down, although the latter can sometimes result in an unintentional nap.) Whatever your position, you should keep your spine straight, but don’t strain.
2. Feel your breath. Pick a spot: nose, belly, or chest. Really try to feel the in-breath and then the out-breath.
3. This one is the key: Every time you get lost in thought—which you will, thousands of times—gently return to the breath. I cannot stress strongly enough that forgiving yourself and starting over is the whole game. As my friend and meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg has written, “Beginning again and again is the actual practice, not a problem to overcome so that one day we can come to the ‘real’ meditation.”

Pro tips

• To stay focused on the breath, try making a soft mental note, like “in” and “out.” (Don’t get too mesmerized by the note itself, just use it to direct your attention to the actual sensory experience of the breath.)
• “Noting,” as it’s called, can also be useful when something strong—such as itches, pain, worries, or hunger—comes along and drags your attention away from the breath. The act of applying a label—“planning,” “throbbing,” “fantasizing”—can objectify whatever’s going on, making it much less concrete and monolithic. (Don’t get too caught up in thumbing through your internal thesaurus for the right word. Make a note and move on.)
• Another trick for staying focused is to count your breaths. Start at one, and every time you get lost, start over. When you reach ten—if you ever reach ten—start back at one.
• Try to meditate every day. Regularity is more important than duration.
• Use a guided meditation to help stay on track. I built the 10% Happier app with Joseph Goldstein and other clear, qualified, and cool teachers to help with this.
• Find friends who are also interested in meditation. It’s not a must, but sitting with a group—or merely having people with whom you can discuss your practice—can have an HOV lane effect.
• Find a teacher you trust. Meditation can be a lonely and subtle business. It really helps to have some personal guidance. If you live in a remote area, there are teachers who offer lessons over Skype.
• Beginning meditators are sometimes advised to sit at the same time and in the same place every day. If, like me, your schedule is unpredictable and involves a lot of travel, don’t worry about it. I sit whenever and wherever I can fit it in.
• Every once in a while, do a little reading about meditation or Buddhism. Even though the basic instructions are simple, hearing them repeatedly can be useful. It’s the opposite of airplane safety announcements. Also, since the practice itself often feels stupid (“in,” “out,” ad nauseam), glancing at even a few passages of a good book can be a helpful reminder of the intellectual underpinnings of the practice, which are extremely compelling. Here are some books I like:

On meditation

Real Happiness, Sharon Salzberg

Insight Meditation, Joseph Goldstein

On Buddhism and mindfulness in general

Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart, Dr. Mark Epstein

Buddhism Without Beliefs, Stephen Batchelor

FAQS

Remind me, what’s the point of this?

Meditation is the best tool I know for neutralizing the voice in the head. As discussed, the ego is often a hatchery of judgments, desires, assumptions, and diabolical plans. The act of simply feeling the breath breaks the habits of a lifetime. For those short snatches of time when you’re focused on the rise and fall of the abdomen or the cool air entering and exiting the nostrils, the ego is muzzled. You are not thinking, you are being mindful—an innate but underused ability we all have, which allows us to be aware without judging.

When you repeatedly go through the cycle of feeling the breath, losing your focus, and hauling yourself back, you are building your mindfulness muscle the way dumbbell curls build your biceps. Once this muscle is just a little bit developed, you can start to see all the thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations that carom through your skull for what they really are: little squirts of psychic energy without any concrete reality of their own.

Imagine how massively useful this can be. Normally, for example, when someone cuts you off in traffic or on line at Starbucks, you automatically think, I’m pissed. Instantaneously, you actually become pissed. Mindfulness allows you to slow that process down. Sometimes, of course, you’re right to be pissed. The question is whether you are going to react mindlessly to that anger or respond thoughtfully. Mindfulness provides space between impulse and action, so you’re not a slave to whatever neurotic obsession pops into your head.

My mind keeps wandering. Am I failure?

This question gets back to the whole “clear your mind” misconception. The relationship between thinking and meditating is a funny one. Thoughts are simultaneously the biggest obstacle to meditation, and also an unavoidable part of it—like the opposing team in basketball, or the hurdles in track. The goal is not to erase the obstacles, but to play as well as possible.

So, again: this entire endeavor revolves around moments of mindfulness, interrupted by periods of distraction, then gently catching yourself and returning to the breath. Over time, the mindfulness may grow longer and the wandering shorter. Not incidentally, the ability to begin again and again has significant “off the cushion” benefits. It creates a resilience that can be enormously useful when confronting the ups and downs of everyday life.

How come I don’t feel relaxed? This really sucks.

First of all, when you learn any new skill—Urdu, French horn, krumping, whatever—it is often awkward and difficult at the beginning.

Second, write down this quote from Jon Kabat-Zinn and put it up on your wall: “Meditation is not about feeling a certain way. It’s about feeling the way you feel.”

It’s amazing how many times I can hear this message and yet forget it when I sit down to meditate. You don’t need to achieve some special state; you just need to be as aware as possible of whatever’s happening right now. This is what the Buddhists mean by “letting go”—better translated as “letting be.”

Meditation became much easier for me when I stopped holding myself responsible for what was happening in my head. To this day, as soon as I start meditating, the first thoughts are usually: How the hell am I going to make it until the timer goes off? Why am I even doing this? But I haven’t summoned those complaints. They just come out of the void. So rather than lapse into what Sharon Salzberg calls a “judgment jag,” I just note the thoughts as “complaining” or “rushing” or “doubt.” Yet again, there are massive off-the-cushion consequences to cultivating this attitude. Just because your spouse or your kids are driving you nuts does not mean you are a “bad person.” You can’t control what comes up, only how you respond.

You keep talking about this notion that “you can’t help what we feel, only how you respond,” but I want to feel different things. Won’t meditation do that for me?

In my experience, yes, it will. Not right away, of course—and not entirely. But as you learn to stop feeding your habitual thought and emotional patterns through compulsive mental churning, you will make room for new things.

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. To wit . . .

Open awareness

Teacher: Joseph Goldstein

1. Take a comfortable seat and close your eyes.
2. Settle into the awareness of your body sitting. Sit, and know you’re sitting.
3. Become aware of your body breathing. Breathing in, know you’re breathing in. Breathing out, know you’re breathing out.
4. Other experiences may arise that take you away from the breath. As these other objects become predominant—sound, a physical sensation, or a thought—use a soft mental note to frame that experience (“hearing,” “pressure,” “thinking”). When that experience is no longer predominant, simply return to noticing the breath or the sitting posture.
5. Now move into a period of open awareness. Instead of returning to the breath after being mindful of different experiences, simply be mindful in a relaxed way. Lightly hold the question “What is being known?” in the mind as each new experience presents itself. Practice being open to the flow of experience.
6. If you feel the mind is getting scattered, less focused, increasingly lost in thought, release the open awareness practice, and refocus on the feeling of the breath.

Mindful while walking

Teacher: Sharon Salzberg

Being mindful while walking is among the most easily accessible ways of being present and calm. Whether you’re strolling outside or just heading to the next meeting, use these instructions to bring awareness into the activity of movement.

1. Begin by walking at a normal pace. Feel the sensations of your feet touching the ground. There’s no need to look down to feel your feet. Aim your attention at the actual sensations of walking—notice each step as it occurs.
2. This is not an intellectual exercise, knowing which muscle group is doing what. Instead, you’re feeling hardness, softness, tightness, relaxation—whenever it might be. You don’t have to name these sensations, just feel them as you walk at a normal pace.
3. If your attention wanders, if you become lost in thought, see if you can simply recognize that and return your attention to the sensations of walking.
4. After some time, if you wish, you can slow down a bit. Feel more precisely the sensations of your feet—lifting up, moving forward, placing your next step.
5. When you’re ready, finish walking as you would normally. See if you can bring this careful attention to sensations in your body throughout the day.

Body scan for sleep

Teacher: Sebene Selassie

Many of us settle into bed at night with our minds still racing from the activity of the day or filled with tomorrow’s to-do list. This meditation is a guided relaxation to help you wind down and prepare for a restful night’s sleep.

1. Start by lying on your back. Rest your arms comfortably at your sides and allow your feet to fall away from each other.
2. Breathing deeply into the belly is shown to help calm and relax your whole system. Place a hand on your belly and begin by slightly exaggerating the breath. Breathing deeply in, feel the belly and hand rise. Breathing out, feel them fall. After several cycles, allow the breath to come to its natural rhythm.
3. Now we’re going to scan from the feet to the head with the intention of releasing any tension and relaxing into sleep.
4. Bring awareness to the feet. What sensations do you feel in the feet? There’s no right way to feel the body, just notice what comes into your awareness. There may be sensations of air moving against bare skin, or feelings of the blanket or sheet against the skin.
5. Move to the ankles and notice any sensations there. You might notice tingling, numbness, tension, temperature, pain, or no sensation at all. Just notice with curiosity.
6. Continue moving up the body, noticing what sensations are present and giving that area a gentle suggestion to relax and release.
7. I hope you have a restful sleep.

Loving-kindness meditation (aka metta)

Teacher: Spring Washam

Metta is a heart-based practice focused on developing the quality of loving-kindness. This practice cultivates self-love, compassion, and altruistic feelings toward others, and can be used as an antidote to self-hatred and anger.

1. This practice involves picturing a series of people and sending them good wishes. Start with yourself. Generate as clear a mental image of yourself as possible at whatever age generates the most natural sense of goodwill.
2. Repeat the following phrases: May I be happy, May I be healthy, May I be safe, May I live with ease. Do this slowly and let the sentiment land. You are not forcing your well-wishes; you’re offering them up, just as you would a cool drink. Success is not measured by whether you generate any specific emotion. The point is to hone the intention of kindness. Every time you do, you’re strengthening your capacity for kindness.
3. Many people will start feeling anger, sadness, or numbness as they begin learning this practice. This is good progress. Be patient with these periods and the meditation will slowly loosen them with time. You’re not doing anything wrong!
4. After you’ve wished the phrases for yourself, move on to someone in each of the following categories: 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.”
5. It’s helpful to begin learning this practice in the most natural way possible. Stick with yourself or the category that is easiest for you until the practice becomes familiar. Then come back to the classical progression.

Stress is natural

Teacher: Alexis Santos

Rather than being afraid of stress, you can learn to turn toward it with a sense of friendliness and curiosity. This makes a huge difference.

1. Sit, stand, or lie down comfortably. Take a couple of deep, full breaths to start. Breathing in, feel the sensations of the in breath. Breathing out, relax. Now allow the breath to return to its natural rhythm.
2. For this period of time, take on the attitude that whatever is happening is okay. Simply notice what is present for you in this moment: notice the sensations in the body and become aware of your general state of mind. Are you feeling relaxed or tense? Just notice what’s present. Nothing needs to be different than the way it is at this moment.
3. If you’re stressed or anxious, bring in some wisdom. Remind yourself that it’s okay to feel this way. It’s unpleasant, but it’s something you’re learning to be aware of. Take your time and just feel what’s going on. Where is the sensation of stress the strongest? Where is it the weakest? Encourage an attitude of curiosity and playfulness.
4. When we’re curious about a challenging experience, we can feel a shift in our attitude, in our relationship to what’s happening. It’s not the stressful sensations that are the cause of our suffering; it’s our resistance that turns them into suffering. Check this out for yourself.
5. We can view stress as a natural process. It’s natural for there to be a range of pleasant and unpleasant experiences. Stress is just one of them. See how this shift in attitude changes the experience of stress in the body and continue settling back and being curious about your present experience.

Recharge

Teacher: Oren Jay Sofer

Learning how to quickly relax and slow down can bring more clarity and calm into your day. The less distracted and rushed you are, the more available you can be for your work or the people in your life.

1. Start by finding a comfortable, upright, and relaxed posture. You can let your eyes close or just look downward. Slowly tune into the breath: you don’t need to focus hard, just let the breath come to you.
2. In mindfulness, we talk a lot about breathing naturally, but we can also use the breath to downshift and recharge. As you breathe, give a little more attention to the out breath. Extend your exhalation by making it slightly longer or slower. With each out breath, notice any sense of ease, settling, or relaxation. After a few cycles like this you can let your breath return to normal, breathing in and out in a relaxed and natural way.
3. Your mind may wander a bit. It’s probably just unwinding or blowing off some steam. Think of it like a child running around and having fun. Whenever you notice that the mind has wandered gently guide your attention back to the breath in the same way you might invite that child to come sit down and rest.
4. There’s nothing to do, nowhere to go. Keep coming back to the simplicity of being present. The demands and pressures of life move pretty fast. This is a break—enjoy feeling your body breathing in and breathing out.
5. Feel free to come back to this anytime during your day. Even one minute spent this way pays off.

More questions:

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.

You’re not a teacher. What business do you have providing meditation instructions?

Fair question. You should be wary of teachers who lack deep experience. I had everything here vetted by people who actually know what they’re talking about.

Can I meditate if I’m a believing Christian (or Jew or Muslim, etc.)? Will it erode my faith?

There’s some controversy around this question. Dr. Albert Mohler, the head of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has criticized both yoga and meditation as being based on Eastern spirituality, and therefore not good for Christians. Before he became Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Ratzinger specifically slammed Buddhism as an “auto-erotic spirituality.”

There’s equally strong pushback from devout Christians (and Jews and Muslims) who point out that meditation has been a part of the mystical traditions of all the great faiths. Furthermore, they argue, mindfulness meditation—especially the secularized MBSR technique pioneered by Jon Kabat-Zinn—is simply a tool for improving mental hygiene. In fact, they argue, quieting the voice in the head has helped them feel closer to God.

What is the least amount of time I can sit and still get the benefits the scientists are always talking about?

No one’s figured out the dosage question yet. I don’t have any evidence for this, but I think if you can manage five minutes, you’ll start seeing changes in your own life, particularly as it pertains to your level of emotional reactivity. (For what it's worth, I also think one minute counts. We have a bunch of one minute meditations in the app.)

In sum

Forget your preconceived notions. Forget the dopey packaging and the unfortunate cultural baggage. Meditation is worth the work—even if you’re too embarrassed to admit to your friends that you’re doing it.

Under the sway of the ego, life becomes a constant low-grade crisis. You are never sated, never satisfied, always reaching for the next thing, like a colicky baby. Meditation is the antidote. It won’t fix everything in your life, make you taller, or (most likely) land you in a state of bliss on a park bench. But it can make you 10% happier, or maybe much more.

There used to be a sign on the wall of Newbury Comics, my favorite record store in Boston. Above the list of upcoming releases, it read, ALL DATES CAN CHANGE, SO CAN YOU.