Ten Percent Weekly

In a candid interview between Dan and Mike D of the Beastie Boys on the 10% Happier podcast, the musician opened up about loss, grief, and the power of meditation in helping him stay open to life’s ups and downs. 

Sometimes, we have to take care of business—other times, ourselves.

When it comes to maintaining a meditation practice, negative reinforcement does not work. But mindfulness does.

This year, we're bringing World Meditation Day down to earth with a week-long celebration of free meditations and live content unlocks.

For seven days straight, we're celebrating the power of meditation and mindfulness with practical techniques that you can apply to your everyday life.

Starting on Monday, May 15th and culminating on Sunday, May 21st with World Meditation Day, we invite you to join us on a journey of self-discovery and personal growth through free daily meditations.

I cried so much in the months after I had both of my two kids.

I cried in banks, in coffee shops, and lord knows every room of my house. I’m not actually sure who cried more – me, or my colicky babies. It wasn’t quite post-partum depression –I prefer to describe it as the everyday gut-wrenching, confusing, disorienting, sleep-deprived vertigo of parenthood.

Meanwhile, here I was, a meditation practitioner for almost two decades, with no clue about what my carefully cultivated spiritual practice had to say about this massive life shift.

Do I have your attention right now?

I hope so, but even if I do, I won’t keep it for very long. As you read this newsletter, chances are that you’ll miss up to half of what I say. And on top of that, you’ll finish reading it, convinced that you didn’t miss a thing.

There are days when I feel that climate change is the only thing that matters, and that the tragedy of it is unbearable. At least I know that I’m not alone. According to a 2020 study by the American Psychiatric Association, over half of Americans said they were somewhat or extremely anxious about the impact of climate change.

So what can we do?

For many people, meditation is like trying to put a wild animal into a tight little cage. But, says meditation teacher Cara Lai, this approach doesn’t work.

Even when we are powerless to change it, it is possible to bear witness to suffering, mindfully present and aware. Zen monk Koshin Paley Ellison explains how.

We share some tips from Dr. Valerie Young, who appeared on a special episode of the Ten Percent Happier podcast co-hosted by Dan and Bianca Harris. Dr. Young is the co-founder of the Imposter Syndrome Institute, and offers up three key tools for handling imposter syndrome in their conversation.

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You can’t talk yourself out of imposter syndrome. Instead, try connecting with your body.

Meditation can help you relax, but more importantly, it can help cultivate an attitude of acceptance that makes falling asleep, or not falling asleep, more restful.

There’s more and more data showing that if you want to be happy, the most important thing in life is the quality of your relationships. In the midst of a holiday that would have you focus all your attention on your romantic partner (if you have one), we think it’s worthwhile to put some focus on friendships. 

It’s very common, in mindfulness meditation, to be invited to “rest the attention on the breath” or even “focus on the breath.”  But particularly if you’re new to meditation, you may have wondered: What does this actually mean? 

Here are three elements to consider.

Last fall, I traveled seven thousand miles to Dharamsala, in northern India's Kangra Valley, to a place that has been home since 1959 to one of the most recognizable human beings on the planet: the Dalai Lama. For decades, His Holiness, as the Dalai Lama is called, has been working with Western neuroscientists, combining ancient wisdom practices with modern science to study what really works to make us happy.