Newsletter Articles

As a 12-year-old in Brazil, I found myself navigating the choppy waters of my parents' recent divorce. The storm had passed, leaving a silence that echoed through the halls of our once lively home. One morning, my tears and a stomachache became my silent rebellion against the world: "Mom, I can't go to school today."

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Don't get me wrong. School was a sanctuary for me, a haven amidst the chaos. But the fear that gripped me was not of school itself, but the prospect of returning home to an empty house. It took me years, and becoming a psychologist, to realize that the child in me was wrestling with anxiety.

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Why am I sharing this personal journey with you? Because I understand I’m not alone; many of us carry the weight of anxiety through much of our lives. And because I also want to share that it doesn't have to be this way. 

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My life pivoted at 15, when my grandmother's wisdom began to reshape my understanding of anxiety. (I now know that her teachings were backed by science.) My hope in sharing this with you is that you too can learn to embrace your anxiety, turning it into a catalyst for growth.

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.

Editor’s Note: With many of us taking some down time this week, we thought we’d offer something lighter in this week’s newsletter: an adaptation of the children’s book by author and filmmaker Todd Strauss-Schulson titled, believe it or not, Your Mind Makes Thoughts Like Your Butt Makes Farts. We think it conveys the essence of mindfulness in a way that matches well with this week’s mood.

We are approaching the longest nights of the year, and, not coincidentally, the time when many cultures and religions celebrate light, love, and the sacred.

For many people, the good cheer and family time of the holiday season brings light to the darkness outside. Yet for many others, the holiday season can be profoundly challenging.  Some of us are alone, while others are with family members with whom we have difficult relationships. Some of us love Christmas music, decorations, and shopping, while others feel alienated or excluded by those things. Despite what commercials suggest, there’s no one right way to feel at this time of year!

Wherever you find yourself this holiday season, I want to encourage you to bring mindfulness and meditation with you – and Ten Percent has resources that can help.

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Grudges generally get a bad rap.  And for good reason – holding onto resentments can be toxic, trapping us in cycles of anger or bitterness.

And yet, all of us have grudges, no matter how much we’re told not to.  What if there were a way to allow them to exist, maybe even to learn with them?

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I first tried meditation nearly fifty years ago, and I have practiced psychiatry as a therapist for nearly forty.  In that time, I’ve written several books comparing, contrasting, and translating the ideas of one into the language of the other, all the while continuing to see clients and attend regular silent meditation retreats.

And yet, while my encounter with meditation has been the most important influence on my work, it was never something that I could describe easily.  Meditation has taught me, changed me, and shaped my life. But how do I use it—or how does it use me—in my interactions with patients?  I know meditation has taught me how to sit still and listen non-judgmentally, but are these the only ways it has contributed to my process?  How do the teachings of mindfulness show up in my day-to-day sessions?  What seeps through from my meditative experiences into conversations with my patients?

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One of the most common core beliefs that people in our society hold is that we are unworthy. We may hear it from others or we may hear it from ourselves. We may have gotten the message from the culture or from people in our families. And it can be very tender to contemplate when we turn our attention to it.

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As we approach the holiday of Thanksgiving, I’m thinking of the word “Enoughness.”

‘Enoughness’ is an awkward term, but it’s used a lot in meditation circles, because it refers to a sense that frequently comes about through meditation: that this moment, this body, even this life can feel like “enough,” even if it might be less than perfect. 

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It’s not just you – dread is on the upswing.

Whether it’s world events like political polarization or climate change, or personal anxieties like meeting new people or speaking on camera, more and more people are reporting experiences of dread: the uneasy feeling you get when you think that something you really don’t want to have happen, is going to happen.

We know this not only because we're feeling it ourselves, but because of the overwhelming response we got when we asked our community to tell us about their dread experiences.

This week, with the control of both houses of Congress at stake, Americans will head to the polls for a crucial election.

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Or will they?

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Midterm election turnout is always lower than in presidential election years, and even in 2020, with the highest voter participation in decades, only 66% of eligible voters actually cast a vote.

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And when people don’t vote, there are consequences.

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Editor’s Note:  We’re proud to feature this exclusive excerpt from Koshin Paley Ellison’s new book, Untangled: Walking the Eightfold Path to Clarity, Courage, and Compassion, which is being published this week.  Please note this essay has themes that some may find disturbing.

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I grew up in a home that held violence and fear: an unstable, unpredictable home. I was raised by loving, ethically idealistic people with, at times, a huge gap between their values and how they actually functioned in the world.