Braze Newsletter Template v 1 link click upn equals 8h B 5yt N Iy S Hz 7ZW 9d 4x H… TEN PERCENT WEEKLY SEPTEMBER 21, 2019 slash slash ISSUE 115 Main Read: Why Meditate? by Yael Shy New in the App: Feeling Rushed with Alexis Santos and Empathy with Oren Jay Sofer Podcast: David Fajgenbaum: Living On Overtime Why Meditate? by Yael Shy No matter how long you’ve been meditating, or even if you’ve never meditated at all, it’s inevitable that you’ll ask, especially at a difficult moment: what’s the point? Why meditate? I’m actually going to answer that question. In fact, I’m going to answer it three times. The first reason is deceptively simple: relaxation. Perhaps meditation’s most famous claim is that it has the ability to help us relax. Then again, so can a bubble bath. So why meditation? Relaxation isn’t a luxury. In the world we live in, it’s a necessity. The everyday tension and stress that accompanies life in the 21st century can be debilitating to our mental and physical health. We need something deeper than an occasional treat. We need something that will get to the root of the problem. link click upn equals 8h B 5yt N Iy S Hz 7ZW 9d 4x H… I first began meditating as a college student because I suffered from unrelenting anxiety that did not subside even when I went to sleep. Regular meditation helped retrain my brain and body to handle anxious thoughts when they arrived. It didn’t stop the anxious thoughts, but it helped short circuit the trigger that connected the thoughts to the physical panic symptoms, such as shortness of breath, sweating, and fainting. So, yes relaxation, but not ordinary relaxation. Meditation helps us ground ourselves more of the time in the here and the now, rather than in the what if. Panic lives in the what if. What if this stalled subway is a terrorist attack? What if I never find love? What if I fail my classes, can’t get a job, disgrace my family, and have to live on the street? The more we train our minds to stay present, the more we become able to meet these what ifs with the distance of a witness, rather than as a victim. The second reason to meditate is wisdom. The thinking mind is wonderful, but it has serious limitations. If you’ve ever been up late at night, tossing and turning with the difficulties of the day, lost in circular thoughts or obsessed with a difficult decision, you have witnessed the limited capacity of the mind to solve our deepest problems. Often the thinking mind tries to pick apart, understand, and bring logic to painful or complicated feelings, without a great deal of success. In contrast, when the mind becomes quiet, a miraculous thing begins to happen. In my case, I start to notice the patterns of my thoughts without getting too attached to them. I start to hear with remarkable clarity the many voices in my head voices of parents, of society, of the stories I have invented. Space becomes available for insights and truths to speak from unconscious realms within. This is wisdom. In my mid twenties, I went on a meditation retreat in the middle of a very tumultuous time in my working life. When I sat down in meditation on the first few days of the retreat, I could feel the magnetic attraction of my work problems consuming my thoughts and not letting me go. Finally, on one of the last days of the retreat, after a week of repeatedly getting caught up in thoughts, suddenly my thinking mind surrendered. Out of nowhere, I heard an internal voice. It was a different voice than the endless, confused machinations of the mind I had been struggling with. It said quietly, with clarity: You have to go. As soon as those words had the chance to break through, I burst into tears. That was it. With four words, what I knew to be true, but didn’t want to face, came to the surface. I needed to leave the work situation I was in. The decision was made and all that was left was the grieving. Nearly all the major insights I have had in my life have come from that place deep inside. Perhaps you have noticed this in your life times when your mind stopped fixating on a problem and an answer came to you from a different place. This is the nature of our mind’s inner wisdom, and meditation is the fertile ground that enables it to emerge. The third reason to meditate is compassion. Compassion is the heart opening feeling that occurs when we witness the ways we are interconnected with every being and thing in the world. Recent research has shown that meditation increases compassionate and altruistic behavior, but personally, I find that the more I meditate, the more I feel motivated to fight for justice and, perhaps more mundanely, to treat the people in my life with everyday kindness and care. Meditation cracks my heart wide open and softens me towards others. It is not something I logically think through. It feels more like a chemical response a rush of love that bypasses my defenses and tenderizes me for a period of time. Meditation opens the heart, builds compassion, and has the potential to inspire loving action which fosters positive change. Ultimately, relaxation, wisdom, and compassion all flow from the process of becoming more awake in our lives. When we are focused on what is happening in real time, even for a few seconds at a time, we are not caught in the tangle of thoughts that constantly swing between the future and the past. We become intimate with the experience of life and are able to live it more deeply. That is the point. Yael Shy is the author of link What Now? Meditation for Your 20’s and Beyond (Parallax, 2017) and the Senior Director of NYU’s Office of Global Spiritual Life and Mindful NYU. link click upn equals 8h B 5yt N Iy S Hz 7ZW 9d 4x H… link Share This Article NEW IN THE APP table with 1 rows and 3 columns row 1 click upn equals 8h B 5yt N Iy S Hz 7ZW 9d 4x H… column 1 link click upn equals 8h B 5yt N Iy S Hz 7ZW 9d 4x H… column 2 Feeling Rushed with Alexis Santos It is time well spent to take a few minutes to get settled and clear, before you spin out of control. Try it in the app column 3 Feeling Rushed with Alexis Santos It is time well spent to take a few minutes to get settled and clear, before you spin out of control. link Try it in the app out of table table with 1 rows and 3 columns row 1 click upn equals 8h B 5yt N Iy S Hz 7ZW 9d 4x H… column 1 link click upn equals 8h B 5yt N Iy S Hz 7ZW 9d 4x H… column 2 New Talk! Empathy with Oren Jay Sofer Unlock your natural capacity for connection with others dot Try it in the app column 3 New Talk! Empathy with Oren Jay Sofer Unlock your natural capacity for connection with others. link Try it in the app out of table QUOTE Your purpose and your people are the most important things in the world. David Fajgenbaum, on this week's podcast TEN PERCENT HAPPIER PODCAST From ABC News link number 205: David Fajgenbaum, link Living on Overtime link graphic Play David Fajgenbaum, a young, promising medical student, could not have imagined he would become a patient in the same hospital he was serving his residency. After being diagnosed with a very rare illness, he came close to death on multiple occasions. In the throes of one encounter, he promised himself that if he survived, he would make a difference in the fight against this disease. Through his research, he found a drug that he believes has helped him into remission. In the wake of his bouts, he has chosen to live his life on overtime, time that he is extremely lucky to have, gifting him a unique perspective on living we can all learn from. Fajgenbaum is the Co Founder and Executive Director of the link Castleman Disease Collaborative Network and leads the Castleman Research Program at Penn Medicine. He is the author of link Chasing My Cure which entails his journey of going from a college athlete, living a healthy life to being diagnosed, and the hurdles he had overcome with love, determination and faith. Listen to the full Ten Percent Happier podcast episode on: link Apple Podcasts , link Spotify , link Tunein , link Stitcher and link ABC Podcasts dot link click upn equals 8h B 5yt N Iy S Hz 7ZW 9d 4x H… David Fajgenbuam, Caitlin Fajgenbaum and Dan Harris graphic 10 Percent Happier link graphic Instagram link graphic Facebook link graphic Twitter link graphic Website link click upn equals 8h B 5yt N Iy S Hz 7ZW 9d 4x H… link click upn equals 8h B 5yt N Iy S Hz 7ZW 9d 4x H… heading level 1 link About Ten Percent Happier link Clear and simple meditation. Learn to meditate and deepen your practice with New York Times link bestselling author Dan Harris and some of the most respected (and cool) meditation teachers. link You have received this email as a registered user of Ten Percent Happier. link (or you opted in to receive this newsletter). link link Not a fan? link Unsubscribe Ten Percent Happier :: 35 Kingston Street, Lvl 1 :: Boston, MA 02111 link