Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - A Meditation For Anxiety | Bonus Meditation with Leslie Booker

Episode Date: January 26, 2025

This loving-kindness meditation can serve as a protection from fear, guard against anxiety, & help you tap into support from your community.About Leslie Booker:Booker brings her heart and wisdom to the intersection of Dharma, Embodied Wisdom, and Liberation. Using this framework, she supports folks in creating a culture of belonging through her teaching and writing on changing the paradigm of self and community care. She shares her offering widely as a university lecturer, public speaker, and Buddhist philosophy and meditation teacher. She currently lives in Philadelphia with her partner and pup and is the Co-Guiding Teacher of New York Insight.To find this meditation in the Happier Meditation app, you can search for “The Protection of Loving-Kindness.”See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to 10% happier early and ad free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Real quick, I want to let you know about an online event coming up at the end of January. It's called When the Rubber Hits the Road, Living the Dharma in Difficult Times. It is presented by the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, D.C. and it's happening on January 24th through the 26th. Amazing teachers will be taking part in this. Tara Brach, DC, and it's happening on January 24th through the 26th. Amazing teachers will be taking part in this, Tara Brock, Drs. Larry and Peggy Ward, Sharon

Salzberg, Robert Thurman, Kazoo Haga, Dhammapada, Melissa Cardenas, and Hugh Byrne. It's a weekend of conversation, community, and practice. They're going to be talking about how Buddhism and Buddhist teachings can help you examine your biases, can help you practice fierce compassion, and even generate some equanimity in times when so many people are living with so much fear. It's offered by donation, and the recordings are included. To register, go to imcw.org slash 10%.

I'm a huge fan of many, many of the folks who are involved in this event, in particular Tara Brach, who is the powerhouse behind IMCW. So I strongly recommend you check out this event. This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Happy weekend, everybody. It's time for a bonus meditation. If you've been around 10% land for any length of time, you've probably heard me talk about how important I think self-compassion is and how hard it was for me to get my head around it initially. Today, in this guided meditation, you're going to be tapping into the feeling of community to help you access self-compassion.

Our teacher du jour is Leslie Booker, who prefers to go by just Booker. A little bit more about Booker before we dive in. She's a university lecturer, public speaker, and Buddhist philosophy and meditation teacher. She currently lives in Philadelphia with her partner and her dog, but she is the co-guiding teacher of New York Insight, which is a great center in New York City. Here we go now with Booker. Hey, folks. This is Booker.

Metta, or loving kindness, is a practice of friendliness or benevolence towards ourselves and others. But meta is also a protection from fear, guarding against anxiety and that which blocks you from being fully alive. We practice not just for our own well-being, but to connect us to the well-being of this network of care and strength that we are inherently a part of. This practice can be done sitting, standing, or lying down. You can close your eyes or keep them open

without focusing on anything specifically. In this session, we'll explore meta by remembering the felt sense of warmth when you are in an environment that feels loving and kind. Can you imagine a place where you feel protected, loved, and cared for?. Notice how it feels to evoke this image. this loving environment for a few moments. If you're noticing a feeling of benevolence or lightness, can you let the body feel full of this goodness, this warmth. See if you can begin to feel it radiating off of your body, you could imagine this body being encircled in this protective bubble of your own self-generated benevolence. If you like, you can begin to expand it a bit more, maybe allowing it to fill up the space

of this room that you're in, allowing all of the things that have supported your practice to be included in this growing circle of protection. Begin to slowly open your eyes if they were closed and take a moment to orient back to your space. You can practice this as close to home or far out into the world as you dream to go. Take good care as you move through your day. Big thank you to Booker. You can find more meditations like this one over on the Happier Meditation app. Just download the app wherever you get your apps to get started.

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