Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - Just Because You Think It, Doesn’t Make It True | Bonus Meditation with Leslie Booker

Episode Date: July 19, 2024

Strengthen your ability to know the difference between fact and fiction by using sound to harness a foundational anxiety-taming skill.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 Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “Return to Reality.”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. This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Happy Friday, everybody. Time for a bonus meditation. Sometimes we need a reminder that our thoughts are not actually true. I mean, they're real, they do exist, but just because you think something doesn't make it factual.

Today's meditation with my friend Booker, her full name is Leslie Booker, but she goes by Booker, uses sound to keep you anchored to what's actually happening so you don't get lost in your thoughts. A little bit more about Booker, she's a university lecturer, public speaker, and Buddhist philosophy and meditation teacher. She currently lives in Philadelphia with her partner and a dog, and she's also the co-guiding teacher of the New York Insight Meditation Center, which I highly recommend if you live in the New York area.

Here we go now with Booker. Hey friends, this is Booker. In our meditation today, we're going to practice knowing the difference between what is actually happening in our experience and the distortion that the mind is creating. Let's begin by finding a posture that's upright and alert and also easy for you to maintain throughout your meditation. Turning your head in one direction, take a breath in, and use that full out breath to

turn your head to look in the opposite direction. The head comes back to center as you sense how much space is around your body. When you're ready, let the eyes rest. You can keep the eyes open, holding the eyes softly without looking at anything specifically, or you can close the eyes altogether. As you ease into your practice, begin to find your anchor, the place in your body where you can allow sound to become the object of your meditation. No need to go looking for sound. Just see what falls upon your ears. It's common for us to instantly attach a name, a memory, a strong emotion, or a reoccurring

narrative when we hear sound. And when you do, see if you can pause and get curious about what is the story we've made up about this sound? Take a few moments to notice if your mind jumps to create a story in response to the sounds in your environment. And what about now? How has the story changed, if at all? When you're ready, you can deepen the breath, begin to slowly open your eyes if they were closed, perhaps looking around your environment and orienting yourself back to your space. I hope this practice will be of benefit to you. Be well, dear ones. Thank you to Booker. You can find more meditations like this one over on the 10% Happier app. Just download the app wherever you get your apps to get started. If you like 10% happier, and I hope you do, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app

or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.