10% Happier with Dan Harris Folgen

Buddhist psychiatrist and author Dr. Mark Epstein has for years written about the overlap between Western psychotherapy and Eastern Buddhist philosophies. Epstein sat down with Dan Harris to talk about the impact meditation can have on the mind, both positive and negative, for those looking for an escape from suffering. He also went deep into the Buddhist concept of the "no-self," whether Enlightenment can be reached ... and what it might look or feel like. He has written numerous books on these topics, his most recent being, "The Trauma of Everyday Life." Epstein first discovered meditation in college and one of the "breakthroughs" he said that made the practice click for him happened while he was learning to juggle. "Once I got the three oranges in the air, my mind had to relax in order to keep it going and I understood, 'Oh yeah, this is what they're trying to teach me in mediation.'" Before he found meditation, Epstein said he was a very anxious person who worried all the time. Now after practicing meditation for more than 40 years, Epstein said he wouldn't know what he would be without it. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Arianna Huffington has a multimillion-dollar media website that reacts to world events by the millisecond, she's a mother of two -- and yet she says she always gets a good night's sleep. Not only that, she says wants to help everyone else do the same. Huffington, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post, has a new book -- her fifteenth -- called "The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life One Night at a Time." In the book, she traces sleep deprivation back to the Industrial Revolution and argues that our culture's chronic need to be "plugged in" is hurting our health, productivity, relationships and happiness. She started researching the effects of sleep deprivation after she collapsed from exhaustion in 2007, two years after launching The Huffington Post. It was also around this time, Huffington said, that she went back to meditation, a practice she had first started at age 13 while living in her home country of Greece. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Want to give meditation a try? Here's a great place to start. When left unchecked, our thoughts exert enormous influence over our lives. But when we become aware of them, we realize that they are little more than nothing. This is a guided meditation from the 10% Happier: Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics app, featuring Joseph Goldstein. Joseph is the co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society. He is also Dan's teacher (which means he knows firsthand how crappy a meditator Dan is). Joseph is one of a handful of western teachers who brought mindfulness meditation to the west 40 years ago. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.