Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book

by Dan Harris

1. Close your eyes and first find home base: some sensation that feels comforting. Maybe it’s the breath, or a relaxed place in your body, or a picture in front of you. 2. Recognize. Now ask yourself: are there any emotions happening? If so, note them: anger, sadness, exuberance. If you can’t find the exact name for what you’re experiencing, note it as feel. 3. Accept. Open to the feeling and let the sensation of it do exactly what it wants to do. See if you can find a quality of caring and friendliness for this emotion that just wants to express itself. 4. Investigate. Now we get curious about our emotion, about where it’s happening and what it’s doing. Is it centered around a particular part of your body? Is the feeling staying the same, or is it changing? See if you can lightly follow the sensation, like you’re a field naturalist. If the emotion starts to get too intense, you have a couple of options. One is you can try to zoom in on one small part of it and notice just that, which makes things more manageable. Or you can swing your attention back to your comfortable place, noting home or rest.