This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

Hello, my fellow suffering beings. I don't know about you, but I have spent a goodly portion of my meditation practice trying too hard, pushing for, I don't even know what. This is a common problem among type A people. We try to win at meditation, whatever that means. But the practice doesn't work that way. If you try too hard, if you over effort,

if you try to make something happen, it's pretty much guaranteed not to happen. What is guaranteed

is that you will suffer. As I like to say, meditation is like a video game where you can't

move forward if you want to move forward too badly. After having suffered this way for many years, I finally had the great good fortune of doing a few

meditation retreats with a teacher by the name of Alexis Santos, who introduced me to a way

to a way to practice. Alexis's teaching style is pretty unusual, at least compared to what I'm

used to, and while initially I reflexively reject what Alexis was offering, I quickly came to see that this was an extremely

practical and valuable alternative approach. To put it simply, this guy has really changed

the way I practiced. And that is why I'm bringing him on the show today. Alexis has been

practicing meditation for 20 years. He is a student of a highly

influential Burmese monk by the name of Sayada Utejania, who's a fascinating character, and you'll

hear about him in this interview. Alexis also happens to be a core teacher over on the 10% happier

app and the lead teacher of our on the go course, which I highly recommend. We're running that

course as a seven-day challenge over on the

app starting on November 13th. If you're not already a subscriber, just download the 10% happier

app wherever you get your apps and start a free trial that will give you access to the challenge

and everything else on the app. If you already have the app, just open it up and follow the

instructions to join. Before we dive in, just to say, we've got some exciting things happening in the 10% happier universe.

We are now offering bespoke guided meditations to go with every podcast episode.

Those meditations will be guided by a teacher of the month, all people who you know from

the 10% cinematic universe, people who have been on this podcast before.

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