This is the 10% Happier Podcast.

I'm Dan Harris.

Hello, my fellow suffering beings, how we doing today?

So much human suffering is caused by the fact that we are stuck in our heads, captured by our thoughts, succored by our habitual rumination and ancient storylines.

So today we're going to talk about the science of getting out of your head, of escaping the brain's default mode network,

which my guests today refer to as the house of habit. We of course need our default mode network,

our capacity to behave habitually. We need it in order to survive and in order to brush our teeth

and tie our shoes without undue cognitive

demands. But if you are stuck in the default mode, you're missing out on quite a bit, and you're also

susceptible to many, many flavors of unhappiness. My guests today are Dr. Zindal Siegel and

Professor Norman Farb. Together, they wrote a book called Better in Every Sense.

In it, they describe something they call sense foraging, which is a simple but powerful practice

where you use your senses to turn down the more noxious aspects of the aforementioned default mode network.

In this conversation, we talk about what sense foraging is exactly

and how it can help you go from languishing to flourishing,

how shutting down your senses makes you more vulnerable to depression,

the difference between sense foraging and mindfulness.

Why, and this is counterintuitive,

but why most of us could use a little bit more chaos in our lives,

how radical acceptance can be a great starting point for sands foraging, and the nine simple

rules for sands foraging. A little bit more about our guests. Before we dive in here, Dr. Zendell

Siegel is a distinguished professor of psychology in mood disorders at the

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