This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello my fellow suffering beings how we doing if in this new year you are looking to start or

restart your meditation habit or if you're already meditating but you want to

up your game we have recruited a true wringer for you a legend perhaps more than any other

single person John Cabot Zen is responsible for the explosion of interest in

meditation over the last decade or two. He invented something called

mindfulness-based stress reduction which took meditation out of a Buddhist context

and made it secular and replicable. In other words he invented a repeatable

eight-week protocol which allowed scientists to begin studying what happens when

regular people learn how to meditate and that is in large measure why we now have all the scientific

evidence that strongly suggests that short daily doses of meditation can

confer a long list of tantalizing health benefits.

John has written many books,

including full catastrophe living,

wherever you go, there you are,

which was first published 30 years ago,

and his latest, meditation for pain relief.

We cover among many other things the nitty gritty practicalities of starting a practice,

how he's learned to be more relaxed about his own practice, including advocating for meditating in bed, how to practice

being fully present with no agenda, how investigating your motivation, something most people

don't actually do, can help you be more mindful and how to practice

letting go of the story of me. This is the third episode in our New Year's series

the non-negotiables where we ask smart people what

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