What Is Mindfulness, Really? And How Do You Know if You're Doing It Right? | Diana Winston
10% Happier with Dan Harris
10% Media, LLC
4.6 • 12.9K Ratings
🗓️ 25 August 2023
⏱️ 61 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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Mindfulness is a word that is in danger of becoming meaningless. In this episode, we dig into the meaning of mindfulness, how to practice without getting overwhelmed, and how to stop the judgment spiral.
Today's guest is Diana Winston, the Director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA's Mindful Awareness Research Center. She has written several books, including The Little Book of Being, and Fully Present, the Science, Art and Practice of Mindfulness, which she co-authored with Susan Smalley, and which is celebrating its tenth anniversary. Diana has been practicing mindfulness meditation since 1989, including a year as a Buddhist nun in Burma.
In this episode we talk about:
- How Diana defines mindfulness
- How we know if we're in a state of bonafide mindfulness
- The difference between mindfulness as a trait and mindfulness as a state
- Whether you have to meditate to achieve mindfulness as a trait
- What current scientific research says about the benefits of meditation
- The link between intuition, happiness and authenticity
- Her definition of happiness
- How meditation can help us relate to our bodies differently
- How to stop the self-judgment spiral
- Creating a top ten list to deal with difficult thoughts
- How to use meditation for chronic pain
- Striking a balance between reason and intuition
- The ripple effects of practicing meditation
- And how to start practicing mindfulness without getting overwhelmed
Full Shownotes:https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/diana-winston
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm your host, your boy Dan Harris. |
| 0:16.8 | Hello, my fellow suffering beings. Welcome to the show. Mindfulness, and I've mentioned |
| 0:24.5 | this before, but mindfulness is one of those words that I fear is being ground down into |
| 0:29.0 | meaninglessness through wrote repetition. What is it really? And how do you know if you're |
| 0:34.3 | actually being mindful? Today, we've got a meat potato's mindfulness episode for you, |
| 0:38.7 | part of our ongoing experiment with dropping three episodes in a single week. Side note, |
| 0:43.4 | we did ask you guys for feedback on that, and the response was overwhelmingly positive. So |
| 0:48.1 | be careful what you wish for. I guess today has been on this show before. She's great. She's |
| 0:52.3 | also a regular on the 10% Happier Meditation app. Her name is Diana Winston. She's the director |
| 0:57.2 | of mindfulness education at UCLA's Mindful Awareness Research Center. She's written several books, |
| 1:03.2 | including the little book of being, and the book that we will be talking about today, which is |
| 1:07.8 | called fully present. The science, art, and practice of mindfulness. She co-authored that with Susan |
| 1:12.5 | Smalley, and it's now celebrating its 10th anniversary. Diana herself has been practicing mindfulness |
| 1:18.2 | meditation since 1989, including a year as a Buddhist none over in Burma. In this conversation, |
| 1:23.9 | we talk about how Diana defines mindfulness, how we know whether we're in a state of |
| 1:28.6 | bona fide mindfulness, the difference between mindfulness as a state and mindfulness as a trait, |
| 1:33.6 | whether you have to meditate in order to achieve mindfulness as a trait. What current scientific |
| 1:38.4 | research says about the benefits of meditation, the link between intuition, authenticity, and happiness, |
| 1:44.0 | her definition of happiness, how meditation can help us relate to our bodies differently, how to |
| 1:49.2 | stop spirals of self-judgment, how creating a top 10 list can help you deal with difficult thoughts, |
| 1:54.7 | and how to start practicing mindfulness without getting overwhelmed by the whole thing. |
| 2:18.8 | Before it ends by going to 10% dot com slash 40, that's 10% one word all spelled out dot com slash |
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