Why You're Always Half-Stressed — and How to Chill | Christiane Wolf

10% Happier with Dan Harris

10% Media, LLC

Dan Harris, Health & Fitness, Mindfulness, Dharma, Mental Health, Meditation

4.6 • 12.2K Ratings

🗓️ 16 November 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If you feel like you spend most of your day on edge — not totally panicked, but not exactly calm either — you're not alone. Most of us live in what meditation teacher Dr. Christiane Wolf calls "yellow mode": a state of low-level vigilance that keeps us productive, but also keeps us anxious, reactive, and exhausted.

In this conversation with DJ Cashmere, Christiane unpacks why our nervous systems get stuck in that yellow zone and what we can actually do to shift back into "green mode" — the state of calm alertness where we feel grounded, flexible, and capable of joy.

They explore:

Why our modern lives constantly trigger fight-or-flight
The difference between "being chill" and being appropriately responsive
Simple, science-backed ways to calm your nervous system in seconds
How trauma and early conditioning make relaxation feel unsafe
The role of community (sangha), right livelihood, and mindfulness in long-term regulation

Christiane is our Teacher of the Month at DanHarris.com, where she's creating guided meditations to go along with many of our podcast episodes. Join us at DanHarris.com to learn more.

Join Dan's online community here

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Tickets are now on sale for a special live taping of the 10% Happier Podcast with guest Pete Holmes! Join us on November 18th in NYC for this benefit show, with all proceeds supporting the New York Insight Meditation Center. Grab your tickets here!

Tickets are now available for an intimate live event with Dan on November 23rd as part of the Troutbeck Luminary Series. Join the conversation, participate in a guided meditation, and ask your questions during the Q&A. Click here to buy your ticket!

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Thanks to our sponsor:
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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris.
0:18.8	Happy Sunday, everybody. Hope you're having a great weekend.
0:21.6	Today we're talking about something that most of us feel,
0:23.8	but rarely are able to put a name on.
0:25.9	It's that subtle background static of tension
0:29.0	that just kind of courses through your life.
0:32.8	It's not full-blown panic,
0:35.1	but it's just this kind of slightly on edge, always behind, never enough,
0:41.5	that general sense of dis-ease. Our guest today, who's a mindfulness teacher and a physician
0:47.4	and an ultramarathoner, Dr. Cristiano Wolfe, has a beautiful way of describing this phenomenon.
0:53.4	She calls it being in yellow. You're not on
0:55.6	red alert. You're not green. You're not grounded. But you're in that middle zone where we spend
1:00.2	most of our lives, vigilant, hyperproductive, or feeling guilty about not being productive enough,
1:06.6	like basically a little fried. So what you're about to hear is a conversation with DJ Kashmir, who's the executive
1:13.0	producer of this show, in which Christiana unpacks why so many of us live in this yellow
1:18.0	zone, why it's not really our fault, and how we can train our nervous systems to spend more
1:23.9	time in green, that state of openness, ease, being in the present moment,
1:29.5	all the cliches, all the good stuff.
1:31.5	Just to say, Christiana is the teacher of the month over at Danharis.com.
1:35.1	That means she's producing all of our guided meditations that go along with our Monday,
1:39.3	Wednesday episodes here on the pod.
1:41.3	She's also doing live meditation and Q&A sessions. As you know, we do these every Tuesday at 4 Eastern. The next one is coming up on November 18th at 4 Eastern. Christina is doing that one solo. Quickly, if you want to meditate with me in person, I've got two events coming up. I'm doing a live taping of this podcast on November 18th in New York City.
	...

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