Podcast appearances and mentions of sebene selassie

A candid conversation about money: How much is enough? How to find real security?Sebene Selassie, an author and meditation teacher. She writes the popular newsletter Ancestors to Elements and her first book is called, You Belong. Jeff Warren is also an author and meditation teacher. He writes the popular Substack newsletter Home Base and is the coauthor, along with me, of a book called Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics. And he is the co-host of the mind/bod adventure pod.This episode is part of our monthlong Do Life Better series. We talk about:How much is enough The illusion of security The importance of being able to talk to your friends about this stuffThe power of identifying your own money story, in other words, finding the point of origination for your own neuroses on the subjectRelated Episodes:Do Life BetterHow to Avoid the Toilet Vortex of Anxiety | Sebene Selassie and Jeff WarrenHow to Stay Calm No Matter What's Happening | Sebene Selassie and Jeff WarrenMeditation Party: The “Sh*t Is Fertilizer” Edition | Sebene Selassie & Jeff WarrenMeditation Party with Sebene Selassie and Jeff Warren: Psychedelics, ADHD, Waking Up From Distraction, and Singing Without Being Self-ConsciousMeditation Party: Magic, Mystery, Intuition, Tattoos, and Non-Efforting | Sebene Selassie and Jeff WarrenSign up for Dan's newsletter hereFollow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTokTen Percent Happier online bookstoreSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelOur favorite playlists on: Anxiety, Sleep, Relationships, Most Popular EpisodesFull Shownotes: https://www.meditatehappier.com/podcast/tph/meditation-party-892Additional Resources:Register for Meditation Party at Omega, October 24 - 26, 2025Allison Strickland's GoFundMeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A crucial (and often misunderstood) concept in Buddhism: letting go.For this episode, Executive Producer DJ Cashmere interviewed a trio of brilliant Dharma teachers to get their advice about how to handle surrendering or letting go. This is the fourth in a series of 'correspondent' episodes, in which DJ identifies a pain point in his life and meditation practice, then goes out into the world to report on the best ways to address it.Kaira Jewel Lingo is a former nun in the Plum Village tradition started by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. Vinny Ferraro teaches at the Insight Meditation Society and Spirit Rock, and also in prisons. Matthew Brensilver teaches at many of the same retreat centers, and spent many years working in the field of addiction pharmacotherapy.*Find the Soft Belly Meditation here *Check out Sebene Selassie's website and newsletter, Ancestor to Elements. Plus, her ‘Let It Be' guided meditation on DanHarris.com****Want to study and practice with today's guests? Please check out these Spirit Rock offerings:Matthew Brensilver, Buddhist Psychology Training (Begins in January)Vinny Ferraro: A Year to Live; Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully (Begins in January)Kaira Jewel Lingo: Healing Our Way Home (Oct. 20); Insight Meditation Retreat (April 9-16; opens Dec. 11)All 10% Happier listeners receive a discount code for our December Insight Retreat (Dec. 8-18) with the code TENPERCENTVinny and Kaira Jewel will also teach at the Insight Meditation Society:Kaira Jewel Lingo, Strength to Love: Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King: Jr. (Jan 17 - Jan 20), and Return to Wholeness: Opening to Wisdom & Love (online) (Mar 23 - Mar 29)Vinny Ferraro, Peace in Presence: A Four-Night Retreat for All (Jan 31 - Feb 4)Related Episodes:Listen to all of DJ's correspondence episodes here3 Buddhist Strategies for When the News is Overwhelming | Kaira Jewel LingoHow to Keep Your Relationships On the Rails | Kaira Jewel LingoThree Buddhist Practices For Getting Your Sh*t Together | Vinny FerraroWhy Self-Hatred Makes No Sense | Matthew BrensilverHow to Actually Be Present | Matthew BrensilverAlso, the teachers' sites: https://vinnyferraro.org/Vinny Ferraro's Course, A Year To Live https://www.kairajewel.com/ https://www.matthewbrensilver.org/Feedback form: Let us know what you think!https://www.happierapp.com/contactSign up for Dan's weekly newsletter hereFollow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTokTen Percent Happier online bookstoreSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelOur favorite playlists on: Anxiety, Sleep, Relationships, Most Popular EpisodesFull Shownotes: https://happierapp.com/podcast/tph/dj-surrender-4See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Unraveling one of our main sources of unhappiness.About Sebene Selassie:Growing up, Sebene felt like a big weirdo. Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and raised in white neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., she was a tomboy Black girl who loved Monty Python and UB40. She never believed she belonged. Thirty years ago, she began studying Buddhism as an undergraduate at McGill University where she majored in Comparative Religious Studies. Now, Sebene is a teacher, author, and speaker who teaches that meditation can help us remember our inherent sense of belonging, that our individual freedom affects absolutely everyone and everything, and that our collective freedom depends on each and every one of us. Sebene is a three-time cancer survivor of Stage III and IV cancer.Check out Sebene's Substack newsletter, Ancestors to Elements. To find this meditation in the Happier app, you can search for “Hope in the Everyday.”See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Recorded live at the Omega Institute, Dan leads us through a loving-kindness meditation, followed by discussion with retreat co-leaders Jeff Warren and Sebene Selassie.For more information on the next upcoming Meditation Party retreat, including scholarships available for BIPOC participants, visit Omega Institute. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We also talk about: whether it is possible to be a failed meditator; grief versus mourning; and meditation tips for parents.Sebene Selassie is a writer, teacher, and speaker who leads meditation, creativity, and nature-based practices for personal & collective liberation. Using ancient wisdom and modern science mixed with her own relational and relatable style, Sebene helps spiritually curious people explore the profound and sacred truth of belonging. She is trained as a meditation teacher, an integral coach, a practitioner of Indigenous Focusing Oriented Therapy for Complex Trauma (IFOT), and is a licensed hiking guide in New York State. She has taught classes, workshops and retreats online and in person for almost fifteen years. Sebene is a devoted student of mystic traditions, including astrology, and writes the popular newsletter Ancestors to Elements. Her first book, You Belong: A Call for Connection, is published by HarperOne. Jeff Warren is a meditation instructor and writer, known for his dynamic and accessible style of teaching. He is the co-author of The New York Times best-selling Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics, founder of the nonprofit Consciousness Explorers Club, and co-host of the Mind Bod Adventure Pod. Jeff's Do Nothing Project streams for free every Sunday night on YouTube; his guided meditations reach millions of people through the Ten Percent Happier and Calm apps, as well as through his Substack, Home Base. Jeff's mission is to empower people to care for their mental health, through the realistic, intelligent and sometimes irreverent exploration of meditation and personal growth practices. As someone with both ADHD and bipolar, he is big on destigmatizing mental health issues, and championing a neurodiverse outlook on life and practice.Tascha Schumann is a Buddhist Lama, writer, visual artist, co-host of The Mind Bod Adventure Pod, and Juno-nominated recording artist whose work has been streamed many millions of times around the world.Related Episodes:How to Stay Calm No Matter What's Happening | Sebene Selassie and Jeff WarrenMeditation Party: The “Sh*t Is Fertilizer” Edition | Sebene Selassie & Jeff WarrenMeditation Party with Sebene Selassie and Jeff Warren: Psychedelics, ADHD, Waking Up From Distraction, and Singing Without Being Self-ConsciousMeditation Party: Magic, Mystery, Intuition, Tattoos, and Non-Efforting | Sebene Selassie and Jeff WarrenSign up for Dan's weekly newsletter hereFollow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTokTen Percent Happier online bookstoreSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelOur favorite playlists on: Anxiety, Sleep, Relationships, Most Popular EpisodesFull Shownotes: https://happierapp.com/podcast/tph/omega-826See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Book coach Joelle Hann—aka “The Brooklyn Book Doctor”—joins me to discuss the journey from book idea to finished product. Joelle delves into common obstacles for first-time authors, the transformative nature of writing, and the importance of mindset and resilience.She also shares insights from her Book Proposal Academy and highlights trends happening in the publishing industry, especially post-pandemic. Whether you're stuck at the beginning or seeking to refine your manuscript, this episode provides great guidance on navigating the daunting path to publishing. (This episode was originally released in July 2023.)---------"When people get serious about writing a book and fulfilling this desire to have a book, that voice is really loud. Voice that says, no one wants to hear from you. This is not a good idea. It's already been done before. It's not interesting."---------Key Takeaways* What many writers need is “mindset guidance” and “expectations guidance,” says Joelle Hann.* Developmental editing vs. book coaching: It's not just about refining the manuscript but nurturing the author's confidence and creative process.* Traditional publishing has shifted, especially since the pandemic. Joelle highlights the pressures on big publishers and how it affects new authors trying to break in.* One thing that surprises Joelle—and flummoxes new authors—is that while they bring enthusiasm to the process, they also face a big crash when confronted with their inner demons.* “When you get serious about the thing you want to do, your inner resistance comes and says, hold on a second,” she says. One way around this? Introducing mindfulness and somatic techniques to help authors move past blocks.* As a book coach, Joelle emphasizes the transformative process of writing, which often reveals bigger personal revelations beyond just the book. For those who face down their inner critics, they often discover unexpected resilience—a key to successful authorship.---------"Editors can love a book and think it's phenomenal, still not be able to sign it because they don't have what they call a ‘vision' for the book, which usually means they can't quite see directly how it'll turn into big sales…Now, that said, people are still getting book deals. My clients are still getting book deals. But it can take more work.”---------About Joelle Hann & the Book Proposal AcademyJoelle Hann is a book coach & writer helping authors write their books and proposals, discover their ideas, and harness their creative process. Her clients have been published with Big 5 and independent presses such as TarcherPerigee (Penguin Group), North Star Way (Simon & Schuster), Harper Wave, Workman, Wiley, Sounds True, Shambhala Publications, and more.Joelle's Book Proposal Academy is a live, hands-on coaching program to help writers craft a top-tier book proposal, structure their book, write chapters, and prepare to become an author. Pitch a book that agents and editors are excited to buy!Past clients include authors Jillian Turecki, Sebene Selassie, Amanda Griffith-Atkins, Eileen Rosete, Catherine Simone Gray and more.This six-month program is the fast track to publishing and making book dreams come true. Learn more and apply here. The next cohort starts October 15th.CreditsThis episode was edited and produced by Chérie Newman at Magpie Audio Productions. Theme music is "The Stone Mansion" by BlueDot Productions. Get full access to The Book I Want to Write at bookiwanttowrite.substack.com/subscribe

When you're spiraling with intense emotions, here's a practice to help pick you up off the bathroom floor. About Sebene Selassie:Growing up, Sebene felt like a big weirdo. Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and raised in white neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., she was a tomboy Black girl who loved Monty Python and UB40. She never believed she belonged. Thirty years ago, she began studying Buddhism as an undergraduate at McGill University where she majored in Comparative Religious Studies. Now, Sebene is a teacher, author, and speaker who teaches that meditation can help us remember our inherent sense of belonging, that our individual freedom affects absolutely everyone and everything, and that our collective freedom depends on each and every one of us. Sebene is a three-time cancer survivor of Stage III and IV cancer.To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “Meltdown.”See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How do we make the most of our time here on this earth? This month we've discussed the minutes in our days with Laura Vanderkam, the productivity of our weeks and months with Cal Newport, and the cadence of our years with Natalie Nixon. Today, Sebene Selassie is here to talk with us about time over the course of a full life. Sebene is a writer, teacher, and lifetime student of Buddhism. She's also a woman living with metastatic breast cancer. She sits down with Jessi to share some of what she has learned in the 20 years since her diagnosis, about control, surrender, and connection. Subscribe to Sebene Selassie's newsletter here. Follow Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn and order her debut memoir, now in paperback. Join the Hello Monday community and continue the conversation with us: Subscribe to the Hello Monday newsletter Join us this week and every week for Hello Monday Office Hours, Wednesdays at 3p ET on the LinkedIn News page Join our free LinkedIn group for Hello Monday listeners

Debating the cliche: Does everything happen for a reason? Plus, the Meditation Party crew tackles equanimity, work/life balance, and meditation vs napping.Sebene Selassie describes herself as a “writer, teacher, and immigrant-weirdo.” She teaches meditation on the ten percent happier app and is the author of a great book called You Belong. She's based in Brooklyn. Jeff Warren is also a writer and a meditation teacher. He and Dan co-wrote the book, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics. He also hosts the Consciousness Explorers podcast. He's based in Toronto. If you want to be part of the show, please call in with a question or comment. The number is 508-656-0540. Or you can email us with a voice memo at podcast@tenpercent.com with a voice memo. Tickets for the two more Meditation Party retreats this year at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York are available now. The last one was a blast. Come join us for both. One is in May, the other October. Related Episodes:How to Stay Calm No Matter What's Happening | Sebene Selassie and Jeff WarrenMeditation Party: The “Sh*t Is Fertilizer” Edition | Sebene Selassie & Jeff WarrenMeditation Party with Sebene Selassie and Jeff Warren: Psychedelics, ADHD, Waking Up From Distraction, and Singing Without Being Self-ConsciousMeditation Party: Magic, Mystery, Intuition, Tattoos, and Non-Efforting | Sebene Selassie and Jeff WarrenScience-Based Tools for When You're Stressed, Obsessed, or Overthinking | Dr. Jenny TaitzSign up for Dan's weekly newsletter hereFollow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTokTen Percent Happier online bookstoreSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelOur favorite playlists on: Anxiety, Sleep, Relationships, Most Popular EpisodesFull Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/med-party-howtohandleAdditional Resources:Download the Ten Percent Happier app today: https://10percenthappier.app.link/installSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

New episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for free, with 1-week early access for Wondery+ subscribers.---Get comfortable with uncertainty and cultivate trust in life, even in the most turbulent times.About Sebene Selassie:Growing up, Sebene felt like a big weirdo. Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and raised in white neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., she was a tomboy Black girl who loved Monty Python and UB40. She never believed she belonged. Thirty years ago, she began studying Buddhism as an undergraduate at McGill University where she majored in Comparative Religious Studies. Now, Sebene is a teacher, author, and speaker who teaches that meditation can help us remember our inherent sense of belonging, that our individual freedom affects absolutely everyone and everything, and that our collective freedom depends on each and every one of us. Sebene is a three-time cancer survivor of Stage III and IV cancer.To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “Trust Yourself and Breathe.”See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode, Sebene Selassie shares insights on how to find connection and where you belong through spirituality. She discusses the concept of belonging as a sense of ease and connection on both social and spiritual levels. Sebene's personal journey of feeling like an outsider and her search for wholeness and connection make her perspectives relatable and insightful. Her personal experiences and teachings offer a profound perspective on integrating interconnectedness into daily life and navigating the challenges of modern society. In this episode, you will be able to: Embrace ethical teachings for a fulfilling modern life Overcome unconscious bias through mindfulness for greater understanding Cultivate belonging and connection through spirituality for a richer life Integrate body awareness to deepen meditation practices Harness the power of gratitude for personal growth and happiness To learn more, click here!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Thomas is joined by writer, speaker, and meditation teacher Sebene Selassie. She provides guidance and wisdom for meditation instructors and beginners alike. She and Thomas discuss ways to create a consistent, coherent, and long-term practice, even when meditation feels difficult or overwhelming due to trauma. Sebene explains key elements, such as mindfulness and compassion, that can help us build a strong foundation and observe what arises during meditation with kindness and understanding. She and Thomas also explore how meditation can benefit activism and participation in society, and the importance of practicing in relation and community, especially for those of us dealing with trauma. Sebene opens up about her own healing journey, and how her meditation practice has helped her accept difficult realities and learn to be present with pain. She shares how her practice has illuminated our interconnectedness, and how we can all use our basic senses to experience this connection and shape our experience of reality.   ✨ Thomas' Art of Attunement course is 50% off - for a limited time.   

Dan Harris takes you inside the way he practices on a daily basis, live from the Omega Institute.Dan did this live, in front of a large audience at a recent Meditation Party retreat at the Omega Institute. You'll hear Dan talk for a little while about why he practices this way. Then he'll do a lengthy, guided meditation. After that, you'll hear him debrief with Sebene Selassie and Jeff Warren, two great meditation teachers, with whom he co-led the aforementioned meditation party retreat.Tickets for the two more Meditation Party retreats this year at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York are available now. The last one was a blast. Come join us for both. One is in May, the other October. For tickets to Dan Harris: Celebrating 10 Years of 10% Happier at Symphony Space: click hereSign up for Dan's weekly newsletter hereFollow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTokTen Percent Happier online bookstoreSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelOur favorite playlists on: Anxiety, Sleep, Relationships, Most Popular EpisodesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A master class in equanimity. It's the latest installment of our Meditation Party series. Live from Omega.Sebene Selassie describes herself as a “writer, teacher, and immigrant-weirdo.” She teaches meditation on the Ten Percent Happier app and is the author of a great book called You Belong. She's based in Brooklyn. Jeff Warren is also a writer and a meditation teacher. He and Dan co-wrote the book, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics. He also hosts the Consciousness Explorers podcast. He's based in Toronto. Tickets for the two more Meditation Party retreats this year at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York are available now. The last one was a blast. Come join us for both. One is in May, the other October. For tickets to Dan Harris: Celebrating 10 Years of 10% Happier at Symphony Space: click hereRelated Episodes:Meditation Party: The “Sh*t Is Fertilizer” Edition | Sebene Selassie & Jeff WarrenMeditation Party with Sebene Selassie and Jeff Warren: Psychedelics, ADHD, Waking Up From Distraction, and Singing Without Being Self-ConsciousMeditation Party: Magic, Mystery, Intuition, Tattoos, and Non-Efforting | Sebene Selassie and Jeff WarrenNirvana | Joseph Goldstein A More Relaxed Way to Meditate | Alexis Santos Sign up for Dan's weekly newsletter hereFollow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTokTen Percent Happier online bookstoreSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelOur favorite playlists on: Anxiety, Sleep, Relationships, Most Popular EpisodesFull Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/medparty-omegaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Tara sits down with Sebene Selassie, an Ethiopian-born immigrant who has devoted decades of work to teaching and writing on the study of Buddhism, indigenous and mystical traditions. The two explore the mystery of human connectivity and realizing your true knowing, as well as finding your place in the world and embracing it.Follow Sebene Selassie on Social Media:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sebeneselassie/-----Work with Sebene Selassie: https://www.sebeneselassie.com/-----Follow Dr. Tara on Social Media:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drtaraswartTwitter: https://twitter.com/TaraSwartLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taraswartTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drtaraswart

Casual talk about our experience at our first Meditation Party,  hosted by Dan Harris, Jeff Warren, and Sebene Selassie. Tisha and Kim recap the finer points of meditation they learned while on retreat at Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York, and share insight into how the different techniques taught by their favorite meditation teachers resonated in a new way. For more information about our A Lighter Life group retreats, visit our website.Please leave a review of the podcast where you can!  Learn more about us at www.SlightlyUnmeditated.com or reach out to us on social media:InstagramFacebookTwitterYouTube  Visit our sponsor Bubblesandbooks.com for a monthly dose of self-care delivered right to your door.Shop online with our friends at Tree of Life Shoppe for sage, oracle cards, and all your favorite metaphysical items.Check us and some other great spirituality podcasts on FeedSpot's 100 Best Spiritual Podcasts You Must Follow  list. Support the show

Casual talk about our experience at our first Meditation Party,  hosted by Dan Harris, Jeff Warren, and Sebene Selassie. Tisha and Kim recap the finer points of meditation they learned while on retreat at Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York, and share insight into how the different techniques taught by their favorite meditation teachers resonated in a new way. For more information about our A Lighter Life group retreats, visit our website.Please leave a review of the podcast where you can!  Learn more about us at www.SlightlyUnmeditated.com or reach out to us on social media:InstagramFacebookTwitterYouTube  Visit our sponsor Bubblesandbooks.com for a monthly dose of self-care delivered right to your door.Shop online with our friends at Tree of Life Shoppe for sage, oracle cards, and all your favorite metaphysical items.Check us and some other great spirituality podcasts on FeedSpot's 100 Best Spiritual Podcasts You Must Follow  list. Support the show

On today's episode, we welcome the wonderful Sebene Selassi: author, meditator, teacher, and multi-faceted being. Sebene shares:Why spirituality is a paradox How to belongHow we deal with death, illness, grief, lossHow to navigate changeIf you are someone dealing with grief, seeking joy, wanting to belong more, this conversation is for you. If you want to figure out how to open up to love even when it feels like the world isn't loving you, tune in. Sign up for How To Feel Your Feelings here. Buy Many Moons 2024 here. Connect with Sebene here. Sign up for her newsletter here. Catch bonus Moonbeaming episodes and support our Patreon here.Sign up for our newsletter!Visit our shop.Follow Sarah on Instagram.Buy The Moon Book.

“ … it's really fascinating actually like the human, at the biological level at the psychological level, we are built to tolerate pain, and we're built to grow stronger from enduring difficulty, we're actually made for it. That's like how it works. Joy matters too - don't get me wrong, you know, but the difficult stuff is always there. So, we might as well get good at utilizing that end of the spectrum as well.” Ralph De La Rosa   Music with kind permission from Krishna Das https://www.krishnadas.com/ Gathering in the light-Om-Narayani. Krishna Das. https://krishnadasmusic.com/collections/music/products/gathering-in-the-light   What is this and why read or listen? What follows is an exploration of my journey of living with chronic pain and accompanying mental health challenges. I now understand, the experience of mental ill health has contributed to the degree and severity with which I have felt this pain.   I started collating my thoughts around the idea of exploring chronic physical pain, and how meditation might help as an intervention to assist people living with these conditions, to experience less suffering. As we will discuss in a bit, pain, whether is physical, emotional, or social, is experienced in similar parts of the brain. So is you know someone who experiences any of these challenges, there may be something in here that might help.   So primarily, we will look at how using a meditative practice might help to reduce suffering, reclaim access to moments of joy and openness and foster the ability to be able to pursue a life worth living, in the presence of pain. Someone once sent me a post on social media with a picture and a quote saying “Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning to dance in the rain.” I was near vomiting with a migraine at the time, so there was no dancing to be done and the message was not received with the love it was sent with.   I think it's important to mention that there is no part of my life that living with chronic pain has not affected. I remember sitting in a psychologist's office on the North Side of Brisbane, and I was quiet for quite a while, trying to curate the thoughts so that I could adequately relay how desperate I felt, but not so much so that I have a short involuntary time in hospital. The words that came out of my mouth spoke to the total sense of loss that I felt as a result of living with chronic pain and the ‘things' that I was not able to do or participate in as a result – “Am I even lovable?” I choked out, in tears. I am not sure what my psychologist answered.   In mental health circles they often talk about the biopsychosocial contributors to understanding mental ill health, and that a clear understanding of these can be the bedrock to solid recovery. It's fair to say and not at all dramatic to say that living with chronic pain for the last 14 years has nearly cost me my life, my marriage, and my grip on sanity. So, the fact that I am writing this, and that this episode is being produced is testament to the fact that recovery is definitely possible.   Recovery as I've come to understand it is a concept which is defined by each person as to how they might like to live despite the challenges they face, be they mental health, chronic physical health or other challenge.   Having a living experience of chronic and persistent pain, has also come with many gifts. This is one of the reasons for this episode - I would like to be able to pass these gifts forward so that hopefully, wherever you are on your journey, whether it's living with chronic pain, mental health or other challenge, that you may find a point of resonance here and maybe a tool that you can add to your toolkit. The second reason is that this forms part of an assessment for an advanced diploma in meditation. Having skin in the game as it were, I feel like I may have a bit of an advantage, by way of lived experience. However this works meets you, may you be well, play be happy may you be safe and may you live at ease of heart with whatever comes to you in life.   “What counts in battle is what you do when the pain sets in.” John Short   The quote above comes from a book that I read about 14 years ago from Dean Karnases called Ultra Marathon Man. In the book Dean talks about nearing the end of one of the ultra marathons, that he ran, with several injuries and nothing left in the tank. Dean's dad offers some advice and empathy, but as he's about to walk away he says “what counts in battle is what you do when the pain sets in”. This has become somewhat of a guidepost for me,  as I explored the terrain chronic physical and emotional pain.   Towards the end, I will include a selection of resources and links. In hosting the Don't Quit on Me podcast, I have spoken with a variety of subject matter experts, in an effort to understand ways to navigate intense stress and pain, in the most intelligently, i.e with the least amount of suffering possible.   A key point from the show comes to mind, talked about by Dr Dan Harvey and Insight Meditation teacher Sebene Selassie, about the experience of emotional, social pain and physical pain being processed in similar parts of the brain. In my very limited understanding, this means that tools that help to reduce suffering for physical pain, may also be useful for the experience of social and emotional pain.   Skin in the Game   “It is indeed a radical act of love just to sit down and be quiet for a time by yourself”. Jon Kabat-Zinn   It's just after 4am and the birds are starting to sing. First one … then another… during the dawn chorus their songs seem louder, livelier and more urgent than during the day. Maybe they seize this space to sing, before the noise of the day can interrupt their beautiful, melodic songs that call each day in to being.   I am awake at this time most mornings. This morning a sequence of experiences; a conjoined blur - pain from a decent tension headache that has been hanging around for days, coupled with pain from fibromyalgia, panic and it's cousin a dense cognitive fog – the residue of a nightmare – I still sense, something dark, very close, too close to see, temporarily I can't move.   As consciousness returns, and with-it, limited movement, I go through the morning ritual, an attempt to ease the pain and fog, and see how much I am able to function and extract from the day. Off to the loo, two bottles of water and then into a portable infrared sauna, to warm up the heaviness living in the muscles and connective tissue, and with any luck subdue the constant companion. Infrared Sauna is also starting to be looked at as a tool for living with chronic pain conditions. (Tsagkaris et al., 2022)   I have a living experience with chronic migraines, tension headaches and fibromyalgia, something that has been around for roughly the last 14 years. Each day is a balancing act between the pain, the anxiety caused by the pain, my energy levels, and as I am beginning to understand and will touch on later, any sense of imminent danger that I may perceive. Each day, an attempt to balance accomplishment without overtaxing a system in survival mode, so much that I pay for it for the coming days.   There are a couple of reasons why the pain may have become such a permanent fixture in my life, and I'll explore them briefly, but one thing I have noticed, is that focusing on why is nowhere near as helpful as what now. If I look back for a point of origin with the physical pain several things happened around the time it started; my mom's passed away, I also trained for a marathon, before which I came down with a respiratory virus. Post race I had blood work done which showed Ross River virus and another virus had been present in my system but were not currently active. I am also a survivor childhood trauma which in and of itself heightens someone's baseline perception of threat and as we'll explore can accentuate and amplify the body's attempt to report pain signals. There is also a strong correlation between trauma survivors and chronic pain sufferers (Asmundson, PTSD and the experience of pain: Research and clinical implications of shared vulnerability and mutual maintenance models).   In 1994 Dr Paul brand wrote the book Pain the Gift That Nobody Wants, describing his work with leprosy patients in India, and the essential role that pain has in keeping us safe. Without , he argues, we would be exposed to an unacceptable level of danger, leaving us devoid of mechanisms to warn us of impending threat.   If I think about my own experience, this is certainly a truism - pain by its very nature, and the way we experience it, is deeply unpleasant, very real, and is designed to get our attention and cause us to recoil. It is a message for us to act, to protect ourselves from the perceived threat. What happens through, when these signals fall out of calibration, when they report pain too loudly or for too long - when there is no longer a present threat that requires us to act, or the message we are receiving is disproportionate to the threat?   This is something I have sat with and worked through for many years, leading to this exploration of how the practice of meditation may be helpful to those, like me, who live with chronic pain.   As I said earlier, through hosting the Don't Quit on Me podcast I have had the opportunity to ask many people for their insights about the nature of pain, and why creating mental space around the experience of pain can reduce suffering. I have also looked at the links between how we experience physical pain and emotional pain, and how they are felt in similar parts of the brain.   Can meditation really help with pain? An article published in May 2023 on Healthline.com, looked at exactly this, Meditation for Chronic Pain Management and, spoiler alert, they found, amongst other things, the following three key points:   “A 2018 study of meditation, mindfulness, and the brain suggested that in the long term, meditation can change the structure of your brain. The resulting change in cortical thickness in some brain areas makes you less pain-sensitive. The neural mechanisms meditation uses to modify pain are different from those used by other techniques. For example, a 2012 studyTrusted Source determined that meditation promoted cognitive disengagement and an increased sensory processing of the actual pain. Meditation also induces the body's own opioid system. A very small, randomized, double-blind study from 2016 used the opioid blocker naloxone or a placebo and studied pain reduction with meditation. The group with the placebo experienced significantly less pain than the group that had the opioid blocker. Research is ongoing to look at the exact physiological mechanisms involved with meditation.” (Hecht, 2020)   That Sounds Painful   What is Pain?   Dr Dan Harvey is a Lecturer in Musculoskeletal Physiotherapy and a pain scientist at the University of South Australia.  Along with Dr Lorimer Moseley, Dan is an author of the book 'Pain and The Nature of Perception: A New Way to Look at Pain' which uses visual illusions to describe features of perception that are relevant to understanding and treating pain. Dan holds a Masters of Musculoskeletal and Sports Physiotherapy, a chronic pain focussed PhD, and serves on the education committees for the Australian Pain Society and Pain Revolution. Below is and excerpt from my interview with Dan (Coriat, Dr Daniel Harvey - The path through pain 2022): I asked Dan about his preferred definition for pain. Dan said “ the official definition from the international association for the study of pain, “Pain is an unpleasant, sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage.”” He went on to say: “... I prefer a simpler definition, which is just something that's unpleasant that has a location to it. The location part is what distinguishes pain from other unpleasant experiences. I guess anxiety for example is very unpleasant, but you can't point to it. You know, you could simplify my definition even further … It's (pain) something unpleasant you can point to. Because it's certainly unpleasant, but it's unique from other unpleasant experiences, in that it actually has a location, usually in the body, but obviously the exception to that is something like phantom limb pain. You can still point to the pain, but you are effectively pointing in mid air. Because you're experiencing it in a location of the body which no longer exists.”   The Mental and Psychological Experience of Pain   I asked Dan about the similarities between psychological and physical pain. “There's a lot of overlap. … one of the early discoveries when we started using imaging techniques to see what was happening in the brain of people in pain, was that we discovered that there is no one pain area, but rather it's many different areas that seem to be active. And there's something about that combination of brain areas that gives rise to the experience. Many of those areas that are active overlap with areas associated with anxiety and fear and other unpleasant experiences. And I guess that's one reason why we might see a higher prevalence of persistent pain problems in people who tend to be higher in trait, anxiety and depression, and maybe even have clinical levels of anxiety and depression. We think there's some sense in which brain areas that are active, and resulting in anxiety, facilitate the networks associated with pain and sort of have this facilitating effect.   On this point, when I spoke with much loved Insight Meditation teacher Sebene Selassie, I asked her the following question (Coriat, Dr Daniel Harvey - The path through pain 2022):   Nick: “I've heard you say in an interview. You were talking about the pain you experienced during cancer, and how it started to become a predictive response, you would feel some pain and you would assume that that would continue, and it would be without break. However, when you deepened your practice, you discovered that you could find spaces between the pain. Could you talk about this. And also, I think if there's a link to how many of us are experiencing pain, and when we do feel pain, obviously there's an instinctual response to assume it's going to be ongoing and be to kind of self-medicate...”   Sebene: “I could talk about physical pain, and just to name that this is true for social pain as well, because actually, our brains process them in the same way. So physical pain and social pain are processed in the same parts of the brain. So, you know, our perceptions of them are really similar and so predicated on what's happened in the past. You know, we build kind of our perceptual reality based on what we've seen before. So, you know, I have a mic in front of me, if I've never seen a mic before, you know, but then I learned what it is every time I see something shaped like this, I'm going to assume it's a mic, and I don't have to kind of go through the relearning process to figure it out. Our brain kind of builds up that knowing something, and that's useful for a lot of things, but it's not very useful in kind of a moment-to-moment sensory experience of a sensation or emotion, or, other people's emotions or speech or relationship with us. And so again, whether it's physical pain or social pain, like our interactions with others, we really want to develop, through this capacity of mindfulness, of embodied awareness of what's happening, the capacity to sense what's happening moment to moment. Instead of, you know, I see Nick and the last time Nick and I met, you know, we had a little bit of a misunderstanding, and now I'm going to interpret every different look of his as some kind of critique of me. Rather than meeting you fresh and deciding, you know, Nick has bad days too, and I'm gonna see what today brings rather than the assumption of, you know, what my experience has been in the past.  And that's what I experienced with physical pain that I went through some periods of really, really painful surgeries or treatments or emergency conditions that emerged in my body and even lying in the hospital or at home experiencing this pain, I could kind of predictably assume, oh, there's that sensation in my belly. I know what that's going to lead to. And so, start to kind of almost anticipate and tense and create more tension and pain and not really have a moment to moment kind of intimate experience of what was happening. And when I could slow down, actually connect to this embodied awareness, feel the sensation in my belly, I could see that, Oh yeah, it's this throbbing strong pain, but now it's actually dissipated.  When I breathe really deeply, actually it creates some space there and now my foot's going numb. I actually don't even really feel this pain in my belly right now. So, rather than having kind of this fixated fear, tense attention to things there internally our own physical or emotional experience, or externally what's going on with someone, we kind of create more spaciousness, create kind of more awareness, bring some relaxation and ease to what's happening, and that can often change everything for us.”   The Mechanisms of Pain   Back to the chat with Dan, I asked him if there was a simple way to understand the mechanisms that drive or report the experience of pain. “I'm not sure if there's a simple way, but a way we like to break it down in the physio program is thinking about inputs, processing and outputs. So, what this does is just let you think about the different components that might be happening in the background that lead to an experience of pain. The input is (comprises) the information that arrives at the brain, so some of that information comes through nerves in the body. Some of it also comes through our eyes and ears, because our brain is always gathering data, about what's happening in our bodies and what's happening in the world. So, we can refer to those things as inputs. Of course, information from the body is really important, particularly in acute pain. But the other inputs are also really important. I could give an example there. A paper cut might hurt extraordinarily, but someone could actually fracture a bone in their foot, in a football game and not notice it. So, there's something about the totality of data, not just the information itself from the body, but what it's combined with at a given time. So that's the inputs. The processing is about what's happening in the brain. So, how is the brain interpreting that data, and how's it making sense of it. In order to make sense of it, the brain considers not just the inputs, but also, what those inputs mean with respect to information that's already stored in the brain, from past experience, from knowledge, from what the doctor told you, from what you read on a scan, all of these things are also influential, when the brain is interpreting what's happening in the body. So, all of those things can potentially have an influence as well. So that's inputs and processing. Then we can think about outputs. And these days we actually think about pain as an output because anatomical textbooks used to describe pain as an input from the body in the quote unquote pain nerves, which we now call nociceptors or danger detectors. But the pain isn't pain until we experience it. And so, because of that fact, we tend to think of it as an output. My physio students always say an output to where though? And I think that the best way to phrase that is it's an output from our brains into our conscious awareness -  and that's much more philosophical than it is scientific, but I think we know so little about the brain that sometimes philosophy is the best way to explain and articulate these sort of things. You know, pain exists amongst a range of outputs. So often when you have pain, you also have some level of fear about it. You might have muscle tension associated with it, along with stress responses, go hormonal responses like cortisol, and then that can interact with the immune system. And so what's happening there can then feed back into the system in a sort of circular way.”       Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.   I asked Dan about a quote that iI heard him make in a lecture “Reality leaves a lot to the imagination. ” I think some background to this is that the brain is bombarded with so much sensory information at a given time, that it needs some sort of method to make sense of all that data, because there remember what comes to the brain from our sensors is merely electrical impulses. It's  (the brain's) task is to filter out the irrelevant ones and make sense of the relevant ones. What seems to seems to be happening is the brain uses its past experience and knowledge that it already has stored to determine what's the irrelevant information that it can filter out, and how it might make sense of the relevant information and give us feelings and perceptions that help us make sense of the world and our bodies and help to guide our actions in a way that you know, helps us to flourish and promotes our survival and all that. So again, it's quite, it's quite philosophical … I think there's still a lot to be drawn out of that way of thinking that can help people with pain. I think we are really just at the start of that. I guess it's only fairly recently that we've moved from continuing to look for some ‘Magic bullet' or some specific problem in the body. We've started to open our minds to looking more broadly about what's happening in the immune system and in the brain and our perceptual system more broadly.”   A New Reality? Based on what Dan was saying it's interesting to also note that a study in 2018 at Harvard showed that short daily doses of meditation can literally grow the grey matter in the areas of the brain associated with self-awareness and self-compassion, and can reduce the grey matter in the parts of the brain associated with stress. This to me and, obviously to the researchers is incredibly promising for those who are walking a path accompanied by pain of any kind - that a no/low cost intervention, that is simple to instigate, with little known side effects, can have this profound an effect. (Powell, Harvard researchers study how mindfulness may change the brain in depressed patients 2018) What is Meditation?   Meditation sort of hit me in the face in the late ‘90s. I was working at a bank at the time, as a technical writer, and was experiencing what I have now come to understand as early signs of a severe depression episode. I wondered up the Queen Street mall in Brisbane, and there was a Virgin Music Store off to left. In there they had listening stations with a selection of some of the newest CDs to have a listen to. This lunch break I felt like I was about to break. I made my way in to the classical room which was sectioned off from the rest of the store by a glass wall. On one stand was a CD by a fella called Robert Gass, singing, with his choir, Om. The primordial syllable over and over for about 30 minutes. As I pushed passed the initial boredom, I was transported to a world where things were calm, still and all that was present was this moment. What is meditation? Well, it depends on who you ask. After having asked many people for definitions of what meditation and mindfulness are one definition of Mindfulness shared by Dr Christine Runyan I loved for it's simplicity and humanness. Christine is a clinical health psychologist, Professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and the Co-Founder of Tend Health. Christine is also a mindfulness teacher at the University of Massachusetts Centre for Mindfulness. I asked Christine during the show how she defines Mindfulness, and what it meant to her: (Coriat, Dr Christine Runyan - Mental Health and covid - On Forgiveness and Healing 2021) Christine: “So, I define mindfulness both as present moment awareness, but I add the quality of compassion, if you will. You know compassion is often a term we think of around the presence of suffering.  All our present moment experiences don't include suffering, so in moments where there are, I would say present moment with awareness with compassion, and maybe if there's not suffering, present moment awareness with kindness. I think that standard Jon Kabat-Zinn definition is without judgment. I find that whether you're parenting a child or sort of teaching an animal something, offering something to do rather than not to do can be a little more helpful right? So instead of don't do this, rather offer an instruction of something to do, and I've really come to that. And in my work, MBCT is a treatment for people who have recurrent depression and there is amount of judgment and self-judgment that comes alongside recurrent depression and experiencing that phenomenon. And so it can be a hard stop, cause it's sort of like they don't have a frame for how to be in a way that doesn't include self-judgment, so instead kind of an invitation to sort of have that present moment awareness with kindness can be an invitation of something to add rather than something not to do, because as soon as you sort of have that without judgment and people notice that they judge, you know then you start down the rabbit hole of judgment. So that's how I define it.”   Another description about what meditation is, comes from one of my favourite Buddhist teachers Pema Chodron. “Meditation is a process of lightning up, of trusting the basic goodness of what we have and who we are, and of realising that any wisdom that exists, exists in what we already have. We can lead our life so as to become more awake to who we are and what we're doing rather than trying to improve or change or get rid of who we are or what we're doing. The key is to wake up, to become more alert, more inquisitive and curious about ourselves.” There are a couple of points that I particularly like about what Pema said: 1)     We are already wise, despite what our inner monologue may tell us, and the limitations that the experience of being in pain has led us to believe. 2)     Many of us are sort of asleep to what's going on in our lives. This is understandable in the presence of persistent pain. One of the initial ways to deal with the constant onslaught of noxious stimuli is to literally disassociate from what's going on in the body. A critical part of the healing journey Is to become aware of the sensations in our body and learn to meet them with curiosity instead of an inbuilt narrative and catastrophizing. 3)     Curiosity and not self-condemnation is one of the keys to loosening the shackles of self-imposed suffering.   And lastly, I feel that no discussion on a definition of meditation would be complete without a word from one of the founders of insight meditation in the West. Sharon Salzberg is a meditation pioneer, world-renowned teacher, and New York Times bestselling author. She is one of the first to bring mindfulness and lovingkindness meditation to mainstream American culture over 45 years ago, inspiring generations of meditation teachers and wellness influencers. I spoke with Sharon in November of last year and asked her what is the invitation that meditation offers.   “Well, right from the beginning, I am going to introduce the idea of meditation as a skills training.  And the first night of the first retreat, (that Sharon attended) which is 10 days long, he said, the Buddha did not teach Buddhism. The Buddha taught way of life. And that's exactly what I was looking for. You know, he said, this is open to anybody. Maybe you belong to a different faith tradition. Maybe you don't really, feel drawn to faith traditions. Doesn't matter, it's a practice and, and it's like a muscle group. You exercise, you know, So the first skill is really concentration or stabilizing attention somewhat. Most of us would say we're kind of all over the place. You sit down to think something through, and you're gone, you're just gone. And our minds jump to the past, or the future and we're anxious and we're just all over the place. And what we do in concentration training, as we gather our attention, we bring it together and we rest, we settle. So, there's a very different sense of centeredness and settledness and just kind of stability in awareness. And then there's mindfulness training, which is kind of like the word of the hour, which can mean many different things. It does mean many things. And I like to think of mindfulness as a quality of awareness where our attention to what's happening in the present moment, our perception of what's happening in the present moment is not so distorted by bias, like old fears - I should never let myself feel this thing. Or many times something happens, especially let's say, it's discomfort in the body, or we feel a shattered expectation, or we feel disappointment, or heartache. We start projecting it into the future. Like, what's it gonna feel like tomorrow? It'll be even worse. What's gonna feel like next week? What's gonna feel like next month? And before we knew it, we've got like a whole lifetime of anticipated struggle as well as what's actually going on right now - that makes it of course, much harder. So, there are a lot of ways in which we have filters or we have distortions of our perception and what we learn to do is relinquish the hold of those things so we're left with what's actually happening and that's why mindfulness is set to be the vehicle for inside understanding. You know, instead of being all caught up in like fighting our experience or being overwhelmed by our experience, we can take a look at our experience and have a very different view of it and mixed up in there always both as a kind of a constituent element and later as a fruition or a benefit is loving kindness or kindness. I don't think you can actually do these practices well without, in a sneaky way, developing some loving kindness, even if it's never talked about. It's like, the fundamental exercise in many systems. Even if they grow and they change and it becomes a much more elaborate kind of practice. The foundational note, which we keep coming back to again and again, is usually choosing an object of awareness, like I'd say the feeling of the breath, the sensation of the in and out breath, resting our attention on that object, and then when our attention wanders, which it will, learning how to gently let go and come back. That sounds easy. Isn't that easy? You know? Because the great temptation as soon as we realize, oh, I'm not with the breath, is to judge ourselves and be down on ourselves, and berate ourselves and feel like a failure. You know, to actually let go and start over means there's a good degree of self-compassion that's developing also, even if we never name it that, even if we didn't even realize that it's happening, and so, to do any of these things well means that's cooking also. So, it will be there, it has to be there. And then of course it is like a fruition because the more we see, yeah, this is not just me, you know, it's like that sense of isolation was another addon. There was something else I plopped on top of what was going on. I don't need to do that. The more we see this is the human condition we're all trying, we're all kind of a mess, you know? Uh, and we wish ourselves well. We wish others well. That starts to get more and more natural.”   My Journey with Meditation    I first started a meditation practice through attending a yoga class. I was having a chat with the teacher at the end of the class, and I asked her for some tips on navigating the pain and suffering that I was going through, without overdoing it. She asked if I had experienced Kirtan before. I hadn't but heard in her explanation the word meditation, and this was something I wanted to explore more, as my sister had sent me a copy of the Jon Kabbat Zin book Full Catastrophy Living a few years earlier and the promise of stillness or calm inside stressful moments was very appealing. At the time I had an orange VW bus which I drove up to a yoga school just on the outskirts of Eumundi and enjoyed one of the strangest and yet most profound evenings that I've ever had. I was both fearful and intrigued, and at one point was wondering whether it should be experienced closed or eyes open, so as not to miss what was going on. As I closed my eyes, I could see a white light connecting all of our foreheads together. Powerful and strange. Given that this was my first ‘go' at it, I made my excuses and jumped in the van to go home, a little bit freaked out but pleasantly so. In retrospect I wonder what might have happened if I'd stayed. However I listened to a CD that I had bought from the studio at the beginning of the chant, all the way home and was instantly hooked. I bought a couple of yoga magazines and found out that Krishna Das was coming to Australia, immediately booked in for a workshop and Kirtan on two separate days at Palmwoods on the sunshine coast in QLD. Again I started the weekend in a decent amount of pain and experiencing very high levels of anxiety and severe depression, however by the end of the weekend I was beaming and felt such a strong bond to the people who I had been chanting with. It was quite unfathomable. I have a beautiful picture of myself with Krishna Das at the end the weekend. For many years mantra repetition became my default meditation. Something that I could pull out of my back pocket whether I was at work at home or out and about, a non pharmaceutical intervention that helped to center me and bring me out of the tyrany of cascading thoughts and more in to this moment – the only moment in which we have any say about what goes on. Many years later I interviewed KD for a book and he mentioned a quote by the Indian sage Ramana Maharishi; He said ‘“The only freedom we have is in the moment. How we meet each moment, how we meet each experience.” All the practices we do, bring us more into the moment, give us more of a sense of confidence in ourselves, and in just being. And from that deeper place, we can meet all the difficult things that come to us in life and all of the wonderful things that come to us in life, without being totally washed away by them or absorbed in them or lost in them. We can enjoy the beautiful things and we can allow the unhappy things to exist and pass away again.'   Now it's probably imprtant to clarify, mostly for my own understanding as I mix the two up, the difference between Kirtan and bhakti. Kirtan and bhakti are both related to the devotional singing of mantras, sacred names or praises of the divine. However, they are not exactly the same.   Kirtan is a form of call-and-response chanting that involves a leader and a group of participants. The leader sings a line of a mantra, and the group repeats it back. Kirtan is usually accompanied by musical instruments such as harmonium, tabla, mridanga, etc. Kirtan is a way of expressing love and devotion to the divine through sound and music. Kirtan can also help to cut through the illusion of separation and connect to the heart and the present moment.   Bhakti is a Sanskrit word that means “love, devotion, faith, loyalty, attachment”. Bhakti is one of the paths of yoga that focuses on cultivating a personal relationship with the divine through various practices such as kirtan, bhajan, japa, puja, etc. Bhakti is also a philosophical and theological concept that describes the nature of devotion and surrender to the supreme reality.   One of the differences between kirtan and bhakti is that kirtan is a specific practice or technique of bhakti, while bhakti is a broader term that encompasses various forms of devotion. Another difference is that kirtan is usually performed in a group setting, while bhakti can be practiced individually or collectively. A third difference is that kirtan follows a structured format of call-and-response, while bhakti can be more spontaneous and creative in expressing one's feelings and emotions.   KD also says of chant more generally ““It's like an older, deeper, bigger being. It's a space, a presence, a feeling. These names are the names of that place inside of us that is love, pure being, pure awareness, pure joy.” Kirtan—and other forms of mantra practice, such as seated meditation—help us uncover that place inside of us, he says: “our true nature.” (Kripalu Centre for Yoga and Health, 2021)     Over the follwing years I have adopted a fluid approach to meditation, utilising practices from Vedic, Buddhist and some secular Mindfulness traditions, and varying types of breathwork grounding and awareness of sound meditations. The important point to mention here is, I feel that, as a person living with pain, the last thing you probably need in your life is another stick to beat yourself with about what you should be doing. I think if the promise of a clamer mind, less catastrophising and less pain resonates with you, look for and try something that makes sense, or feels good you. Or more eloquently from the Buddha's teachings: “Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumoured by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”     Self Compassion   Before we have a go at a practice to draw this to a close, it's essential to add a point that I touched on very briefly before, and that's the point of self-compassion. The most succinct way I've heard described, was by Liz Stanley: “I would just say it's really important (for listeners) to recognize that one of the ways we actually make things worse for ourselves, is when we let our thinking brains judgments about what might be going on in our mind and body, kind of get stuck because those judgements actually make things worse. So, to give an example, if somebody is experiencing chronic pain, and they're feeling self-judgment, or shame, or impatience, or anger, about the fact that they are feeling chronic pain, that kind of judgment and any narrative that the thinking brain might be kicking up around it ‘it shouldn't be this way', you know it was doing better, I should have done my exercises, any sort of stories that might be there, when the thinking brain does that, the survival brain perceives those thinking brain judgements as threatening. And so, it turns on even more stress arousal. So, if someone's experiencing discomfort and then they're judging it, they're actually making that stress arousal. Likewise, we often have habits to compare what's going on in us with someone else. Like we might experience a wave of anxiety about an upcoming test or something. And then the thinking brain's like, well, I shouldn't be anxious about that, that's not really a big deal. You know, this other person, well, they're dealing with this and this and this and this in comparison, what I'm dealing with is really not a problem. You can hear the judgment in that. And when the thinking brain starts, those kinds of comparing thoughts that devalue what's going on in our body, again, the survival brain finds that challenging, and it will turn on more stress arousal. So as much as possible, if someone is experiencing a wave of emotion or a wave of stress or defaulting to engage in a coping mechanism that they might not want to be engaging in, a habit they wish they could break - as much as possible just meet that experience with some kindness, and see if you can set that judging aside, because the judging is only making it worse. It's only making the, the survival brain that much more amped up.” (Coriat, Dr Christine Runyan - Mental Health and covid - on forgiveness and healing 2021)   That's the last thing I really wanted to say, Nick, because I know it's something I really struggled with”   Practice     References   Music throughout the podcast Das, K. (2007). Gathering in the light-Om-Narayani. Krishna Das. https://krishnadasmusic.com/collections/music/products/gathering-in-the-light   Other References Haggai et al, S. (2016, July). Mindfulness meditation modulates pain through endogenous opioids. The American Journal of Medicine. https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(16)30302-3/fulltext Zeidan et al., F. (2023, February). Disentangling self from pain: mindfulness meditation–induced pain relief is driven by thalamic–default mode network decoupling. Journal for the International Association for Pain. https://journals.lww.com/pain/Fulltext/2023/02000/Disentangling_self_from_pain__mindfulness.8.aspx Powell, A. (2018, August 27). Harvard researchers study how mindfulness may change the brain in depressed patients. Harvard Gazette. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/04/harvard-researchers-study-how-mindfulness-may-change-the-brain-in-depressed-patients/   Tsagkaris, C., Papazoglou, A. S., Eleftheriades, A., Tsakopoulos, S., Alexiou, A., Găman, M.-A., & Moysidis, D. V. (2022, March 14). Infrared radiation in the management of musculoskeletal conditions and chronic pain: A systematic review. European journal of investigation in health, psychology and education. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8946909/   Hecht, M. (2020, September 4). Meditation for pain relief: What to know & how to try it. Healthline. https://www.healthline.com/health/meditation-for-chronic-pain   Asmundson, G. J. (2022, December 2). PTSD and the experience of pain: Research and clinical implications of shared vulnerability and mutual maintenance models. Canadian journal of psychiatry. Revue canadienne de psychiatrie. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12553128/   Coriat, N. (2022, October 20). Dr Daniel Harvey - The path through pain. Don't Quit on Me. https://www.podpage.com/dont-quit-on-me/dr-daniel-harvey-the-path-through-pain/   Coriat, N. (2021, March 11). Sebene Selassie - belonging in an age of disconnect. Don't Quit on Me. https://www.podpage.com/dont-quit-on-me/s1e3   Coriat, N. (2021, December 31). Dr Christine Runyan - Mental Health and covid - on forgiveness and healing. Don't Quit on Me. https://www.dontquiton.me/dr-christine-runyan-mental-health-and-covid-on-forgiveness-and-healing/   Center for Yoga and Health, K. (2021, July 11). The Beginners' Guide to Kirtan and Mantra. Kripalu. https://kripalu.org/resources/beginners-guide-kirtan-and-mantra

Find freedom from obsessive loops of fear by getting grounded in the body, dropping the stories, and bringing some kindness to the struggle.About Sebene Selassie:Growing up, Sebene felt like a big weirdo. Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and raised in white neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., she was a tomboy Black girl who loved Monty Python and UB40. She never believed she belonged. Thirty years ago, she began studying Buddhism as an undergraduate at McGill University where she majored in Comparative Religious Studies. Now, Sebene is a teacher, author, and speaker who teaches that meditation can help us remember our inherent sense of belonging, that our individual freedom affects absolutely everyone and everything, and that our collective freedom depends on each and every one of us. Sebene is a three-time cancer survivor of Stage III and IV cancer.To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “Loosening the Grip of Panic.”See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the third installment of Meditation Party, an experiment we're running with a chattier format – more of a morning zoo vibe, but way deeper, of course. Dan's co-hosts in this episode are his two close friends: the great meditation teachers Sebene Selassie and Jeff Warren. Sebene Selassie is based in Brooklyn and describes herself as a “writer, teacher, and immigrant-weirdo.” She teaches meditation on the Ten Percent Happier app and is the author of a great book called, You Belong. Jeff Warren is based in Toronto and is also a writer and meditation teacher who co-wrote the book, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics with Dan Harris. Jeff also hosts the Consciousness Explorers podcast.Related Episodes:#489. Can You Really Conquer Hatred Through Love? | Father Gregory Boyle#519. The Art and Science of Keeping Your Sh*t Together | Shinzen Young and James Gross Best of the Archives: Making it RAIN | Tara BrachFor more info on the Meditation Party Retreat: Meditation Party Workshop at Omega InstituteTo watch this interview online, go to: https://www.youtube.com/@TenPercentHappierIf you want to be part of the show, please call in with a question or comment. The number is 508-656-0540. Or you can email us with a voice memo at podcast@tenpercent.com with a voice memo. Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/meditation-party-3See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Discover the profound insights of belonging in our latest episode, where we unravel the enigma of connection with Sebene Selassie, author of You Belong: A Call for Connection. Dive into a conversation filled with self-discovery, love, and a universal sense of belonging:A Personal Journey: From feeling like a "big weirdo" in Washington, D.C. to a celebrated teacher and speaker, Selassie's unique story is an invitation to explore our own sense of belonging.An Inspiring Revelation: Learn how belonging starts within, and why knowing and connecting with ourselves is the first step to embracing the world.Ancient Wisdom & Modern Practices: Unlock the secrets of ancient traditions and contemporary contemplative practices that reconnect us to truths of belonging.Healing from Trauma: Explore the methods to unlock trauma from the body, creating space for grace and growth.This episode isn't just about fitting in; it's about cultivating a deeper sense of connection within ourselves and the world.You can find Sebene at: Website | Instagram | Episode TranscriptIf you LOVED this episode you'll also love the conversations we had with Rev. angel Kyodo williams about what we leave outside the room when we seek to fit in. Check out our offerings & partners: My New Book SparkedMy New Podcast SPARKED. To submit your “moment & question” for consideration to be on the show go to sparketype.com/submit. Visit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The great meditation teacher Sebene Selassie said this about today's guests: “I think their work is going to revolutionize mindfulness.” The guests in question are Jake Eagle, a licensed mental health counselor, and Dr. Michael Amster, a physician with a specialty in pain management who is also a certified yoga and meditation teacher. Together, they're out with a new book called The Power of Awe: Overcome Burnout & Anxiety, Ease Chronic Pain, Find Clarity & Purpose―In Less Than 1 Minute Per Day. In it, they lay out a simple technique for “microdosing mindfulness” that just about anybody can work into their daily lives.Plus: Dan's wife, Bianca, joins Dan as co-interviewer.In this episode we talk about:How Jake and Michael stumbled upon this method (the story involves pancakes)Why Bianca has had trouble booting up a meditation habit (and why Jake says he's “a terrible meditator”)Why people who have trouble sitting daily for extended periods might find that these microdoses are easier to work into their dayHow to do the A.W.E. MethodThe similarities and differences between A.W.E. and traditional mindfulness meditationPractical tips for trying out A.W.E. in everyday life, given how hard it is to form habitsThe early scientific evidence regarding the effectiveness of the A.W.E. MethodAnd, finally, whether Bianca and Dan were convinced to try the method!For tickets to TPH's live event in Boston on September 7:https://thewilbur.com/armory/artist/dan-harris/themightyfix.com/happierFull Shownotes:https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/eagle-amster-630See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The simple yet effective technique of trusting your body will help you fall into a quiet, restful sleep.About Jeff Warren:Jeff is an incredibly gifted meditation teacher. He's trained in multiple traditions, including with renowned teacher Shinzen Young. Jeff is the co-author of NY Times Bestseller "Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics," and the founder of the Consciousness Explorers Club, a meditation adventure group in Toronto. He has a knack for surfacing the exact meditation that will help everyone he meets. "I have a meditation for that" is regularly heard from Jeff, so we've dubbed him the "Meditation MacGyver."To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “How to Fall Asleep.” More information on the upcoming "Meditation Party" retreat at the Omega Institute with Dan Harris, Sebene Selassie, and Jeff Warren is here.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this gentle meditation, Sebene offers support for grief. She guides you through a practice of kindness and compassion for yourself.About Sebene Selassie:Growing up, Sebene felt like a big weirdo. Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and raised in white neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., she was a tomboy Black girl who loved Monty Python and UB40. She never believed she belonged. Thirty years ago, she began studying Buddhism as an undergraduate at McGill University where she majored in Comparative Religious Studies. Now, Sebene is a teacher, author, and speaker who teaches that meditation can help us remember our inherent sense of belonging, that our individual freedom affects absolutely everyone and everything, and that our collective freedom depends on each and every one of us. Sebene is a three-time cancer survivor of Stage III and IV cancer.To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “Working with Grief.” You can hear Sebene, along with teacher Jeff Warren, on the Meditation Party episodes:#553. Meditation Party: The Sh*t Is Fertilizer Edition#601: Meditation Party: Psychedelics, ADHD, Waking Up from Distraction, and Singing Without Being Self-ConsciousMore info on the upcoming Omega Institute Retreat (available in-person and virtually) with Dan, Sebene, and Jeff is here. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to Round II of the Meditation Party. The feedback we got from our first episode was overwhelmingly positive, so we're going for it again. Meditation Party is an experiment we're running with a chattier format – more of a morning zoo vibe, but way deeper, of course. The real agenda here is to show that meditation doesn't have to be a solo death march; it is vastly enhanced by having friends. Dan's co-hosts in this episode are his two close friends: the great meditation teachers Sebene Selassie and Jeff Warren. Sebene Selassie is based in Brooklyn and describes herself as a “writer, teacher, and immigrant-weirdo.” She teaches meditation on the Ten Percent Happier app and is the author of a great book called, You Belong. Jeff Warren is based in Toronto and is also a writer and meditation teacher who co-wrote the book, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics with Dan Harris. Jeff also hosts the Consciousness Explorers podcast.In this episode, we talk to Jeff about what it's like to be a meditation teacher who has ADHD. And even if you don't have ADHD, there's a lot of practical value to this conversation, because we all have unruly minds, and Jeff has found some great ways to work with this condition. We also take listener questions, discussing topics like drugs. Specifically, psychedelics — and whether you're violating Buddhist precepts if you take them. We also talk about how frustrating it can be to repeatedly wake up from distraction in meditation. And finally, we have a segment talking about the stuff we're psyched about right now… in which Sebene sings for us. Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/sebene-selassie-jeff-warren-601See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Working through fear by anchoring in the breath and body gives you the capacity to be fully available to help when help is needed.About Sebene Selassie:Growing up, Sebene felt like a big weirdo. Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and raised in white neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., she was a tomboy Black girl who loved Monty Python and UB40. She never believed she belonged. Thirty years ago, she began studying Buddhism as an undergraduate at McGill University where she majored in Comparative Religious Studies. Now, Sebene is a teacher, author, and speaker who teaches that meditation can help us remember our inherent sense of belonging, that our individual freedom affects absolutely everyone and everything, and that our collective freedom depends on each and every one of us. Sebene is a three-time cancer survivor of Stage III and IV cancer.To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “Caring for Vulnerable People,” or click here: https://10percenthappier.app.link/content?meditation=bc7cb7bc-6883-466f-8626-cad27be2a5e6See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This four-part breathing technique calms the nervous system, relaxes the body, and is an effective antidote to obsessive over-thinking.About Jeff Warren:Jeff is an incredibly gifted meditation teacher. He's trained in multiple traditions, including with renowned teacher Shinzen Young. Jeff is the co-author of NY Times Bestseller "Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics," and the founder of the Consciousness Explorers Club, a meditation adventure group in Toronto. He has a knack for surfacing the exact meditation that will help everyone he meets. "I have a meditation for that" is regularly heard from Jeff, so we've dubbed him the "Meditation MacGyver."To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “Breath Stressbuster,” or click here: https://10percenthappier.app.link/content?meditation=a93acc59-93ca-4002-9977-7ab1217fa1a3For more information about Dan and Jeff's upcoming retreat (with Sebene Selassie) at the Omega Institute: https://www.eomega.org/workshops/meditation-partySee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Learn how to grow your resilience by connecting to a positive attitude, resolve, and allowing yourself to say yes to difficult emotions.About Sebene Selassie:Sebene Selassie was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and began studying Buddhism thirty years ago as an undergrad who majored in Comparative Religious Studies. Now, she is a meditation teacher, speaker, and author of the book “You Belong: A Call for Connection.” To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “Resilience.” or click here: https://10percenthappier.app.link/content?meditation=460c0495-7971-4c98-8ed8-bb03a6c23ed0.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today's episode is the first in an experimental new series called Meditation Party. Dan takes listener calls with fellow meditators Sebene Selassie and Jeff Warren and get candid about their practices and dealing with lifeSebene Selassie is based in Brooklyn and describes herself as a “writer, teacher, and immigrant-weirdo.” She teaches meditation on the Ten Percent Happier app and is the author of a great book called, You Belong. Jeff Warren is based in Toronto and is also a writer and meditation teacher who co-wrote the book, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics with Dan Harris. Jeff also hosts the Consciousness Explorers podcast.Call (508) 656-0540 to have your question answered during the Meditation Party!Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/sebene-selassie-jef-warren-553See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Stressed about the strained economy? You're not alone. Sebene offers tools to help see the abundance we all have in our lives.About Sebene Selassie:Sebene Selassie was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and raised in white neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., she was a tomboy Black girl who loved Monty Python and UB40. She never believed she belonged. Thirty years ago, she began studying Buddhism as an undergraduate at McGill University where she majored in Comparative Religious Studies. Now, Sebene is a teacher, author, and speaker who teaches that meditation can help us remember our inherent sense of belonging, that our individual freedom affects absolutely everyone and everything, and that our collective freedom depends on each and every one of us. To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “Money Worries,” or click here: https://10percenthappier.app.link/content?meditation=06cd264b-c462-4e87-8a9a-76be4093c7f2.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode, Sebene shares her experience of abandonment, not just as a child, but also with herself in her marriage. She gets real about her current life transition of a marriage separation, her multiple cancer diagnoses, and realizing how codependency played a part in keeping her body unwell. She drops so many gems in this episode, friends - join me in witnessing this real-time rebirth story as Sebene shares powerfully about her new chapter and the liberation of coming back to what truly makes her happy. We dive into: Sebene's experience with abandonment and how it has shaped her A sneak peek at her book, “You Belong: A Call for Connection” Belonging as a paradox & Sebene's experience moving through this  Her multiple brushes with death and how cancer became a catalyst for healing Divorce, codependency & her journey to independence Coupledom - how we romanticize it & honoring our deepest truth instead Sebene's gems about connecting with death And more   Sebene Selassie is a teacher & writer who guides people to remember and trust the mystery and power of belonging. She offers courses, workshops, and retreats online and in person. She is trained as a meditation teacher, an integral coach, and as a practitioner of Indigenous Focusing Oriented Therapy as well as being a devoted student of esoteric traditions including astrology. Sebene is a four-time survivor of Stage III and IV metastatic breast cancer. Her first book, “You Belong: A Call for Connection” is published by HarperOne. Connect with Sebene here: Website: https://www.sebeneselassie.com/ Check out her book: https://www.sebeneselassie.com/youbelong Sign up for her newsletter: https://www.sebeneselassie.com/thecall Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sebeneselassie/ Connect with me and let's go deeper: Website: https://www.pohongyu.com IG: https://www.instagram.com/pohong.yu/ FB: https://www.facebook.com/pohong.yu/

Sebene guides you through using physical touch points to reduce anxiety. This is a great alternative to focusing on breathing.About Sebene Selassie:Sebene Selassie was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and raised in white neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., she was a tomboy Black girl who loved Monty Python and UB40. She never believed she belonged. Thirty years ago, she began studying Buddhism as an undergraduate at McGill University where she majored in Comparative Religious Studies. Now, Sebene is a teacher, author, and speaker who teaches that meditation can help us remember our inherent sense of belonging, that our individual freedom affects absolutely everyone and everything, and that our collective freedom depends on each and every one of us. To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “Working With Anxiety,” or click here: "https://10percenthappier.app.link/content?meditation=1fe8c559-04a4-4082-bf7c-e59d573c1252"See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Sebene Selassie is a meditation teacher and spiritual guide who spreads healing across the globe, but today she is in the apartment for some SEXUAL healing! We discuss being in a sexless relationship, reconnecting with your sexuality, and totally figure out the secret to the universe (spoiler alert; it's just getting finger-blasted). Ashley finds inner peace. Maddie unleashes their inner slut.   You can find Sebene on IG and Twitter: @sebeneselassie, And you can follow her work, teachings, and workshops on her website: ▶ https://www.sebeneselassie.com/  Support WHGS for bonus content, uncut podcasts, live streams, and more: ▶ https://www.patreon.com/WHGS Ashley is coming to your city! Join her mailing list for ticket drops: ▶ https://www.ashleygavin.com/#dates,     or text “tour” to +1 (877) 497-0441 NEW!!! Check out our merch: ▶ https://shop.merchcentral.com/collections/ashley-gavin  Win a dinner with Ashley in your city! ▶ https://www.ashleygavin.com/win,      or text “notadate” to +1 (877) 497-0441 ______________________________________________ – CONNECT WITH US! – Newsletter: ▶ https://mailchi.mp/6de0153eb9c8/whgs Instagram: ▶ https://www.instagram.com/ashgavs/ TikTok: ▶ https://www.tiktok.com/@ashgavscomedy Twitter: ▶ https://twitter.com/ashgavs Ashley Gavin's Tour Dates: ▶ https://www.ashleygavin.com/#dates ——— Maddie Wiener's Instagram: ▶ https://www.instagram.com/maddietwiener/?hl=en  TikTok: ▶ https://www.tiktok.com/@maddietwiener  Twitter: ▶ https://twitter.com/maddietwiener  ——— Watch this on YouTube! ▶ https://youtu.be/b6QlowJWNrs  ______________________________________________ – SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! – Helix Sleep: ▶ https://helixsleep.com/gaysex Athletic Greens ▶ https://athleticgreens.com/whgs Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You Belong: A Call for Connection with Miami Book Fair Author Sebine Selassie In You Belong, much-admired meditation expert Sebene Selassie reveals that accepting our belonging is the key to facing many challenges currently impacting our world. To belong is to experience joy in any moment: to feel pleasure, dance in public, accept death, forgive what seems unforgivable, and extend kindness to yourself and others. To belong is also to acknowledge injustice, reckon with history, and face our own shadows. Full of practical advice and profound revelations, You Belong makes a winning case for resisting the forces that demand separation and reclaiming connection—and embodying belonging. 

Have you ever struggled with feeling like you belong? Have you ever felt like we're all connected but not quite sure how? Today's guest is the author of one of my favorite reads this year, You belong: A Call for Connection. This books dives into our need to belong, why we don't always feels that we belong, and how we can reconnect with everything around us to rediscover our belonging. Sebene Selassie is a writer & teacher who guides people to remember and trust their belonging. Born in Ethiopia (of Ethiopian and Eritrean heritage) and raised in Washington DC, she began studying Buddhism over 30 years ago at McGill University as an undergraduate in Comparative Religious Studies and Women's Studies. She has an MA from the New School where she focused on race and cultural studies. For over 20 years, she worked with children, youth, and families nationally and internationally for small and large nonprofit organizations. Her work has taken her from the Tenderloin in San Francisco, to East Harlem–New York, to refugee camps in Guinea–West Africa. Sebene is trained as a meditation teacher, an integral coach, and as a practitioner of Indigenous Focusing Oriented Therapy (IFOT) and she is a devoted student of esoteric traditions including astrology, numerology, and tarot. She offers courses, workshops and retreats online and in person and is one of the most popular teachers on the Ten Percent Happier meditation app. Her first book, "You Belong: A Call for Connection" is published by HarperOne.If you loved today's episode, I have a favor to ask! Subscribe and drop us a review! It's how we can keep the podcast going and growing with your favorite content!Want to connect with Sebene? Visit her social media accounts:Instagram: @sebeneselassieWebsite: https://www.ashleykstoyanov.com/jefa-in-trainingMiami Book Fair: miamibookfair.com SHOW LINKS & RESOURCESJoin the Seizing Happy Community: https://bit.ly/SeizingHappyTribe

Stress is something all of us experience. There is the idea of good stress and bad stress. Some examples of good stress may be traveling, starting a new job or career, or moving. These same things may also be considered bad stress. It's how we react and perceive them. For example, let's look at traveling. Maybe you're traveling for vacation and are happy and excited. You are looking forward to the adventure. On the other hand, maybe you are traveling for an event that you are not looking forward to- maybe it's a work event that you are not happy to be going to, or traveling for some other reason that you are not happy or excited about. Therefore, you are probably not looking forward to the adventure and the stress feels differently compared with traveling for enjoyment. Most of us tend to avoid “sitting” in our stress. We don't want to examine it. We may choose different paths or coping mechanisms to deal with it. Some choices may help or hinder. However, “sitting” with our stress in a meditative manner may help to not only acknowledge the stress but also accept the varying facets it brings. Sebene Selassie says, “It's an opportunity to adore oneself so completely that imperfections are part of the perfection of your being. No part left out. Until we contend with that, our practice is simply a battle with ourselves, a self-evaluation project dressed up as self-acceptance.”

This week I sit down with my friend Sebene Selassie who is a meditation teacher and the author of "You Belong" to talk to me about some things I'm wrestling with in my everyday life while on my journey to become (what I call) a more complete and full human being. Listen in on our convo, I think you'll find it helpful! SHOW NOTES: MY BOOK: https://www.amazon.com/Re-Thinking-Everything-Spiritual-Journey/dp/B09QNV8QX7/ref=sr_1_1?crid=V52CPQJD7N53&keywords=glenn+siepert+book&qid=1643323104&sprefix=glenn+siepert+book%2Caps%2C71&sr=8-1  PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/whatifproject  BUY ME A COFFEE: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/whatifproject  HERETIC SHOP: https://www.bonfire.com/store/the-heretic-shop/  SEBENE SELASSIE: https://www.sebeneselassie.com  YOU BELONG: https://www.sebeneselassie.com/youbelong  (SPECIAL MUSIC) YUNG CITIZEN: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/yung-citizen/945553400 

Hope is a skill. Using the phrase ‘let it be' invites us to be more relaxed with life and lets us envision a better world.About Sebene Selassie:Growing up, Sebene felt like a big weirdo. Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and raised in white neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., she was a tomboy Black girl who loved Monty Python and UB40. She never believed she belonged. Thirty years ago, she began studying Buddhism as an undergraduate at McGill University where she majored in Comparative Religious Studies. Now, Sebene is a teacher, author, and speaker who teaches that meditation can help us remember our inherent sense of belonging, that our individual freedom affects absolutely everyone and everything, and that our collective freedom depends on each and every one of us. To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “Learn Acceptance, Spark Hope,” or click here: https://10percenthappier.app.link/content?meditation=0c9bda64-63da-44ed-8569-cfb9bd3d38cc.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Find freedom from obsessive loops of fear by getting grounded in the body, dropping the stories, and bringing some kindness to the struggle.About Sebene Selassie:Growing up, Sebene felt like a big weirdo. Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and raised in white neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., she was a tomboy Black girl who loved Monty Python and UB40. She never believed she belonged. Thirty years ago, she began studying Buddhism as an undergraduate at McGill University where she majored in Comparative Religious Studies. Now, Sebene is a teacher, author, and speaker who teaches that meditation can help us remember our inherent sense of belonging, that our individual freedom affects absolutely everyone and everything, and that our collective freedom depends on each and every one of us. To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “Loosening the Grip of Panic,” or click here: https://10percenthappier.app.link/content?meditation=cea1fa4d-882a-4b50-b966-20d97d08d84d.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It can be quite rare to find yourself in a place where you feel totally accepted. In this episode, producer Reva Goldberg takes us to a truly unique beauty salon: it's the ultimate safe space for its customers, many of whom are in their 80s and 90s. We take a close look at two hairdressers who create a laugh-out-loud-funny atmosphere, while also showing deep compassion at the same time. We'll also explore why feeling unconditionally accepted helps us cope with the toughest emotions at any age.Featured in this episode are Dr. Pablo Sabucedo and Dr. Rebecca Allen.The Ten Percent Happier app has several meditations for working on acceptance, like “Letting Tough Emotions Be” with Sharon Salzberg and “Resilience” with Sebene Selassie. To try it for free, go to tenpercent.com/more.Follow us on Twitter at @podfeelings, and if you've got a question or story about an emotion you're grappling with, send us a voice memo at morethanafeeling@tenpercent.com.Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/mtaf-podcast-episodes/acceptanceSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Get comfortable with uncertainty and cultivate trust in life, even in the most turbulent times.About Sebene Selassie:Growing up, Sebene felt like a big weirdo. Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and raised in white neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., she was a tomboy Black girl who loved Monty Python and UB40. She never believed she belonged. Thirty years ago, she began studying Buddhism as an undergraduate at McGill University where she majored in Comparative Religious Studies. Now, Sebene is a teacher, author, and speaker who teaches that meditation can help us remember our inherent sense of belonging, that our individual freedom affects absolutely everyone and everything, and that our collective freedom depends on each and every one of us. To find this meditation in the Ten Percent Happier app, you can search for “Trust Yourself and Breathe,” or click here: https://10percenthappier.app.link/content?meditation=7d6060b0-8c20-4fb0-860b-ed5fd7ef5914.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today's episode: Sebene Selassie.Sebene is a meditation teacher, integral coach, Indigenous Focusing Oriented Therapy (IFOT) practitioner and author of You Belong: A Call for Connection. She's also one of the most popular teachers on the Ten Percent Happier meditation app.Sebene guides us through the four elements of earth, fire, water, and air. This practice is both powerful and practical. Sebene shows us how to harness the elements to balance our minds and bodies, and how the elements help us understand different aspects of who we are and how we connect to the world around us. A grounding journey into, in Sebene's words, "our own indigeneity."To go straight to Sebene's (12 minute) four elements practice, it starts at 3:00 and ends at 15:22. Links:• Sebene's Website• Sebene's book: You Belong: A Call for Connection Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/explorerspod)

This week we spoke to Sebene Selassie. Sebene is a meditation teacher, author and speaker. She is also a three-time breast cancer survivor, and her work focuses on the areas of belonging and identity. This was inspired by her experiences of having moved to a white neighbourhood in Washington, D.C from Addis Ababa and being "a tomboy black girl who loved Monty Python and UB40. I never believed I belonged"Our conversation looked at her journey into meditation and her work in unconscious biases amongst much more.To find out more about Sebene:Website- https://www.sebeneselassie.com/aboutInstagram- @sebeneselassieTwitter- @sebeneselassie See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Sebene Selassie is a teacher & author who guides people to remember and trust their belonging. Born in Ethiopia and raised in Washington DC, she began studying Buddhism 30 years ago as an undergraduate at McGill University where she majored in Comparative Religious Studies. She has an MA from the New School where she focused on race and cultural studies.  For over 20 years, she worked with children, youth, and families nationally and internationally for small and large not-for-profit organizations.  She teaches classes, workshops and retreats regularly and is one of the most popular teachers on the Ten Percent Happier app. Sebene is a three-time cancer survivor of Stage III and IV breast cancer. Her first book "You Belong: A Call for Connection" is published by HarperOne. Music by Tim Moor - https://pixabay.com/users/18879564-18879564/ Twitter Close Support the show

Today's Conversation about Resilience is with mindfulness teacher, Sebene Selassie. We talk about her journey and how to create more belonging as a way to create a better tomorrow.

Description Rima Vesely-Flad teaches at Warren Wilson College exploring the intersections of Buddhism, race, and gender. Her teaching is deeply entwined with her current research on Buddhist teachers of African descent in the United states, particularly in the Vipassana tradition. Buddhism as it was adopted in North America has reflected the racism and discriminatory ideologies of this society. Rima researches how Black Buddhist teachers are doing things differently—and how Buddhist institutions in North America and contemporary Buddhist teachings are changing as a result. As more Black teachers are coming into positions of power in the US, authoring books, providing teachings, they are making new articulations of the dharma and carving spaces of liberation from dominant social messages. Black Buddhist teachers, many of whom also self-identify as queer, show how dharma can be a great vehicle for recognizing that historical harm was done and continues to be done, and to working with that recognition. They disrupt the status quo, bringing about new awareness based on embodied experience, and bringing attention to internalized racism and inter-generational trauma. With the tools that Buddhism provides to address, name, and be in discomfort, these teachers are making a different dharma possible: a space of resistance and healing to the pervasive ideologies of white supremacy. Teaching and reading this material with students, both white and marginalized, and gender non-conforming, Rima provides expansive opportunities for all to recognize the work that remains. Quotes “Let's take not only Black people who are marginalized in society and value their bodies and value their spirits and value their persons, but let's also take the most marginalized folks within Black communities and privilege their voices and their experiences so that in this movement not only do we have many, many self-identified queer leaders, but we also have an emphasis on transgender persons and the disproportionate violence especially against Black transgender women.” Rima Vesely-Flad “Spirit Rock just graduated a teacher group that was 90% people of colour. That's unprecedented!” Rima Vesely-Flad “IMS is about to graduate a teacher group that is 70% people of colour.” Rima Vesely-Flad “When I did the research for my book, which pertains only to people of African descent both who are recognized teachers but also who are long-time practitioners, it turns out that almost 63% self-identify as queer. That's a very big deal.” Rima Vesely-Flad “In that privileging of the body, these teachers are saying we work with the body, the body is our vehicle towards liberation and our social experiences and how we're constructed needs to get named as much as they need to be transcended. So that there is within these spaces a recognizing of how racism is internalized, the overt violence that gets enacted, the level of fear with which we move in our broader society, all of that gets named and put out there.” Rima Vesely-Flad “The practice of liberation is not simply to achieve these different states of mind, but it's also to say that liberation means a kind of transcending of those dominant, damaging messages that we have internalized so that we are not always in reaction to white supremacy.” Rima Vesely-Flad “One of the reasons I think these teachings from these Black teachers are so profound is that you can tell that they have managed to live in a different way. They are not always moving against white supremacy. They are not changing their patterns, not changing their bodies, not always in reaction to the degradation that has been part of the waters we all swim in.” Rima Vesely-Flad  “Predominantly white Buddhist sanghas and retreat structures and governing structures in the United States have not taken seriously that fact that racism can flourish in those communities and that that needs to be named and confronted and worked with through dharma practice.” Rima Vesely-Flad “Leadership matters – who is on the podium or on the platform or holding the mic – those sets of voices matter a lot in terms of trying to shift a culture, to simply invite more people in but not shift the power structure is really not enough.” Rima Vesely-Flad “In the concept of decolonization, we are not talking about reclaiming land.  We are talking about reclaiming rituals and we are talking about implementing new rituals and there is a lot to be said for symbolic power.” Rima Vesely-Flad “These are more liberal communities – politically liberal communities – and yet not dissimilar to having a group of white students in my classroom who self-silence around race and racism.” Rima Vesely-Flad “That is precisely where white people need to do some work and to really work with that fear, that self-silencing, and that inhibition, and again I think the dharma is such a great place to start with that because you have tools to sit with discomfort.” Rima Vesely-Flad Links and References Thich Nhat Hanh and rigorous sitting https://www.lionsroar.com/thich-nhat-hanh-sit/ Theravada Buddhism or Insight Meditation or “vipassana movement” from South East Asia https://www.lionsroar.com/theravada-buddhism-america/ Names of newly trained Black Buddhist teachers: Jozen Tamori Gibson https://www.spiritrock.org/jozen-gibson Leslie Booker https://www.lesliebooker.com/ Kate Johnson https://www.katejohnson.com/ DaRa Williams https://www.dharma.org/teacher/dara-williams/ Noliwe Alexander https://www.spiritrock.org/noliwe-alexander Solwazi Johnson https://www.spiritrock.org/solwazi-johnson Devin Barry https://www.spiritrock.org/devin-berry Rima Vesely-Flad, Racial Purity and Dangerous Bodies: Moral Pollution, Black Lives and the Struggle for Justice, 2017 https://www.fortresspress.com/store/productgroup/1634/Racial-Purity-and-Dangerous-Bodies Examines the grassroots protest work in Ferguson and beyond to dismantle systems of oppression and disproportionate policing and mass incarceration Uses and critiques liberation theology Healing Justice https://www.advocate.com/commentary/2019/5/16/what-healing-justice Insight Meditation Society https://www.dharma.org Spirit Rock https://www.spiritrock.org Kevin Manders and Elizabeth Marston, Transcending: Trans Buddhist Voices, 2019 https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/608719/transcending-by-kevin-manders-and-elizabeth-marston/9781623174156 Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to mending Our Hearts and Bodies, 2017 https://centralrecoverypress.com/product/my-grandmothers-hands-racialized-trauma-and-the-pathway-to-mending-our-hearts-and-bodies-paperback Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, The Way of Tenderness: Awakening through Race, Sexuality, and Gender, 2015 https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Way-of-Tenderness/Zenju-Earthlyn-Manuel/9781614291251 Lama Rod Owens, Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation through Anger, 2020 https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/608716/love-and-rage-by-lama-rod-owens/ Rev. angel Kyodo Williams, Lama Rod Owens, and Jasmine Syedullah, Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation, 2016 https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/547708/radical-dharma-by-rev-angel-kyodo-williams-lama-rod-owens-and-jasmine-syedullah/ Rema Vesely-Flad, Black Buddhists and the Black Radical Tradition The Practice of Stillness in the Movement for Liberation, 2021 (forthcoming from NYU Press) Rema Vesely-Flad, “Black Buddhists and the Body New Approaches to Socially Engaged Buddhism,” Religions, 2017 “Inside Out” prison teaching program at Warren-Wilson College https://www.warren-wilson.edu/2017/08/24/inside-out-program/ Jan Willis, Dreaming Me: One Woman's Spiritual Journey, 2008 https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Dreaming-Me/Jan-Willis/9780861715480 angel Kyodo Williams, Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living with Fearlessness and Grace, 2002 https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/332699/being-black-by-angel-kyodo-williams/ Sebene Selassie, You Belong: A Call for Connection, 2021 (Forthcoming) https://www.harpercollins.com/products/you-belong-sebene-selassie?variant=32894632755234 Names of Black feminist writers and Black writers on Dharma bell hooks Audre Lorde James Baldwin  

Embodied awareness means grounding ourselves in our sensory experiences in order to connect with what we're experiencing in the present moment. Sebene Selassie leads us in this guided meditation to connect with our body and our breath.  Show notes: Meditation by Sebene Selassie. Sebene Selassie is a mindfulness teacher on the Ten Percent Happier app and author of the book You Belong. 

Day 6...Listen Up! Sebene Selassie knows You Belong. We are not separate which is why we can no longer hit the snooze button on systemic white supremacy and racism and anti-black-ism In America. And there's a wake up moment about the meaning of a kind of hair-spiration that comes after a shower (literally). Lots to learn from Angel Kyodo Williams and Robin DIAngelo. Letting go of white supremacy and becoming an ally on the way to accomplice. Apprenticeship just beginning. Join me in the wake up and say Yay zone. Gratitude, links and learnings from https://instagram.com/sebeneselassie?igshid=40qa5y013k2k and https://instagram.com/zenchangeangel?igshid=c14e6hohqewj and https://instagram.com/diangelorobin?igshid=v60nwfi1jhvn. NamsYay y'all

This podcast episode is offered humbly as a practice to support and uplift in times of crisis. This is recorded as America experiences widespread protests and riots in response to the deep, and too-long-ignored racism prevalent in every layer of our culture. This talk and this practice, I hope, are useful for all beings everywhere as we bravely and unflinchingly face the oppressions, discriminations, forced exoduses and genocides that occur anytime we create the label “other”.  I encourage you to listen to a myriad of voices alongside my own: Reverend Angel Kyodo Williams, Sebene Selassie, Spring Washam and Joanna Hardy are a few of the teachers I follow. *************** I can't remember who said it or where I read it, but I remember reading somewhere in my studies that meditation eventually asks you to feel The Great Heartbreak of the World. At the time, I remember thinking, “ummmmm. No thanks.” Who wants to feel heartbreak?! What I wanted was to feel better: less stress, more happiness. So, I meditated. Sometimes regularly; sometimes not. Usually not for more than 10 minutes, and I did start to feel better. So, I meditated with more consistency for longer time frames. I read some books and studied with teachers I respected, and the more I practiced, the more I found myself moving from my head to my heart. I was feeling MORE. I was more aware of my own feelings in everyday situations, and I was more aware of when I was purposely NOT feeling or numbing out to world events as if they didn't affect me. Eventually, there was a moment when “The Great Heartbreak of the World” finally resonated - I understood what that teacher meant. He/she meant we have to feel it all. We can't ignore the pains of any being's suffering if we are truly awake. In this moment, as cities across America experience the rage of oppression and racism gone on for far too long, we meditate. We meditate not to feel better but to feel. As Pema Chodron says,  “To stay with that shakiness—to stay with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge—that is the path of true awakening. Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic—this is the spiritual path.”  Today's meditation practice is a compassion practice that can apply to any person or group of people that you choose to practice for - it can be practiced for yourself, if you are the one who needs that loving support today. When we practice, we are deeply connecting to the thread of humanity we all share. Let us stand {and sit} together in solidarity and in love. Reverend Angel Kyodo Williams: https://www.instagram.com/zenchangeangel/ Sebene Selassie: https://www.instagram.com/sebeneselassie/ Spring Washam: https://www.instagram.com/springwasham/ Joanna Hardy: https://www.instagram.com/joannahardy65/ Connect with me on Instagram {@merylarnett} to get bonus meditation tips, mini-meditations, and the occasional baby spam: https://www.instagram.com/merylarnett/ and if you enjoyed today's episode, please consider leaving me a review wherever you get your podcasts. Reviews help others to find this podcast! ***Did you know I have a FREE Meditation Starter Kit on my website merylarnett.com? It is full of my favorite tips, stories and ideas for starting and maintaining a daily meditation prac...