Publisher Description
This book will get you to meditate. Minus the pan flutes.
ABC News anchor Dan Harris used to think that meditation was for people who collect crystals, play Ultimate Frisbee, and use the word “namaste” without irony. After he had a panic attack on live television, he went on a strange and circuitous journey that ultimately led him to embrace a practice he’d long considered ridiculous. Harris discovered that meditation made him more focused and less yanked around by his emotions. According to his wife, it also made him significantly less annoying. He wrote about his experiences in the bracingly candid and extremely funny memoir 10% Happier, which became a #1 New York Times bestseller and landed Harris in the entirely unexpected position of being one of meditation’s most vocal public proponents.
Here’s what he’s fixated on now: Science suggests that meditation can lower blood pressure, mitigate depression and anxiety, and literally rewire key parts of the brain, among numerous other benefits. And yet there are millions of people who want to meditate but aren’t actually practicing. What’s holding them back?
In Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics, Harris and his friend Jeff Warren, a masterful teacher and “Meditation MacGyver,” embark on a cross-country quest to tackle the myths, misconceptions, and self-deceptions that stop people from meditating. They rent a rock-star tour bus (whose previous occupants were Parliament Funkadelic) and travel across eighteen states, talking to scores of would-be meditators—including parents, military cadets, police officers, and even a few celebrities. They create a taxonomy of the most common issues (“I suck at this,” “I don’t have the time,” etc.) and offer up science-based life hacks to help people overcome them.
The book is filled with game-changing and deeply practical meditation instructions. You’ll also get access to the 10% Happier app, where you can listen for free to guided audio versions of all the meditations in the book. Amid it all unspools the strange and hilarious story of what happens when a congenitally sarcastic, type-A journalist and a groovy Canadian mystic embark on an epic road trip into America’s neurotic underbelly, as well as their own.
Includes two bonus guided meditations.
Download and start listening now!
Part romp, part travelogue, part meditation manual, Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics takes us along for the journey as Dan Harris and meditation teacher Jeff Warren traverse the country. We discover meditating police officers, moms, media figures, and the meditator on the street (literally, as they open a pop-up meditation booth). Dan discovers some things about himself as well. This book is fun, instructive, timely, and immensely helpful.
—
Sharon Salzberg, author of Real Happiness and Real Love
About the Authors
Dan Harris is a
correspondent for ABC News and the coanchor
for the weekend edition of Good Morning
America. Before that, he was the anchor of the Sunday edition of World News. He regularly contributes
stories for such shows as Nightline, 20/20, World News with Diane Sawyer, and GMA. Harris has reported from all over the planet, covering wars in
Afghanistan, Israel/Palestine, and Iraq and producing investigative reports in
Haiti, Cambodia, and the Congo. He has also spent many years covering America’s
faith scene, with a focus on evangelicals—who have treated him kindly despite
the fact that he is openly agnostic. Before joining ABC News he was in local news in Boston and Maine. He grew up
outside of Boston and currently lives with his wife, Bianca, in New York City.
Carlye Adler is a best-selling author, book collaborator and award-winning journalist. She is the founder and chief ghost of the Casper Media Group, which creates content for well-known entrepreneurs and leaders in business, entertainment, philanthropy and politics. As a journalist, Carlye’s writing has been published in BusinessWeek, Fast Company, Fortune, Forbes, Newsweek/The Daily Beast, Time, and Wired and has been anthologized in The Best Business Stories of the Year.
Jeffrey Warren designs and teaches meditation based on the book 10% Happier. He also writes and speaks about how different practices work, what they suggest about the nature and scope of the human mind, and how to regulate the human brain.