The Marginalian
The Marginalian

How to Meditate: An Animated Guide

How to Meditate: An Animated Guide

In his poem about how to meditate, penned decades before neuroscience as we know it, Jack Kerouac described meditation as the way to pump the brain’s “good glad fluid.” Half a century later, neuroscientist Sam Harris made an eloquent case for how meditation stretches our capacity for everyday self-transcendence. But meditation is somewhat like poetry — a lamentable number of many people hold a stubborn resistance to it, a resistance that “has the qualities of fear,” borne out of a certain impatience with learning a new mode of being that doesn’t come easily but, when it comes, brings tremendous and transcendent satisfaction.

This lovely primer by journalist Dan Harris in collaboration with Happify, animated by Katy Davis — who previously animated Brené Brown’s wisdom on vulnerability, human connection, and the difference between empathy and sympathy — explores how to overcome that self-defeating resistance and reap the enormous, far-reaching benefits of meditation:

Harris examines the more granular aspects of meditation and self-reflection in his book 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works — A True Story (public library).

Complement with Wendell Berry’s beautiful poem about how to be a poet and a complete human being, which begins with a most meditative invitation: “Make a place to sit down. / Sit down. Be quiet.”


Published September 16, 2016

https://www.themarginalian.org/2016/09/16/how-to-meditate-animation/

BP

www.themarginalian.org

BP

PRINT ARTICLE

Filed Under

View Full Site

The Marginalian participates in the Bookshop.org and Amazon.com affiliate programs, designed to provide a means for sites to earn commissions by linking to books. In more human terms, this means that whenever you buy a book from a link here, I receive a small percentage of its price, which goes straight back into my own colossal biblioexpenses. Privacy policy. (TLDR: You're safe — there are no nefarious "third parties" lurking on my watch or shedding crumbs of the "cookies" the rest of the internet uses.)