Feel Your Feelings, Drop the Story | Sebene Selassie
4/24/202627 min
Why forcing the breath backfires and how to use the four elements to get out of your head.
Breath meditation sounds simple in theory. In practice, many meditators find that the moment they pay attention to their breathing, it starts to feel forced, shallow, or just plain weird. In this live session, Dan and Sebene Selassie dig into why that happens — and what to do about it.
They also answer subscriber questions on shame and how to work with it skillfully, the RAIN technique, breaking the cycle of rumination, and Sebene's beloved elements practice as a tool for embodiment. Plus: an unexpectedly lively digression on colonoscopy prep and the nature of being with discomfort.
If you want to go deeper with Dan and Sebene, check out their Audible Original, Even You Can Meditate, available now.
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Join Dan and Emmy Award-winning journalist Allison Gilbert at 92NY on May 17th for a live conversation about how mindfulness can deepen connection and combat loneliness, available in person and via streaming. Register here.
Join Dan, Sebene Selassie, and Jeff Warren for Meditation Party, a 3-day immersive retreat at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY, October 16–18. Grab your in-person spot here, or sign up to livestream here!
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsDan Harris· Host0:00
[music] It's the Ten Percent Happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. [music] Hello, party people. How we doing today? Today we're gonna talk about how to deal with shame, what to do when your mind won't stop ruminating, a technique for managing strong negative emotions, an ancient Buddhist practice for getting out of your head and into your body, and how to handle it when you feel like you cannot meditate on your breath. There is also in this conversation a fairly extended detour into colonoscopy prep that I did not see coming, but you'll understand when we get there. My guest is the meditation teacher and author Sebene Selassie. Seb and I recently co-wrote and co-recorded an Audible Original, so an audiobook that you can get over on Audible. It's called Even You Can Meditate. You should go check it out over on Audible. What you're about to hear, though, is a live Q&A that Seb and I did with, uh, subscribers to my new-ish meditation app, Ten Percent with Dan Harris. If you haven't done it already, you can sign up for the app over at danharris.com. Also, heads up, if you wanna meditate with me in person, I've got two events coming up. On May seventeenth, I'll be at the, uh, Ninety-Second Street Y in New York City. I'll guide a meditation and take your questions. Then on October sixteenth through eighteenth, Sebene and I, along with our friend Jeff Warren,