Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics

About Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER FROM THE AUTHOR OF 10% HAPPIER

Too busy to meditate? Can’t turn off your brain? Curious about mindfulness but more comfortable in the gym? This book is for you.

You’ll also get access to guided audio meditations on the 10% Happier app, to jumpstart your practice from day one.

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 become 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 this guide to mindfulness and meditation for beginners and experienced meditators alike, 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. 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.

Praise for Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics

“If you’re like many people, you’re intrigued by the promise of meditation but don’t know how to begin—or you’ve benefited from meditation in the past but need help to get started again. If so, Dan Harris has written the book for you. Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics is well researched, practical, and crammed with expert advice—and it’s also an irreverent, hilarious page-turner.”—Gretchen Rubin, author of The Four Tendencies and The Happiness Project