Meditation 101: A Beginner's Guide

Are you new to meditation, and interested in finding out how to start a practice? We'll walk you through the basics!

Narrated by Dan Harris.

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[MagneticBrain]

Straight to the point. No annoying, slow spiritual nonsense. great vid!

[DestructorEFX]

Mindfulness changed my life, and together came meditation. It feels like I have unlock something that I was always looking for and never found it. It's amazing!

[TheMitchellWhite]

This is the best video on meditation I’ve ever seen. Short and to the point. 100% perfect.

[sherylarnold]

Thank you for being straight and to the point on your meditation post. There are so many posts on meditation that babble on about this woman’s life and all the crap that got her to mediate. So I just want to say thank you for being direct and to the point.

[allenkvextreme]

The best video about this topic that i've ever seen. people always like to complicate things and confuse the viewers so you pay for their course... THANK YOU!

[AeonCatalyst]

Meditation is like playing "The Game". Focus on the breath, and when you realize you "lost the game" (lost focus), you go back to playing. Over and over again.

[jayniroxton-wiggill]

I love the meaningful messages, but I adore your animations, Gobblynne!

[gortonimo]

this is the only thing I know you or Dan for, yet, and I'm already a lifelong fan. Keep up the good fight! ❤

[BM]

I've watched 3 to 4 videos on meditation before this one and this is one is the first to make me feel like I've actually learned how to do meditation, the others just focused a bit too much on things that I just wasn't looking for.

[nothingchanges]

I love how you put so much information into a 2-min video

[claudinemvilongo]

Merci. Je croyais qu'en ayant toutes ces pensées qui envahissent mon esprit, je ne méditais pas bien, et qu'il fallait penser à rien du tout, et là, je comprends que ça va, je suis sur la bonne voie. Je vais m'y remettre davantage

[stinkysocksstudios]

Very grateful for the simplistically expressed information and making it fun to digest mentally.

[daisyflower]

The animations are the cutest ever. I love this video

[ثارالله-شد]

With meditation, life can be continued with more peace and freshness

[Mustafabeciri]

With meditation I am new fresher more productive more Beautiful

[saberhammouche]

I like the way you get weather information in a few minutes video

[transformpsych]

This is the best video on how to do meditation. Just saw it in a workshop yesterday given by Paula Butterfield in Ohio by the Institute for Brain Potential - for therapists.

[allanfernz]

You had me at its like a bicep curl for the brain 💪

[Manjitsingh-mrzw]

This is the best video on meditation I think this video is life change.

[ajmarr]

How Mindfulness can be like movie theater popcorn.

It has recently been demonstrated (link below) that reward uncertainty or novelty can improve the sensory experience of high value reward. In other words, popcorn actually tastes better when we are watching exciting movies, and tastes worse when we are watching paint dry. This is due to what are called dopamine-opioid interactions, or the fact that dopamine activity (elicited by positive novel events, and responsible for a state of arousal, but not pleasure) interacts with our pleasures (as reflected by mid brain opioid systems), and can actually stimulate opioid release, which is reflected in self-reports of greater pleasure.

Opioid release occurs when we are consuming food and drink, but it also occurs when our musculature is in a state of inactivity or rest, which is why relaxation feels good. Since mindfulness is the best way to induce a state of deep rest, it follows that after a mindfulness session, the pursuit of exclusively meaningful behavior (meaning would be defined as behavior that has branching novel positive implications), would accentuate the pleasure of relaxation and keep us relaxed. This has many examples in common experience, as we often have pleasurable or ‘flow’ experiences when doing meaningful work when in a relaxed state. So rather than surrendering to distraction when not meditating, just put off all distraction and exclusively do meaningful things, and you will note that the pleasant effects of mindfulness can go a very long way.

A more formal explanation from affective neuroscience of this technique is provided on pp. 44-50 in a little open-source book on the neuro-psychology of rest linked below.

Rauwolf, P., et al. (2021) Reward uncertainty - as a 'psychological salt'- can alter the sensory experience and consumption of high-value rewards in young healthy adults. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General (prepub)