How to Train a Happy Mind

A guided meditation on impermanence that helps us release fear and anxiety to embrace the constant change at every scale of reality: from particles, possessions, homes, and the environment, to our thoughts, feelings, and perceptions, and relationships. When we embrace impermanence, we more easily take on challenges like today’s Coronavirus crisis. We become more fully present to those around us and we can even more deeply appreciate life’s impermanent pleasures.Episode 10. Guided Meditation - Embracing ImpermanenceFour years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment to share the rich tradition of Tibetan Buddhist analytical meditation in a form that requires no belief beyond what science currently accepts. The first 40 episodes of the podcast gradually go through all of these topics, in order, beginning with appreciating the gift of our life and our place in the universe, and gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we are re-releasing updated versions of these topics.Support the show

We cling to things as if they won’t change, but change is the nature of reality. When we embrace impermanence, we prepare ourselves for big changes, and are able to let go of our fear and anxiety to become more fully present to those around us, to make the most meaningful choices day-to-day, and to more deeply appreciate life’s fleeting pleasures.Episode 9. Embracing ImpermanenceFour years ago, we created A Skeptic’s Path to Enlightenment to share the rich tradition of Tibetan Buddhist analytical meditation in a form that requires no belief beyond what science currently accepts. The first 40 episodes of the podcast gradually go through all of these topics, in order, beginning with appreciating the gift of our life and our place in the universe, and gradually moving up to cultivating boundless compassion for all beings and understanding the ultimate nature of our inner and outer realities. Over the next year, interspersed with new interviews, we are re-releasing updated versions of these topics.Support the show

In this guided meditation, Stephen Batchelor invites you to unconditionally embrace your experience of the moment, to simply watch all thoughts, feelings, and emotions, and notice the ground of nonreactive awareness. This guides you toward a path rooted in freedom, openness, and love.Episode 158: Meditation on Embracing Life with Stephen BatchelorSupport the show

 Nearly 30 years ago, Stephen Batchelor wrote a book called Buddhism Without Beliefs that's become a foundational work for those seeking to adopt Buddhism into a non-religious form while still maintaining the power and authenticity of its time tested practices. I had a chance to speak with Stephen Batchelor recently from his home in France, where he shared his own creative struggle with Buddhism: from his origins as an ordained Tibetan Buddhist monk to becoming a skeptical agnostic who admits that he simply doesn't know the answers to life's biggest questions.Episode 157: Buddhism Without Beliefs with Stephen BatchelorSupport the show

Derek Fagerstrom interviews Scott Snibbe about his new book, How to Train a Happy Mind, at San Francisco’s Book Passage. Derek is the co-founder of Pop-up Magazine, and has worked at Esquire, Interview, and Francis Ford Coppola's literary journal Zoetrope: All-Story. How to Train a Happy Mind is out now in paperback, e-book, and audiobook. You can find it anywhere you buy books.Episode 156: Book Passage Talk with Derek FagerstromSupport the show

Scott Snibbe leads a meditation from his new book, How to Train a Happy Mind, on how to make the most of our precious lives.Episode 155: Precious Life MeditationSupport the show

Scott Snibbe shares a chapter from his new book, How to Train a Happy Mind: The Precious Life. If you enjoy this episode, check out the whole audiobook on Audible, which includes guided meditations!Episode 154: The Precious Life—Chapter Reading from How to Train a Happy MindSupport the show

This is an exciting episode for the podcast because my book, How to Train a Happy Mind, comes out today. To celebrate its release, we're sharing a conversation I had with best-selling author Vicki McKenzie a couple of weeks ago at a book preview event in London, in front of a live audience.This podcast is where I developed most of the ideas for the book, based on more than a decade leading meditations that eventually formed many of our episodes. I want to thank all our listeners for your feedback and support over these four years. You've helped me develop the book's simple eight-step program that combines Tibetan Buddhism with modern science and psychology. I'm excited to hear what you think about it.If you'd like to buy How to Train a Happy Mind, you can find it anywhere you buy books. I've donated all my proceeds from the book to the Skeptic's Path to Enlightenment nonprofit. So your purchase helps support this podcast. If you end up enjoying the book, please consider reviewing it on Amazon or Goodreads, which will help other people discover it.Episode 153: How to Train a Happy Mind book launch conversation with Scott Snibbe and Vicki MackenziSupport the show

Meenadchi guides a meditation on discovering, playing with, and feeling the good things in your body through a light visualization.Episode 152: Meditation on Feeling Good with MeenadchiSupport the show

A couple of decades ago, a friend introduced me to a book called Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg. Over the years, I've tried imperfectly to use its gentler forms of communication. At various points in life the techniques of NVC, as it's known for short, have saved me from losing a lawsuit, losing a job, and losing a partner. Still, these techniques didn't always work for me. When our producer Annie Nguyen recently introduced me to a book called Decolonizing Nonviolent Communication, it put words to those challenges. The book's author, Meenadchi, a somatic healing practitioner, spoke with me recently about the ways that she's updated nonviolent communication to account for the power structures in our society that exacerbate conflicts, and the interdependence between people and our environments that may have been missing from nonviolent communication's original formulation. I find her approach, distinctly Buddhist as a "middle way" that helps us draw strong boundaries and fight the injustices in the world, while still holding love and compassion, even for our enemies. Meenadchi's therapeutic work centers on social change and embodied transformation. She specializes in healing members of communities impacted by gender-based violence, complex trauma, and serious mental illness. Episode 151: Decolonizing Nonviolent Communication with MeenadchiSupport the show