How Mindfulness Can Fix Pretty Much Anything—And How To Be Consistent Without Self-Criticism | Alexis Santos

10% Happier with Dan Harris

10% Media, LLC

Dan Harris, Health & Fitness, Mindfulness, Dharma, Mental Health, Meditation

4.6 • 12.2K Ratings

🗓️ 6 November 2024

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How to get the practice into your molecules—not in some militaristic way, but in a way that feels easy and natural.

Alexis Santos has been in the field of mindfulness and meditation since 2001. After graduating from Harvard University in 1995, he spent several years in medical school before leaving his chosen career as a doctor to seek out a different path. It was while traveling in India that he was introduced to insight meditation.

Since that time, Alexis has practiced in many meditative styles and traditions, including with Sayadaw U Tejaniya, the Thai Forest tradition with Ajahn Sumedho, the Tibetan tradition with Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche and within the lay Western insight community where he continues to learn from the growing diversity of voices.

Alexis's primary teacher has been Sayadaw U Tejaniya, from the Burmese Theravada tradition, and with whom he ordained as a Buddhist monk from 2003 - 2005. Sayadaw encouraged Alexis to teach in 2012. Alexis also completed the Spirit Rock/IMS four-year teacher training program with Jack Kornfield and others, including mentors Joseph Goldstein and Carol Wilson.

Alexis teaches meditation at retreat centers around the world. He is featured on the Ten Percent Happier meditation app and is co-founder of Open Door Meditation Community in Portland, Maine where he is a guest teacher.

Alexis's teaching style is natural and uncrafted. He brings a practical, intuitive and compassionate approach to the development of wisdom.

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Want to study and practice with Alexis? Visit his website at alexissantos.io where you can join his freely offered online practice sessions.

He will also be teaching at the Insight Meditation Society from March 5 - 12. When Awareness Becomes Natural: An U Tejaniya-style Insight Meditation Retreat

Related Episodes:

A More Relaxed Way to Meditate | Alexis Santos

I Just Did A 10-Day Silent Meditation Retreat With Joseph Goldstein. Here’s What I Learned

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free right now.
0:04.7	Join Wondery Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.
0:13.9	It's the 10% Happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, everybody. How we doing? Here is something I hear from people all the time,
0:33.4	guilt and self-criticism about allegedly not being sufficiently consistent about meditation.
0:40.5	Side note, one of the amazing things about having started a new online community over at Dan Harris.com
0:45.8	is that I get to hear from you, the listeners, all the time.
0:50.1	And this issue, consistency, comes back over and over. So here's what I normally say about this.
0:57.5	Don't worry about it. Habit formation is hard. It's super common to fall off the wagon. Nothing has been
1:03.0	lost if you have missed a day, a week, a year. Just start again. I stand by that answer. But today,
1:10.5	my guest is going to give an even better answer.
1:14.1	This, what you're about to hear, is an interview with one of my favorite Dharma teachers,
1:18.0	somebody I have worked very closely with over the years, Alexis Santos.
1:22.0	We're going to talk about how, on a very deep level, mindfulness can really fix almost anything.
1:29.1	And we're going to discuss some very practical tips for how to stay mindful as consistently as possible throughout your day.
1:35.7	To put it another way, it's about how to get the practice into your molecules, not in some grit your teeth, militaristic way, but in a way that feels easy and natural, in a way that is self-reinforcing because it feels good and you want to keep doing it.
1:51.7	Just to say, before we dive in here, we are posting this on the day after the 2024 presidential election in the United States.
1:59.6	We spent a lot of time, my team and I, thinking about
2:02.5	what to post on this day, which for many of you might be a moment of uncertainty and angst,
2:09.3	and this is the route we have chosen. However, I do want to say if you're listening at some other
2:14.2	point in time or you're listening in some other country and you're not particularly concerned about the American election. This content is evergreen.
2:22.3	It's universal. A little bit about Alexis before we dive in. He's been in the meditation game since
2:27.5	2001. He went to Harvard undergrad, then spent a few years in medical school. And then to the
	...

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