“What will meditation do for you? Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Probably something in between. It's worth a try.”

- Kelly Kelbel

Hi Friends -

Can meditation help with a cancer diagnosis? It can definitely help mitigate some of the discomfort from treatment. And for some, it can change their experience of the whole ordeal.

That’s our subject in this week’s “Real People, Real Practice” post, featuring a body scan by my friend Kelly Kelbel (the second of two “embodiment” practices she made – the first is here). I met Kelly and her partner, Tony, at one of my retreats a few years back. At the time, she had just finished dose-dense chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation, as well as new specialty medications for a rare and aggressive disease, Inflammatory Breast Cancer. Her journey was harrowing. Not just the treatments, but also the poor care she received at the beginning, the dismissals from various medical professionals who underplayed or misunderstood her symptoms. She had to trust her own instincts and advocate for herself, until eventually she found a team of oncologists in Boston who got her the right diagnosis and treatment plan.

Kelly made this guided practice for folks with breast cancer, although, as she notes, you don’t have to have cancer for it to be supportive. I share some of Kelly’s words about how meditation has specifically helped her below.

That help – that care – has already propagated outward. Tony, a musician, made her a gorgeous song “for comfort and uplift”: Treatment 1. Kelly wanted to share that feeling and connection, so she began to write and record meditations for others in similar situations. Her Substack newsletter – Chemo Sessions – was born. Please subscribe to Kelly’s publication if you know anyone facing cancer, or if you just want to support her work. “The idea,” says Kelly, “is that people could go into their infusions with a companion, read some words from people who have been through chemo treatments, and do a guided meditation.”

What’s helped you during your own health crisis? Maybe a specific form of meditation, or something else entirely. Share thoughts in the comments if inspired. Our aim has always been for the comments section to be its own resource, a place to swap stories and practices and connect to a community of fellow caring humanoids.

“Real People, Real Practice” is a regular column where I make a custom guided meditation in response to someone’s curiosity or situation. You can submit a request here, I’m going to start doing more of these. And sometimes, someone else – like Kelly – has a practice so perfect that I couldn’t possibly improve on it!

Jeff: Kelly, can you summarize how meditation has helped you?

Kelly: I feel like meditation has saved me. How dramatic! I wasn’t drowning, and aside from this really aggressive cancer diagnosis, I was fine. Except I was stuck in serious ruminating thoughts, always replaying conversations or rehearsing potential interactions. I could not get out of my head. And I questioned my worth and value as a human. And I was somehow very aware of my body while being totally dissociated. I used to wake up and go to the to-do list in my head. What I would accomplish, what I would produce. I didn’t feel happy even though I had a really beautiful life. I felt busy, like I was always working toward something to be appreciated later.

Now, I wake up with a lightness. Is this happiness? I wonder. I think I’m actually smiling, too, and all because of my aliveness. It’s so simple and so fucking hard, too. Meditation has helped me grieve so much loss while holding gratitude for so much beauty. It has helped me make sense of the sorrow and expanded my appreciation for joy. Meditation invites me to think more clearly, less obsessively. I will say that I am less productive. There is something about facing my fears, facing my death, that actually got me to pause, to slow down. If you are talking with me, I’m now in the room with you, listening with my body. It takes more time and heart to listen like this, to live like this.

I started meditating with your intro to meditation course on the Calm app, and the ease of it got me to do it. After a few weeks, on the way to chemo, my partner Tony noticed that I was different. He asked how, why, what was happening. Cancer created anxiety in me that I hadn’t experienced before. Meditation created equanimity, and that was new to me, too. My current meditation practice is focused on embodiment, on finding home inside my own body, deeply inspired by the book The Wakeful Body by Willa Blythe Baker and also by the teachings of Sebene Selassie. A phrase came to me in a recent meditation when distracted that I now use daily: Return to my body.

Jeff: Friends, I hope Kelly’s words and practice can be a support, whatever your situation. I don’t think we all need to meditate in this life, or even to meditate when things get hard. But I do think everyone can benefit from some kind of deliberate practice. Some way to interrupt the narrow convictions of the mind, and come into direct contact with the broader landscape of the present moment.

It’s always amazing and mysterious to me what people find there / here. I’ve heard many describe a similar pattern: through illness or life challenge or the death of a loved one, through the practice of accepting what’s here, people find support and perspective and even transformation in ways they could never have imagined. Sometimes that acceptance is forced on them. Other times, through grace, it just happens. Maybe both are a kind of grace.

Thank you Kelly for your creativity and care. If you live in the Asheville area and are curious to meditate with Kelly, Tony and her community, check out Kelly’s Experimental Meditation Club at the excellent AyurPrana Listening Room.

Let’s meditate!

Jeff

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Celebrating Our Neurotic Attachments – CEC Meditation

Monday March 30, 2026, 7:30pm EST
Online via Zoom

I’m bored by my enlightened disdain for my attachments. For years I’ve tried to unfix from my worldly neuroses. It hasn’t worked. So I’ve decided to celebrate them instead. In this meditation, we celebrate our neurotic attachments so fully that they float off us – sigh – like liberated ghosts on their way to a sparsely-attended poetry reading in Heaven.

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Hey friends –

Lots going on in the world. More on that below. I’m behind on my “Hey Jeff” column, where you send me specific questions or curiosities or challenges, and I make a meditation for it. Your questions have been received and they’re piling up. I’ll try to get better at releasing one every six weeks or so. I do think this column needs a new name, though: how about “Real People, Real Practice”? Not that the other practices I guide are any less real! If you have a better name, let me know in the comments.

For this one, my friend Andrea asks how meditation might support her mother, who is dealing with awful chronic pain. Meditation does have much to potentially contribute here, including helping us get clearer about which other non-meditation interventions might also help.

A meditation on pain is relevant for this moment. Pain is pain, and that includes emotional pain. Many of us have witnessed with horror the state violence that’s unfolded in Minnesota over the past few weeks. Our pain makes sense. It’s the social organism responding intelligently to serious injury. We need to feel this pain so that we can respond.

Meditation can help pain be less overwhelming. It can also help us get clearer around the different impulses coming up and through us when faced with a crisis. I made a meditation specifically about this a couple years ago, as the bombing in Gaza continued to spiral into a brutal – and immoral – humanitarian catastrophe. When faced with this kind of violence, do we react from our own trauma – wanting to hurt back, or to disassociate? Or can we respond from our compassion and wisdom? A compassionate response can be extremely fierce and angry and decisive. Meditation isn’t about passivity. It’s about availability.

So, let’s work with pain. Below is a shortened version of my correspondence with Andrea – shared with her permission. I’ve added some additional thoughts and resources at the end, because, as many humans can attest to, pain can also be a vehicle for profound transformation. I hope this practice can be a support for you and your loved ones in this time of intensity and change. Practice, in my view, has never been more indispensable.

Love,
Jeff

Andrea:

My 83-year-old mom has had Parkinson’s for over 15 years. Deep brain stimulation made a huge difference to her symptoms. I think of her as having had a do-over— she got many years of extra time living pretty well. She even climbed Mount Kilimanjaro to raise money for Parkinson’s research. But now the effects are wearing off (as they do with DBS) and she’s struggling both physically and mentally. She was a psychotherapist and the most positive person I knew—she actually introduced me to meditation back when I was in my 20s. She even made me my own meditation cassette! But now when I listen to her talk about how she is feeling, I think a renewed meditation practice might really help her. She is focused on her aches and pains in a way that makes sense, given what she’s dealing with, but it also possibly contributes to her suffering. I wonder if you have a meditation that might speak to that experience so many of us have when we are unwell of sitting inside our pain in a way that only magnifies it.

Jeff

I would love to try to make something to help her, I just need to talk through a bit more with you. One focus can be self-compassion, always. In terms of over-focusing on the pain, that can mean over-focusing on the pain sensations themselves, so that our attention and our resistance to what we’re experiencing get all bound up together. It can also mean over-focusing on our secondary suffering: the narratives about our pain, visuals, long-term prognosis, sorrow etc. Getting clear about the bare sensations themselves can help with both, as can naming what else may be happening, so it’s no longer unconsciously contributing to the situation.

In terms of general meditation strategies for pain, there are at least two broad groupings: focus away, and focus towards. Focus away is common sense and totally okay. In a meditation that means finding places of refuge inside our sensorium, from active compassion practices, to directions in experience (sights, sounds, other parts of the body) that may be neutral or even soothing. Focus away also includes all the other things we do to distract ourselves and/or manage our pain. When I shared your mom’s situation with my friend – a meditator and teacher who’s lived with the pain of bone cancer for twenty-plus years, she wrote:

“Whatever works! Rocking crying swaying laying down standing up heat cold sleep more crying … also allowing yourself some compassion and comfort acknowledging how hard it is. And yes, also feeling what’s happening and noticing sensation.

Sebene points to the other big strategy: focus towards the pain. That is, go deeper into it, with delicacy and curiosity. This takes longer to get a handle on, and can sometimes make the pain (temporarily) worse. On the other hand, as a serious meditation strategy, it can transform our relationship to pain at the very root. I usually recommend gently moving back and forth – pendulating – between both options, and seeing what happens.

Additional Jeff Note

I’ll say a bit more about focusing into pain, via the wisdom of my great teacher Shinzen Young, because it gets to the heart of meditation’s transformative magic. And not just meditation – any spiritual ordeal.

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Jeff

Anonymous’s Note:

Hi Jeff …

How should I deal with crying during meditation? It’s hard to follow the breath when I burst into tears. It honestly happens almost every time I meditate and has been for over a year now, I think. (Yes I have a fantastic counselor.) I've been meditating almost every day for about 10 years now but can't figure this out. Help please?

I feel frustrated and anxious and sad during the crying. I feel a bit lost too, about why this keeps happening and how raw it feels and how to deal with it. After, I feel a bit less of these things and I'm able to get up and move on with life. It's rarely a big catharsis but it does help me recenter. Sometimes it's just leaking eyes and sometimes it's full-out sobbing, with no clear indication as to which will come on any given day. So that's fun.

I'm a Highly Sensitive Person and tend to absorb everybody else's emotions even when I put up energy shields. My counselor says it's great to cry because it means I'm letting something go. I've learned that it's less about what exactly I'm letting go and more about the act of releasing energy. I would love some guidance.

Dear Anonymous,

I’m sorry you’re struggling, friend. As another highly sensitive human, I feel you. These are hard times, and we pick up the energy around us. Part of the reason I practice is to reset and let some of that go.

Crying is absolutely normal in meditation, for exactly the reasons and in exactly the way you describe. We get quiet and open and what’s under the surface starts to come up. We can practice for years before this happens; other times it’s immediate; other times it never gets emotional at all. Everyone is different. Sometimes instead of emotions it’s more physical, like the release of muscle tension. It can involve crying, yawning, burping, twitching, spontaneous movements, sudden alignments, memories, visions, and every kind of vibratory and energetic strangeness. “Kriyas” is one term for it.

I tear up a lot, often with no emotion involved - I’ll be surprised afterwards to find my face wet. Body workers have it right: “our issues are in our tissues.” In meditation it’s part of the path, the off-gassing of trapped humours, or to use another metaphor, more of us begins to circulate into more of life. Many describe a sense of relief after these episodes, feeling more open or settled or emptied out. And of course there can also be confusion and discomfort, particularly if we have no context for what’s happening.

A few years into my practice, I went through several months where every time I got deep into meditation I’d feel intense shame and rage. I did not feel lighter afterwards. I felt doomed. It did work itself out eventually. Checking in with a therapist helped, so I’m happy to hear you have a counsellor. A lot of trauma work is built on the understanding that the right supportive presence can accelerate the processing and the integration.

In terms of how this all plays out over time, in particular for the Highly Sensitive Person … here’s a phrase I think a lot about:

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Hi, It’s Jeff.

This is a column called “Hey Jeff”, where I share a meditation in response to someone’s unique situation or curiosity.

Many many people tell me they struggle to fall asleep … lying in bed, eyes wide, thoughts churning with the day’s concerns. Then come the concerns about not falling asleep, followed by concerns about what needs to get done the next day, followed by concerns about the state of the world, followed by concerns about planet-pummeling asteroids (it happened to the dinos!), and so on through an ever-propagating wave of mental freak-out.

How do we work with this?

Different strategies work for different folks, from writing down to-do lists to progressive muscle relaxation to high dose herbal tranquilizers. Plus all the usual sleep hygiene tips.

The problem of course with trying to fall asleep is that the harder you try, the further away sleep gets. My trick for this is to divide and conquer – to first address the body, by pretending to already be asleep. And then to address the mind, by sending it on a trippy associative journey of surrender and melty-melty drooly goodness, to use a venerable category of meditation much esteemed by ancient yogis.

Today’s practice is for those hard-to-sleep moments. It can also work as part of a restorative midday snooze.

Warning: do not listen while operating heavy machinery! Find a quiet, relaxed spot, and let the river carry you.

Melty melty love love,

Jeff

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“With severe tics, I can tell that Alden often feels separate from his own body.”

Welcome back to “Hey Jeff”, a regular column where I share a meditation in response to someone’s unique challenge or curiosity. This week you’ll meet Superdad Stephen, and his amazing son, Alden, now 15. Alden has Tourette’s Syndrome, a condition where his body makes involuntary tics and sounds. Stephen, Alden and I began corresponding two years ago, when Stephen sent me a handwritten letter explaining how meditation has helped Alden. We did a bit of detective work together around the how and why of this, some of which I include below, as the details may be of interest to other unsettled nervous systems. The result was a fun wiggly body scan meditation that I created specifically for Alden, but is really for anyone who wants to send a bit of kindness into their excitable animal bodies – particularly when their bodies have agendas of their own! Head’s up: the guided practice has a bit more talking than usual (Alden says the extra support helps him relax). The extended version has more space and silence.

To Alden and Stephen: thank you for letting me share your words and your art. Your story and courage have been an inspiration!

Jeff Rat

Excerpt from Stephen’s Original Note:

Dear Jeff,

… Alden suffers from OCD and Tourette's Syndrome, having strong motor and vocal tics (head jerks, eye rolls, shouts, leg kicks, etc.). As a parent, there is nothing more difficult than experiencing your child suffering and struggling. There is no cure. Medical / therapy treatments have thus far proven to be ineffective. The only thing that I have seen help so far are your meditations. As we settle into the practice, about halfway through I witness his tics lessen. There are times by the end when they stop altogether. We are trying to integrate the lessons into everyday life and are making progress … Alden must often feel like his body is just doing its own thing, acting out on its own, separate from him. It seems like your meditations offer him some moments of being in his own body, some moments of being able to feel and be connected, some moments of autonomy and calm. For someone with Tourette's, this is powerful stuff.

…Alden wants to thank you too. He draws rat characters... 1000's of them, each one different (like Ghost Rat, Flat Rat, Disco Rat, Baseball Rat, etc). He wanted to draw Jeff Rat for you, so I am enclosing it with many thanks.

Stephen

Dear Stephen,

Your letter had a powerful impact on me … Maybe I could write a meditation specifically for Alden? Let me know which meditations seem to settle him most, and perhaps also which parts … Alden sounds like a radster, just like his dad. “Jeff Rat” is now on my fridge.

Warmly,
Jeff

Jeff,

Thank you … for sending the photo of Jeff Rat on your fridge. I showed it to Alden and his face lit up. I just spoke with Alden to ask him what aspects of the meditations settle him the most. We’ve had many other conversations over time, so I think I can offer some parent observations too.

As a preface, we recently discovered one therapy to couple with his mindfulness practice. He has learned CBIT (Comprehensive Behavioral Integration for Tics). This therapeutic approach has offered him some management tools. However, it is important to point out the paradox. CBIT is a therapy that identifies the initial urge and then implements a competing response to “block” the tic. It works as a tool, but it takes a good deal of mental and physical energy to pull off. Conversely, meditations allow whatever is there to be there without judgement or battle, letting sensations come and go. Meditation and mindfulness lessen tics, but in a very different way than CBIT. CBIT seems to help with the physical manifestations of the tics, while mindfulness seems to get at the underlying causes, such as anxiety and OCD. The combination of the two approaches is offering him some strategies depending on the specific environment.

Alden says that focusing on the breath is relaxing for him, as well as body scans. He chooses his hands most often as his home base (sometimes focusing on the warmth in his hands). He prefers short moments of silence as opposed to long ones… There is something comforting about the added guidance that relaxes him more. He says he likes the ones where he can picture himself in an environment.

For the body scans, he likes tensing and holding muscles and then relaxing them as it progresses through the body. I noticed that at the beginning of any given meditation he often has a few very strong tics, almost like he is shaking out what is there before he settles in. You had a meditation where we kinda danced around and were completely ridiculous with our bodies flailing… We laughed together and he seemed to enjoy that shaking out. I think it was similar to the tensing/release scans, and mimics that initial ticing that he needs to do. For Tourette’s, maybe it could be helpful to incorporate a physical release “shake” or tensing towards the beginning prior to settling in.

He also mentioned that he liked the meditation that sends love to yourself.

When we did this meditation together, I struggled to not completely break down, especially when you said "it's okay little buddy". With severe tics, I can tell that Alden often feels separate from his own body. When some bad tics were peaking, I witnessed him hitting himself and yelling at his body as if it were not him, trying to get it to stop. I earmarked the self-love meditation for frequent use because I think it is so important for him to send love to himself - to see and feel his body as his “self” instead of some “thing” acting on its own accord. I think the breathing, the body scanning, and the home base of his hands are some aspects of grounding and being in his body… Then sending it love and kindness while accepting whatever is there as good and normal… Those things make it all settle and calm by the end.

I hope these anecdotes help with the neurodiverse writings you are embarking on. Alden was excited to share his observations, as well as I. Many thanks for offering us this opportunity to share.

Take care.

Stephen

More back and forth followed, with more detail. I then created a “Daily Trip” meditation on the Calm app for Alden called “Some Body To Love.” I got this response:

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In this month’s instalment, I respond to Lucy’s question about sometimes not wanting to meditate. Below is her short note, shared with permission.

Jeff

Lucy: I really enjoy meditations that acknowledge that feeling where you sit to meditate and you don’t really want to do it. You just feel bummed about something and you sit and then you quiet your mind and a still small voice of calm creeps in.

Hi Lucy,

I appreciate the patience and compassion in what you describe. The trust that sitting with your bummed-outness can sometimes make space for something else.

Anytime we don’t feel like meditating there is always the possibility that our body is telling us something important, like sitting down inside an anxious brain might lead to more anxiety. Some other activity — exercising, talking to a friend, having a nap — could be more appropriate. Learning to recognize and honour those quieter body signals is one of the fruits of a meditation practice.

And, I’ve also found that not feeling like meditating … can be one of the best times to meditate. Truly. In fact, not feeling like doing anything is a great time to meditate. Not feeling like reading a book, or being present, or talking to someone — these big aversions and subtler ‘blahs’ are all opportunities to ask, if we have the wherewithal:

What actually is the problem here?

What’s coming between me and life being … OK in this moment?

Something is. I don’t mean some external situation — although of course those will be there. I mean some internal situation. Some conviction that things need to be otherwise. This often has an echo in the body: a jangly discontent, a flatland dullness, a violent aversion, a set line of the mouth. If we can notice that conviction — wherever in the body it lives — we can sometimes free ourselves from its truth claims. And that relief can be profound.

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How wrong I was, on both counts. There are now over 2,500 meditation apps, used by millions of people around the world. And they work. My collaborations with Ten Percent Happier (now called Happier) and Calm have been incredibly rewarding, in part because I receive hundreds of notes from subscribers explaining exactly how a ten-minute per day guided practice has changed people’s lives. The apps are also what allowed me to connect with so many of you, something I’m still kind of amazed about.

For this “Hey Jeff” column, I thought I’d share one of these notes. It’s from Heather, whom I met at a recent in-person retreat. I love how clearly Heather describes the changes that have come about from her ten-minute daily practice. I’ve created a customized meditation for her on “staying the course,” included here. Heather also asks how she might take her practice to the next level, so I’ve written about one particular path that may play to her strengths.

How have meditation apps influenced your practice? What does your practice look like – ten(ish) minutes a day, or something different? Do you wonder about taking things to the “next level,” or has this level turned out just fine, thank you very much? Let us know in the comments. 

Warmly,

Jeff

Heather’s Note: 

Hi Jeff,

I began meditating about 8 years ago. After a lifetime of managing anxiety and worry I had made a conscious decision that moving forward I did not want to make my life choices based in fear, my hope was to make my life choices that focused on what I WANTED in life rather than choosing my life’s path by avoiding those things that I feared most. 

I began by listening to 10-minute meditations 4 to 5 times a week. Over the years the shift has been subtle but profound. I like to say that meditation has changed how my mind works. The tendency to think anxious and extreme thoughts had become a superhighway in my thought patterns. I credit meditation with helping me to break this very prevalent thought pattern. Worry is no longer my “go to” response. My mind in general is clearer, calmer and quicker to recover when life does throw something troublesome my way. These changes occurred quietly, they did not arrive as dramatic moments in time but rather as calm moments of realization in everyday life.

I believe meditation has provided me with a foundation on which I have been able to make a number of shifts in my life. I have seen an improvement in my mental, emotional and physical health. I have learned to see myself (and others) with more compassion and empathy. It is from a place of strength and understanding that I have been able to take a clear look at who I am, how my past has brought me to where I am today and how I would like to move forward from the present. I am continuing to become my own best friend while learning unconditional love for myself. For me the most unbelievable part of this journey is that it all happened in just 10 minutes a day! 

As the years have passed my meditation routine has really not changed very much. It has remained just a daily commitment I make to myself in honor of my own well-being. 

As I type all of that I realize that the meditations about staying the course have played a part in my journey. The concept of meditating in all kinds of weather was a huge revelation for me. As I stated above I have wept through meditations, I have been pissed off and angry throughout a meditation, I have been like my own little Buddha during meditations … and through them all I have stayed for the 10 minutes. And I think that practice in itself has had a notable effect on my staying power for any and all life’s situations regardless of them being pleasurable or excruciatingly painful. 

Is there a “next step” you would recommend if I wanted to expand my meditation practice? I spoke with you at the retreat about experiencing my breath becoming so slow it seems almost nonexistent and this is a depth of concentration that interests me. Would you have any advice for pursuing this kind of meditation?

With thanks and gratitude,

Heather

Heather, I love this, it really captures your down-to-earth voice. Your commitment is impressive. I’ve never been able to stick consistently with a daily sit, my pattern is more binge meditate, fall off wagon, binge meditate, fall off, etc. Weirdly, it seems to have still worked, insofar as I’m now more habituated to the settledness and the sanity, and can find it in more situations and conditions than before. I plan to keep at my various practices, because they keep me pointed in the right direction. The difference now is I tend to do most of them because I enjoy them, as opposed to practicing out of a sense of duty, or because I’m desperate to fix my deranged self. 

Do we need a “next step” in our meditation journey?

Entirely up to you. Ten minutes a day clearly works; you could do that for the rest of your life and it would in all likelihood keep deepening. The practice – especially the equanimity and surrender – gets down into your nervous system, so that at a certain point the changes take on a momentum of their own. More and more of life gets folded into your practice, without you needing to do anything about it. It’s awesome – like finally getting on the good side of a mental health feedback loop. 

So it’s important to know that you don’t need to level up in any way. And, since you have a knack for seated meditation and are curious about expanding it, I say go for it. There are many possible meditation paths to explore. Your report of getting absorbed by the breath tells me you have good concentration, so I’ll say a bit about the juicy and quite pleasurable path of concentration.

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In this month’s installment, I respond to Patrick’s question about feeling like life is blah, plus the difficulty of choosing long-term satisfaction over short-term gratification. Below is his note, shared with permission.

Jeff

Patrick’s Note: I’m 54 and feeling disappointed in this grand life experiment these days. Why do we choose to do things we know aren’t good for us? Choosing not to move and exercise, not to eat a salad instead of a cheeseburger, choosing to binge Netflix instead of work on a painting. We’re so geared toward the things that take the least effort. You choose those things enough and realize that you are not really feeding the things that bring you more sustainable joy, more peace.

I know that when I am able to stop, notice, feel the moment and make the more soul-satisfying choice, it is often the meditation that has enabled me to be more mindful and see the long-term satisfaction over the short-term gratification. My inner critic still beats me up for the times I grab some Ben and Jerry’s and watch TV more that it congratulates me for taking a nice walk around the neighborhood and honestly, I wish that guy would shut up some days.

I am reminding myself that I am enough. Your meditations, your writing, the CEC, have all been so helpful in my journey so please accept my heartfelt thank you for what you do!

I mentioned my painting. I attached some of my recent work here. I just wanted to pass them along because they bring me joy and I know you appreciate art, and hopefully they can bring you a little joy as well.

-Patrick S.

Hi Patrick – 

I appreciate your note, and I love your paintings! Thank you. 

It seems like you’re talking about two things: First, the feeling of being in the middle of life and wondering … is this it? And second, the challenge of choosing long-term satisfaction over short-term gratification. I can relate to both. I also sometimes get bummed about both. So: compassion, and self-compassion.

And I think those two things are connected.

Let’s start with short-term gratification. It happened to me last night (ok, it happens to me 6 nights a week). Wiped after a day of work and child care, I knew I could meditate, cause that always makes me feel more grounded and centered and sane. But instead I doom-scrolled YouTube, watched a long movie fight scene compilation, a young man dancing like a robot, and short interviews with Kurt Vonnegut and … Harry Belafonte? (YouTube algorithm, thy dost truly know me!)

The problem of course with instant gratification is the dopamine fades fast. It also leads to ever-diminishing returns. We have to keep upping the novelty to get the same reward, and eventually we’re left holding an empty party-sized bag of potato chips, with a queasy stomach and a vague sense of existential meaninglessness. 

As you’ve noted, meditation is basically the opposite. Often quite boring at first, yet the more we do it, the more it can leave us feeling oddly satisfied with simple things. That can happen in the moment — and it can also happen as an increasing tendency over time. 

Here’s a rigorously mathematical napkin sketch about exactly this, from my book with :

In life, we chase the highs and avoid the lows. All that grabbing and pushing actually makes our personal roller coasters more exaggerated. With all our attention riveted to the ups and downs, it’s like living in only two dimensions. 

Meditation and other spiritual practices shift our attention sideways, into life’s width dimension. Aka, “The Z Axis” (except no one calls it that):

As practitioners, our attention obviously still gets hijacked by the specifics of our respective conditions. But we also develop – more and more – the capacity to live into a third dimension of experience, which my old teacher Shinzen Young calls “happiness independent of conditions.” Life gets wider and richer, regardless of whether we’re up, down, or somewhere in between. 

So that’s the idea. Is it actually true in practice?

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In this month’s instalment, I respond to Judy’s question about openness. Below is Judy’s note, shared with permission.

Jeff

Judy: Hi Jeff. I struggle to understand what you mean when you say to be "Open". I have heard this term from other meditation teachers as well, and I don't really know what it means. Would you do a session on this topic? Thanks.

Hi Judy, great question. To help with the experience of openness, that is, what you “do” on the inside, it is easiest to share a meditation with that intention.

And … I’ll riff on it a bit too, since the subject points to the deep end of how meditation can transform us, and gives me great joy to reflect upon.

Openness (for me) is another way to talk about equanimity, which is the skill of not interfering with anything happening in our direct in-the-moment experience. 

The opposite of equanimity is you hear a loud sound, and your body tenses. Or a challenging emotion comes up, and you just don’t have the bandwidth to go there right now (understandably), so you try to quash it down, or distract yourself in some way. Or you’re having a great time with a friend, and you don’t want it to end, so you sort of hold on to the moment, dragging your feet.

Both pushing away and holding on are forms of resistance, and resistance is uncomfortable. In meditation-speak, it’s part of suffering.

Openness can be an antidote to that suffering. It’s a way to not carry the pain of the moment – or the pleasure of the moment – with us into the future. We reset to the pain or pleasure of the actual moment, and this is far more manageable than the gigantic energy suck of fighting and agonizing with things that aren’t here.

Opening means letting experience be just what it is. 

Simple, but not easy. Not easy because we often don’t notice the many subtle ways we interfere with experience. And even if we do notice them, most of us never explicitly learn how to smooth them out.

Meditation is a life-long training in exactly this. 

Over time, as we open again and again, something wild can begin to happen. Openness itself begins to increase in authority, and thoughts and feelings and even sensory input begin to decrease in authority. It’s what’s known in perceptual psychology as a figure-ground reversal. That which was once in the background is now in the foreground. So fixated were we on the content of our experience, we never noticed the open space of awareness where it was all happening. Now we notice it more and more. 

The understanding that comes online is: I am that space. Whatever the heck else I may be, I am also the open spacious ease within which everything is coming and going. 

And … Space is the Place! Space has no problems. Space is pure acceptance. Space always accepts what’s in it – it doesn’t suddenly seize up and push out some bit of life it doesn’t like. Space can’t get scratched by a cloud, or thumped by a boot, or threatened by an angry word. Space can’t even die, no more than the space inside a building dies once the building is demolished. 

What a relief!

What then?

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In this month’s installment, I respond to Helen’s question about boundaries. Below is her note, shared with permission.

Jeff

Helen’s Note: Hi Jeff, I'm 61 years old and have grown kids and a husband who are dealing with uncertainty and change in their lives. I'd love a meditation about not taking on their struggles as my own and returning to my peace. Thank you, Helen

—---------------------

Hi Helen – I’ve been there, friend. Not only are we exhausted by our own stuff, we get to be exhausted by everyone else’s stuff too!

The fact that you’re noticing this is happening in the first place is huge. The next step is getting curious about what’s happening in your body at these times. For me, the experience of taking on other people’s struggles is mostly an experience of losing contact with my body. For example, when my preschooler son gets dysregulated and throws a massive tantrum, suddenly I’m dysregulated. I’m desperately trying to calm him down because I actually can’t stand how it all feels in my own body. His discomfort is my discomfort – we’re tangled up like two yo-yo strings.

If I can become aware this is happening, then I can sometimes drop my attention into my feet – connecting to the sense of my own body – and from there let the wave of urgent feelings inside me pass. Interestingly, when I can stay present with this boundary, he’s often quicker to settle.

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This month, I respond to Mar, who is baffled by the idea of paradox. Below is her note, shared with permission, and a guided meditation.

Mar’s Note:

Hi Jeff,

My name is Mar.

One of the biggest ideas I struggle with in meditation is the seemingly never-ending paradoxes. I’m everything but I’m nothing. I’m everybody but I’m nobody. What we do matters because it shapes our future but the only thing that exists is this exact moment. Happiness beyond external factors is the goal but Buddhism focuses on life’s interdependence. Happiness beyond external factors sounds awesome but we depend so much on relationships and community. I think of the quote, “wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. Between the two, my life flows.” 

I understand two things can be true at once. But figuring out where to sit between two truths   

makes my mind do somersaults. Does everything matter and nothing matter at the same time? Or does everything matter in one moment, and nothing in the next? Do external influences matter, but only part of the time?

Hi Mar, it’s Jeff.

Great question. The first and most important thing to say is: I have no idea!

Now let’s explore paradoxes, because there seems to be no way around them. There are entire forms of practice that are about banging your head against exactly the confounds you describe. That’s what they do in Zen with koan practice. Impossible questions that crack us open to the mystery. If you’re drawn to paradox, you will find a whole rich path of practice to investigate (for a start, try this book).

I’ve noticed paradoxes only seem paradoxical to my rational mind. In experience itself, where is the paradox? There’s just sounds and sights and sensations and feelings and the thought “wait, that’s impossible!” floating past a random image of a cheeseburger. It can be a helpful exercise to identify where you really really think something must be true – where you have, essentially, collapsed the fundamental indeterminacy of reality into a static rule – and then to laugh at yourself, because … who do you think you are, and why should reality care? One of my favorite practices is laughing at the ridiculousness of my chimpanzee models of reality. Psychedelics are also very good for this.

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This is a column called “Hey Jeff”, where I create a customized meditation in response to someone’s unique situation or challenge or curiosity.

In this month’s installment, I respond to Karen, who has cancer. Below is her note, shared with permission. I turned part of my reply into a guided meditation. If it speaks to you, save it for a hard day. Or explore it now. It’s meant to help the only way I know how: one moment at a time. 

Thank you Karen for your words – wishing you courage and equanimity and a full recovery.  

Jeff

Karen’s Note: Surgery after surgery, followed by chemo and now radiation have put my body through the wringer after my colorectal cancer diagnosis eight months ago. Working as a psychotherapist to support others on their healing path has kept me both well-distracted and well-worn. I’ve had to keep it moving and I’ve been afraid to slow down.

I’m profoundly tired, sad and scared. I feel powerless, which often leads to rage and reactivity.

I don’t want to be with myself, my loneliness, my shame, my terror or my physical pain. I often disassociate so as not to feel. But of course this only leads to more disconnection, loneliness, shame, rage and pain. I crave connection, most certainly with myself as well as with others.

How do I maintain a connected relationship with my body through this traumatic time? How do I safely access a daily meditation practice when I'm very often at the intersection of freak out, burn out, and some version of fight, flight, freeze or fawn?

Thanks xx

Hi Karen, it’s Jeff. 

What an awful situation. Exhaustion, physical and emotional pain, worry about health and the future, all while needing to keep up some kind of professional momentum. It’s a crushing load. I’m sorry you’re carrying it, friend.

I’ve never had cancer so I can’t say anything about that. But I’ve had a lot of physical pain and I’ve dealt with hopelessness and suicidal despair in my life. Moments when I can’t imagine enduring one more second. 

At these times, different strategies work for different people. 

Here’s what helps me:

First, I move my physical body to a new space. Another room, an empty church, somewhere in nature. A different setting for a different set. I make it a pilgrimage. I complain the whole time I’m going, because I think it’s bogus and it won’t do anything.

Once I arrive, I sit and ask for help. I don’t know who I’m asking: life, God, leprechauns? I don’t care. The point is to get humble. To get on my knees, and know my own powerlessness. To make space for life to find me.

I put my hands on my chest or my belly and I breathe out. I feel the contact with my hands. I try to let that small intimacy settle my nervous system a bit.

I say ‘I’m sorry for what you’re going through.’ I say ‘I love you.’ Something genuine – how would you actually talk to a friend? How would you want someone to talk to you? 

And then I say, ‘just this moment.’

I do my best to shrink-wrap my attention out of the past and the future and into my senses, into the exact right now. That’s key.

If my body is in a lot of pain, I find someplace else to pay attention – maybe the tip of my fingers, or the palms of my hands. Or I focus on sound: a background hum, the swish of passing tires on wet pavement, the wind in the trees.

I say, ‘just this moment.’

That’s all I have to get through. One moment at a time.

I need a break from thinking I need to fix my body, or my problems, or the world’s problems. A break from the fear and overwhelm and heavy sense of responsibility.

So I surrender. I give up control. And I try to zoom my attention into the smallest neutral thing.

Just this tingly sensation in my body as it emerges, this little bit of it. Or just that sound, dipping my attention in like a hummingbird.

This immediate thing, and nothing else. Nothing further out, nothing up in the head, nothing out in the future. Connecting to right here.

When I drift, or get hijacked by despair or urgency or doubt, I come back to some immediate neutral sensation. I come back a hundred times.

I move my attention into and through and under a sensation until I find what feels like the tiniest piece of sacredness. So tiny. A piece of the world that has nothing to do with me. Or a piece of my body that has nothing to do with my controlling mind.

Something happening all on its own.

I can’t explain it, but doing this can feel like a relief. It can feel like connection with myself.

I tell myself everything is bearable one moment at a time. I tell myself it’s OK.

I tell myself, 'just this moment.'

I imagine my pain and helplessness draining out through my feet into the ground.

I ask for help.

I give up.

I don’t expend any energy doing this, because I don’t have any energy to expend. It’s more a letting go of bound-up energy, of resistance and useless wheel-spinning. I don’t even have to summon up some kind of special self-compassion, because what I’m doing is already the essence of self-compassion.

Giving myself rest and acceptance.

I find that after doing the above for a few minutes – or longer, if possible – I feel cleared out. Less alone.

And then I text or call a friend. Because you’re right, the habit of disconnection and shame and isolation makes everything worse. I force myself to connect out to another nervous system. I personally can’t do this when I’m in that brutal contracted pain space, but I can do it after I’ve surrendered the way I’ve just described.

Hope that helps my friend, and that you get the healing you need. 

Warmly,

Jeff

PS -   My friend – a terrific meditation teacher and human – has written quite a bit about her long journey with cancer, and created meditations on Ten Percent Happier for chronic pain and anxiety. Sebene also has a beautiful Substack: . We speak with Sebene in the next episode of , where she guides a practice on how to cultivate intuition.

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