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Speaker 1: to Coast to Coast a m dot com and signing

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Speaker 1: up for Coast Insider. Now here's a highlight from Coast

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Speaker 1: to Coast AM on I Heart Radio and welcome back

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Speaker 1: to Coast to Coast George, and are you with you now?

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Speaker 1: He was last with me almost four years ago when

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Speaker 1: we talked with him about his best selling book Ten

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Speaker 1: Percent Happier Now. Dan here Us has another book called

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Speaker 1: Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics that he wrote with Jeff Warren

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Speaker 1: and Carly Adler. Dan of course, is the co en

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Speaker 1: anchor of ABC's Nightline and the weekend editions of Good

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Speaker 1: Morning America. He is the author as I'm suction of

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Speaker 1: ten Percent Happier that was a New York Times bestseller

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Speaker 1: that he launched ten Percent Happier podcast and an app

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Speaker 1: called ten Percent Happier Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics. Dan, welcome back,

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Speaker 1: good to talk with you. Thanks for having me again.

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Speaker 1: Great to be up late with you. And you were

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Speaker 1: in the New York studios or people are gonna say,

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Speaker 1: my gosh, you must be in a studio with George

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Speaker 1: right next to him. You sound great. I wish I was.

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Speaker 1: I'm on the wrong coast. So tell us a little

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Speaker 1: bit about this story that got you to write this

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Speaker 1: book Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics. And I'm gonna play a

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Speaker 1: little clip a little later with you, which you'll of

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Speaker 1: course remember, but I think it's important to the story

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Speaker 1: what happened to you? So uh, the the very beginning

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Speaker 1: of the story is that I had a panic attack

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Speaker 1: on national television on a little show we do here

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Speaker 1: at ABC News called Good Morning America. This was back

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Speaker 1: in two thousand four. Um. I like to point out that,

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Speaker 1: because I'm a huge masochist, actually asked our research department

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Speaker 1: to find out exactly how many people were watching and

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Speaker 1: they came back with a really reassuring number of five

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Speaker 1: point one million. So yeah, it was. I mean, you'll

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Speaker 1: play the clip of it at some point when we'll

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Speaker 1: play it pretty soon. It was really an uncomfortable moment,

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Speaker 1: and uh, it um set me off on a long,

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Speaker 1: windy road that ultimately led me to embracing something that

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Speaker 1: I always thought was ridiculous, which is meditation. Let's yeah,

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Speaker 1: let's play a little bit of the clip right now,

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Speaker 1: and let me set the stage for this because if

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Speaker 1: you saw the clip, if you can see it, and

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Speaker 1: it's available on YouTube for example, it's there you'll see

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Speaker 1: Dan's facial expressions as this panic attack is starting to

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Speaker 1: take him over. Uh. Listening on the radio, you'll hear

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Speaker 1: him change a little bit, but not much. But if

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Speaker 1: you saw him, you'd see it. From ABC News, this

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Speaker 1: is good morning, America. Welcome to the most embarrassing day

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Speaker 1: of my life. We're gonna go now to Dan Harris

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Speaker 1: Is at the news desk. Charlie and Diane, thank you.

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Speaker 1: This is me ten years ago. And the reason this

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Speaker 1: is the most embarrassing day of my life is not

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Speaker 1: that it looks like I've been attacked by a blow

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Speaker 1: dryer and a can of hairspray. No, it's that I

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Speaker 1: am about to freak out on national television. Health news

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Speaker 1: now one of the world's most commonly prescribed medications, maybe

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Speaker 1: providing a big bonus. Researchers report people who take cholesterol

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Speaker 1: lowing drugs called statins for at least five years may

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Speaker 1: also lower their risk for cancer, but it's too early

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Speaker 1: to prescribe sentence slowly for cancer production. At this point,

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Speaker 1: I realized I'm helpless, so I bail right in the middle.

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Speaker 1: That doesn't for news. We're gonna go back now to

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Speaker 1: Robbing and Charlie. Well, you could hear yourself struggling. Dan.

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Speaker 1: Did you think you were having a heart attack or something? No,

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Speaker 1: I knew exactly what was going on. Actually, I knew

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Speaker 1: I was having a panic attack. Um, I didn't know why.

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Speaker 1: We can talk about the why in a moment, but uh, yeah,

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Speaker 1: it was. It was very clear to me what was

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Speaker 1: going on. I had had stage fright. Um my entire rear.

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Speaker 1: I actually made the joke in my first book that

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Speaker 1: my career up into that point reference represented a triumph

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Speaker 1: of narcissism over fear because I liked being on TV

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Speaker 1: more than I feared, uh the messing up, messing up

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Speaker 1: in front of a large audience. But I, uh, you

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Speaker 1: know when it when it ended, When the when I

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Speaker 1: prematurely ended my newscast and tossed it back to the

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Speaker 1: main hosts of the show, Charlie Gibson and Diane Sawyer.

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Speaker 1: Everybody came running over and asked me what happened, and

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Speaker 1: I lied and said I didn't know. But in fact

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Speaker 1: I knew that it was a panic attack. You've had

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Speaker 1: some before this episode, not a full not full blown

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Speaker 1: panic attacks, but I'd had moments of getting very, very nervous,

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Speaker 1: but I was always able to kind of pull it back.

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Speaker 1: This time, I couldn't. It just got away from me,

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Speaker 1: and you know, my heart was racing, my lungs seized up.

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Speaker 1: I couldn't speak anymore, I couldn't breathe. You can hear

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Speaker 1: if you're listening closely, that my breathing is labored and heavy.

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Speaker 1: And I just I couldn't do what one needs to do,

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Speaker 1: and one is a broadcaster, as you know very well,

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Speaker 1: which is to speak. And uh so I hadn't. I

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Speaker 1: was helpless, as I said, and uh yeah, I mean

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Speaker 1: this is an ancient panic attacks or the fight or

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Speaker 1: flight um uh response is something we evolved for, you know,

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Speaker 1: we have we It was for it was useful in

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Speaker 1: the context of being a caveman, when you were confronted

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Speaker 1: with a saber tooth tiger. It was he was useful

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Speaker 1: to have your brain flood with adrenaline and the body

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Speaker 1: respond in a very specific way. But now panic attacks,

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Speaker 1: we get them in situations where it's completely inappropriate, like

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Speaker 1: in a meeting with our boss and when we're claustrophobic

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Speaker 1: or um when we're in front of a large audience.

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Speaker 1: And this was an example of that. Dan, I've got

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Speaker 1: a friend who does some part time ring announcing at

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Speaker 1: boxing events, and he's based out of Saint Louis, and

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Speaker 1: he was doing one for Don King that was going

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Speaker 1: to be beamed and streamed. So they told him, you're

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Speaker 1: gonna have a few million people watch in you And

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Speaker 1: he goes in the ring and he loses it. He

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Speaker 1: and he and he gets hit with what he said

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Speaker 1: was the worst panic attack of his life. He thought

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Speaker 1: he was going to go down right there. For people

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Speaker 1: who haven't had one of these, it's got to be

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Speaker 1: an awful feeling. My gosh, it's very common for people

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Speaker 1: to have them and think, as you said before, that

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Speaker 1: they're dying. I think that they're having a heart attack. UM.

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Speaker 1: It that is, that is extremely common. Um. If you've

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Speaker 1: never experienced it before, you will. You know. It feels awful,

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Speaker 1: awful because your your mind and body are in mutiny.

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Speaker 1: And and it's this, it's this vicious cycle because the

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Speaker 1: more your body freaks out, the more your mind freaks out,

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Speaker 1: and then as a consequence, your body starts freaking out

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Speaker 1: even more, and then your mind starts freaking out even more,

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Speaker 1: and it just cycles and cycles and cycles. Ironically, a

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Speaker 1: week and a half ago, during some of my open lines,

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Speaker 1: we talked about panic attacks and some of the stories

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Speaker 1: that rolled in were absolutely staggering. Will do that again

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Speaker 1: next hour with you when we take questions and phone calls. Now,

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Speaker 1: this latest work, of course, called Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics.

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Speaker 1: Tell me about the title. I. Uh So, I wrote

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Speaker 1: tempers and Happier, in which I told my story of

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Speaker 1: how I had a panic attack and then ultimately kind

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Speaker 1: of threw me into the world of self help and

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Speaker 1: uh and ultimately landed me on something that I really

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Speaker 1: I had always thought was bolognay, which is meditation, but

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Speaker 1: that actually there's all this science that suggests it's really

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Speaker 1: good for you. And so I told that whole story,

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Speaker 1: and it was kind of a I describe it as

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Speaker 1: an argument dressed up as a memoir. In other words,

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Speaker 1: the book was a memoir, but really it was an argument.

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Speaker 1: The argument was you should meditate. And the way I

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Speaker 1: made the argument was to tell my personal and often

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Speaker 1: very embarrassing story. I not, first of all, I didn't

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Speaker 1: think anybody was going to read it. I was my

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Speaker 1: I was thinking, you know, I'm like a B level

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Speaker 1: news guy who's writing a book about a niche subject.

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Speaker 1: And but to the extent that I, first of all

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Speaker 1: I got, I got kind of lucky because the book

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Speaker 1: came out right as meditation was starting to get cool.

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Speaker 1: It was the first time in my life I've ever

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Speaker 1: been ahead of a trend. And uh so people started

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Speaker 1: to read the book and it became successful. And I

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Speaker 1: naively and somewhat cavalierly assumed that anybody who read the

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Speaker 1: book would start to meditate, as if they were like,

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Speaker 1: you know, put the book down and hurl themselves into

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Speaker 1: the lotus position and start meditating. That was that was,

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Speaker 1: as I said, naive um, and it was it really

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Speaker 1: underestimated how hard it is for people to form healthy habits.

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Speaker 1: You know, I talked about evolution before, how we evolved

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Speaker 1: to have a panic attack and or or to have

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Speaker 1: the fight or flight response in certain situations. Well, the

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Speaker 1: other thing evolution did for us, or did not do

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Speaker 1: it for us, is it didn't bequeath us a mind

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Speaker 1: and a brain that is good at adopting healthy habits.

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Speaker 1: You know, we evolution so left us a brain that

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Speaker 1: was really good at detecting threats and finding um sources

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Speaker 1: of food and sexual partners. Why because evolution really only

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Speaker 1: cares about getting your DNA into future generations. And so

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Speaker 1: when I wrote them after the book came out, I

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Speaker 1: I realized that I was wrong in my assumption that

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Speaker 1: anybody who read it would start meditating. And so I

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Speaker 1: did a couple of things. One, as I started up,

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Speaker 1: you mentioned in your very very kind introduction that I

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Speaker 1: have an app company called Temper sund Happier, and we

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Speaker 1: teach people how to meditate through this app, and it's

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Speaker 1: we have all these amazing teachers. And as being part

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Speaker 1: of this company, I saw firsthand this rich pageant of

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Speaker 1: human neurosis that get in the way of people who

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Speaker 1: want to meditate. I'm talking. I don't really, I'm not

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Speaker 1: aiming to convert people who don't want to meditate, But

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Speaker 1: there are millions of people out there and want to

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Speaker 1: meditate but can't do it for a whole bevy of reasons.

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Speaker 1: And so I figured, Okay, let me write another book

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Speaker 1: in which I systematically, you know, taxonomyze and tackle all

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Speaker 1: the obstacles to meditation. But because I didn't want it

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Speaker 1: to be a dry book, I structured it at this

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Speaker 1: book as well as a as a story, and it's

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Speaker 1: a great story, and we're going to go through some

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Speaker 1: of those cases. Most doctors Dan would probably prescribe Xenix

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Speaker 1: or some other mood altering anxiety anti anxiety pill. You

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Speaker 1: don't seem to favor that. You think meditations the way

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Speaker 1: to go. I take it. Oh. I Actually I'm a

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Speaker 1: maximalist when it comes to mental well being or any

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Speaker 1: kind of well being. I think you should pull every

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Speaker 1: level you can as long as as it's healthy. Um. So,

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Speaker 1: if your doctor recommends UH medication and you feel that

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Speaker 1: she or he is making the recommendation wisely, and then

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Speaker 1: I have nothing. I have nothing bad to say about medication.

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Speaker 1: I just think that we need to look at the

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Speaker 1: full range of options. So when we know what works

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Speaker 1: when it comes to mental well being, it's uh, eating well,

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Speaker 1: getting enough sleep, having good relationships, having meaningful work or

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Speaker 1: volunteer work in your life, exercising my and medication if

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Speaker 1: your doctor recommends it. My What I'm just trying to

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Speaker 1: say is that meditation should also be on the list

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Speaker 1: of no brainers when it comes to taking care of yourself.

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Speaker 1: And when you say meditation, what are we talking about?

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Speaker 1: Great question. I'm very glad you asked that, because the

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Speaker 1: word meditation is a little bit like the words sports.

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Speaker 1: It describes a whole range of activities. You know, badminton

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Speaker 1: and water polo have very little to do with one another.

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Speaker 1: So there are tons of kinds of meditation. When I

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Speaker 1: talk about meditation, I'm talking about mindfulness meditation, which is

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Speaker 1: derived from Buddhism, but it is thoroughly secular. It's been

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Speaker 1: stripped of any religious lingo or metaphysical claims, and mindfulness

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Speaker 1: meditation the reason why I was drawn to it is

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Speaker 1: because it's the kind of meditation that has been studied

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Speaker 1: most extensively in the labs and has been shown. Now

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Speaker 1: the research is really in its early stages, but the

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Speaker 1: research suggests that mindfulness meditation can lower your blood pressure,

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Speaker 1: boost your immune system, and literally rewire key parts of

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Speaker 1: your brain that have to do with stress, focus, self awareness, compassion,

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Speaker 1: and so that that is really what intrigued me as

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Speaker 1: a skeptic. And uh so, so what is it I can?

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Speaker 1: I can give it to you very quickly. Um. Beginning

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Speaker 1: mindfulness meditation is extremely simple, really only three steps. The

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Speaker 1: first is to sit comfortably with your back straight so

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Speaker 1: that you don't fall asleep, although worst things could happen.

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Speaker 1: Many people close their eyes. If you don't like to

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Speaker 1: close your eyes, you can kind of just gaze in

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Speaker 1: a neutral way at on the on the side, something

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Speaker 1: on the ground. And then the second step is to

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Speaker 1: bring your full attention to the feeling of your breath

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Speaker 1: coming in and going out. You know, pick a spot

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Speaker 1: your nose, your chest, or your belly. Your not thinking

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Speaker 1: about your breath, You're just feeling the raw data of

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Speaker 1: the physical sensations of the breath coming in and going out.

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Speaker 1: The third step is the big, the most important thing,

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Speaker 1: because as soon as you try to do this seemingly

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Speaker 1: easy thing, your mind will go nuts. You You'll start

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Speaker 1: thinking about what's for lunch? Why did I say that

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Speaker 1: stupid thing to my boss? Where did gerbils run wild?

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Speaker 1: You know? Why did dances with wolves be good Fellas

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Speaker 1: for best picture? Blah blah blah. And the whole game

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Speaker 1: is just to notice when you've become distracted, and to

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Speaker 1: start again and again and again and and that's a

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Speaker 1: bicep curl for your brain. Listen to more Coast to

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Speaker 1: Coast AM every weeknight at one a m. Eastern and

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Speaker 1: go to Coast to Coast am dot com for more