Jonathan Foust

By Jonathan Foust

What's Jonathan Foust about?

Senior teacher at the Insight Meditation Community of Washington and co-founder of the Meditation Teacher Training Institute, Jonathan Foust share weekly talks, guided meditations and inquiries that explore how to cultivate an awakened heart and mind.

5.0

127 ratings

Download our free app to listen on your phone

LAST EPISODE

Am I Dreaming? Thoughts on...

09.28.2023

This talk explores how to deconstruct beliefs. You’ll learn about the origin of thoughts and beliefs, the art of interrupting the stream of thinking, the art of deconstructing beliefs and the importance, when you do this work, to err on ...

Jonathan Foust episodes:

09.28.2023 Am I Dreaming? Thoughts on Thinking Part 3: Investigating Beliefs This talk explores how to deconstruct beliefs. You’ll learn about the origin of thoughts and beliefs, the art of interrupting the stream of thinking, the art of deconstructing beliefs and the importance, when you do this work, to err on ...
09.21.2023 Am I Dreaming? Thoughts on Thinking Part 2: The Power of Mental Noting This talk explores the power of noting or labeling your inner experience. You’ll learn how you can cut through discursive thinking by training your attention to the sense fields, but also what it means to ‘take the seat of the ...
09.13.2023 Am I Dreaming? Thoughts on Thinking, Part 1: Embodied Awareness This talk explores how to cut through the trance of thinking. You’ll learn how turning toward awareness itself reveals how much you rely on thinking and some practical strategies using embodied awareness for ‘remembering’ who and what you truly are.
08.31.2023 How to Increase Your Capacity for Wisdom and Insight This talk explores how you can open to greater insight and wisdom in your life. You’ll learn about the characteristics of a wise person, what gets in the way of wisdom, the anatomy of intuition and insight and the natural ...
08.23.2023 Concentration, Mindfulness and Insight This talk explores the power of paying attention on purpose as well as the power of non-judging awareness. You’ll learn about how getting control of your concentration can make a huge difference in your life as well as what happens ...
08.17.2023 The Keys to Lasting Happiness [archive] This talk explores how you can cultivate lasting happiness. You'll learn how to avoid the biggest trap in seeking happiness and how you can cultivate happiness both externally - through wise and skillful action - as well as internally - ...
08.12.2023 The Best Technique [archive] This talk reveals the best technique for awakening heart and mind. You’ll learn about techniques that awaken your capacity for sustained present-moment awareness, techniques for cultivating awareness of change, techniques for purifying the heart and techniques for opening to the ...
08.01.2023 Frank Sinatra Got It Right: Do Be Do Be Do This talk explores what I think of as the “Frank Sinatra Sutta.” You’ll learn the importance in meditation - and life - of willful doing combined with conscious being. The result of this balance is ‘knowing,’ the arising of insight ...
07.25.2023 Change Yourself, Change the World (archive) This archive talk explores how your perception of stress and suffering in the world is a mirror your inner world. You’ll learn how, by reflecting on the core teachings of suffering, the cause of suffering, the cessation of suffering and ...
07.19.2023 4 Reasons I Meditate This talk explores why, after 52 years of practice, I still meditate. You’ll learn about the science behind meditation, what all great traditions say about the practice, the power of empirical evidence and the potency of the intention to live ...
07.11.2023 More Practice Questions with Tara and Jonathan (Part 2) We’re back! We had so much fun last time we are doing another. Here’s the second installment of practice questions with Tara Brach and Jonathan Foust.
06.28.2023 Practice Questions with Tara and Jonathan (Part 1) Jonathan interviews his wife, Tara Brach, regarding common practice questions and weighs in on a few himself.
06.20.2023 Understanding Joy [archive talk] This talk explores how to increase your capacity for joy and wholesome states. You’ll learn about the nature of Joy, what gets in the way of the experience and how to cultivate more and more positive and fulfilling qualities of ...
06.14.2023 Love and the Fear of Losing Love This talk explores the near-enemy of love: Attachment. You’ll learn about the nature of attachment and attachment styles in relationship as well as keys to healing what holds you back from loving fully.
06.08.2023 The Antidote to Imposter Syndrome This talk explores how to free yourself from feeling like an imposter. You’ll learn the power of self-awareness, the importance of investigating inner states and how to break out of the box of the doubting mind. You’ll also explore ways ...
05.24.2023 Conversations with Depth Practitioners: Advice on Intensive Practice with Tracy Budd Soon after retiring, Tracy Budd, who had a strong meditation practice, embarked on an exploration of meditating for four hours a day following the Elephant Path and the teachings of Culadasa. In this interview we explore what happened over the ...
05.18.2023 More on From Fear to Wisdom (2 of 2) We continue our exploration on moving from Fear to clear-seeing. You’ll explore a few protocols that have helped me enormously in shifting from feeling caught to feeling empowered again. Fear can serve as an early-warning detection system and when explored ...
05.11.2023 From Fear to Wisdom (1 of 2) This talk explores how to move from Fear to Clear-Seeing and new possibilities. You’ll learn how unresolved fear restricts the possibilities in your life and how you can turn toward fear through cognitive processes as well as somatic inquiry. When ...
05.04.2023 From the Ruthless Critic to Wise Discrimination This talk explores how you can transform your relationship with your inner critic. You’ll learn the origins of negativity bias, how that critical voice forms in your early development and how the miracle of self-awareness can lead to a life ...
04.28.2023 Sacred Wounds, Sacred Gifts This talk explores how you might transform your deepest wounds into sacred gifts. You’ll learn how stress and suffering are inevitable and how, when you deeply examine your wounds, you can unveil the gifts they offer. We’ll explore the concept ...
04.19.2023 How to Heal What’s Broken This talk explores the mechanics of healing (and how I’m healing a bone fracture.) You’ll learn how critical it is to make room for all your reactions and how to ask yourself an important question that can make room for ...
04.14.2023 The Quickest Way to Be Happy This talk explores the nature of happiness. You’ll learn how happiness truly is ‘here and now,’ how important it is to actively explore what is between you and feeling happy, how happiness is a reflection of your true nature and ...
04.04.2023 Four Ideals to Guide Your Practice This talk explores four sutras offered by the Buddha on how to awaken your heart and mind. You’ll learn the importance of cultivating a lifelong aspiration to awaken, to actively cultivate spiritual friendships, to be open and kind and to ...
03.30.2023 Compassion Strategies for Working with Pain This talk explores how to draw on compassion when in pain. You’ll learn how compassion must be balanced with wisdom (tough love) and a powerful technique for opening the frame of compassion that can dramatically shift your personal experience of ...
03.15.2023 Deconstructing Pain This talk explores strategies for working with physical pain and beyond. You’ll learn about your primary and secondary response to pain, how to discern your ‘pain recipe,’ the cost of ignoring the messages of pain and a practice where you’ll ...
03.09.2023 Pain is a Holy Messenger This talk explores how to shift your relationship to physical pain. You’ll learn how pain lives in both the body and mind, how ‘pain’ is looking out for your well-being and how your attention can dramatically affect your experience of ...
03.01.2023 My Thoughts on “How We Live is How We Die” This talk offers some thoughts and practices on how to stay awake through the journey of your life …. As told through the lens of a recent travel misadventure. You’ll learn about the nature of the ‘two selves,’ the conditioned ...
02.22.2023 How to Increase Your Capacity for Equanimity This talk explores how you can open more fully to what is considered the highest expression of practice. You’ll learn a helpful working definition of equanimity, the near-enemies and challenges of the practice and what it means to be open ...
02.21.2023 How to Increase Your Capacity for Joy This talk explores both the experience of internal joy as well as the joy that can arise on behalf of others. You’ll learn about the habitual pursuit of joy, the radical pursuit of joy, the shadow side of joy and ...
02.20.2023 How to Increase Your Capacity for Compassion This talk explores how to cultivate a wise response to suffering. You’ll learn the roots of the practice, the pitfalls and challenges, where to start and how you can tap into the immeasurable aspects of compassionate presence.
02.20.2023 How to Increase Your Capacity for Kindness This talk explores how to practice being a well-wisher to all. You’ll learn about the origination of the heart practices, where to start, how it can evolve and why these practices can be so life-changing for you.
01.10.2023 Water the Root and Enjoy the Fruit: Living from Awake Presence This talk explores the power of stepping back and hitting the reset button in your life. You’ll learn about what can happen when you remember the results you are driving toward and the power of pausing and ruthlessly taking stock ...
12.26.2022 What You Really Want Is Already Here This talk explores the nature of enlightenment. You’ll learn about the qualities of an awake being and some of the practices and traditions that help make awakening possible, ranging from willful effort to deep surrender. This talk contains multiple short ...
12.16.2022 Conversations with Depth Practitioners: Whole Brain Healing with Dr. John Britton You’ve heard about right brain / left brain functioning and may be familiar with Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor’s “God” experiences when her left brain was damaged. But what happens when you experience a right brain injury? Dr. John Britton describes ...
12.07.2022 Slow is Smooth, Smooth is Fast This talk explores how slowing down can transform your life. You’ll learn about the impact of slowing down not only to be more effective in getting things done, but how slowing down can open up new insights into the nature ...
12.02.2022 Help with Future Thinking: An Interview with Rachel Krantz from “Help Existing” This week’s podcast is from my interview with Rachel Krantz and her wonderful podcast, “Help Existing.” This week I'm talking with meditation teacher Jonathan Foust about the tendency of the mind to live in the future. Whether it's fantasizing or ...
11.24.2022 The True Magnitude of Gratitude This talk explores the transformative power of gratitude. You’ll learn how gratitude is a doorway to happiness, how gratitude is related to “evolutionary biology,” how gratitude can help you reframe your biggest challenges in life and can help you access ...
11.21.2022 Waking Up via the Seven Factors: #7 Cultivating Steadiness and Equanimity This talk explores the seventh factor of awakening. You’ll learn how this factor is the the complete expression of all and as you cultivate both spaciousness and steadiness, wisdom and compassion can flow unrestricted.
11.14.2022 Waking Up via the Seven Factors: #6 Cultivating Concentration and One-Pointedness This talk explores the power of sustained attention. You’ll learn about the consequence of chronic distraction, the levels of concentration you can achieve in your meditation practice, how to balance concentration with deep relaxation and how to bring more sustained ...
11.03.2022 Waking Up via the Seven Factors: #5 Cultivating Calm and Tranquility This talk explores how to cultivate a calm and relaxed presence. You’ll learn how tranquility is critical to mindfulness practice and sets the stage for more and more intimate awareness of what is happening and how you are holding it.
10.26.2022 Waking Up via the Seven Factors: #4 Cultivating Rapture and Joy This talk explores ways you can bring more joy into your life. You’ll learn about the two essential forms of joy and how practicing ‘yes’ to life can cultivate more aliveness, radiance and upwelling of well-being in your life.
10.23.2022 Waking Up via the Seven Factors: #3 Cultivating Energy and Vigor This talk explores ways you can cultivate greater aliveness and vitality. You’ll learn how mental and physical energy, vitality and aliveness are integral to the process of being more awake, aware and present in your life.
10.06.2022 Life is Amazing When You Align Your Actions with Your Aspirations This talk explores what happens when your actions actually align with your highest intentions. You’ll learn about what happens when your ego is in charge of autopilot, the distinction between aspiration and intention and practical techniques for bringing clear intention ...
09.29.2022 Waking Up via the Seven Factors: #2 The Art of Investigation (encore) This talk explores the power of looking closer at what is present. You’ll learn how cultivating curiosity, examining what is arising and how you are relating to it can lead to not only greater freedom, but profound insights into the ...
09.21.2022 Waking Up Via the Seven Factors: #1 Establish Mindfulness (encore) This talk explores the factors that go into not only waking up, but working with the most profound challenges in your life. You’ll learn how recognizing the filters through which you perceive is truly a key to liberation and how ...
09.17.2022 Are You Sure You Want What You Think You Want? This talk explores the nature of the wanting the mind. You’ll learn about the qualities of desire, the nature of reality, what can happen when you suspend the wanting mind and the challenges that arise when you cultivate a more ...
09.03.2022 Choose What is Already Changing This talk explores how to embrace impermanence. You’ll learn about the inevitability of change and how understanding your reactivity and biases can help you access a quality of awareness that can help you move from reactivity to wisdom, compassion, creativity ...
08.23.2022 Riding the Wave (encore talk) This talk explores how you can be more fully present to experiences as they spontaneously arise. You’ll learn how energy is intelligent and evolutionary, how you instinctively shut down the flow of things, how to fully embrace what is arising ...
08.23.2022 Meditation: Soften Inward with Mindful Outbreaths (12') In this twelve minute meditation, you'll be guided to focus on particular somatic points while relaxing with progressive exhalations, softening, feeling and moving into deeper, spacious states of awareness and presence.
08.17.2022 To Live a Life of No Regrets This talk explores what it takes to live life with a clear conscience. You’ll learn how regret is a natural part of our human experience, how helpful it can be to slow down and address your regrets as well as ...

Older episodes

Jonathan Foust

What's Jonathan Foust about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Jonathan Foust episodes:

Am I Dreaming? Thoughts on Thinking Part 3: Investigating Beliefs

Am I Dreaming? Thoughts on Thinking Part 2: The Power of Mental Noting

Am I Dreaming? Thoughts on Thinking, Part 1: Embodied Awareness

How to Increase Your Capacity for Wisdom and Insight

Concentration, Mindfulness and Insight

The Keys to Lasting Happiness [archive]

The Best Technique [archive]

Frank Sinatra Got It Right: Do Be Do Be Do

Change Yourself, Change the World (archive)

4 Reasons I Meditate

More Practice Questions with Tara and Jonathan (Part 2)

Practice Questions with Tara and Jonathan (Part 1)

Understanding Joy [archive talk]

Love and the Fear of Losing Love

The Antidote to Imposter Syndrome

Conversations with Depth Practitioners: Advice on Intensive Practice with Tracy Budd

More on From Fear to Wisdom (2 of 2)

From Fear to Wisdom (1 of 2)

From the Ruthless Critic to Wise Discrimination

Sacred Wounds, Sacred Gifts

How to Heal What’s Broken

The Quickest Way to Be Happy

Four Ideals to Guide Your Practice

Compassion Strategies for Working with Pain

Deconstructing Pain

Pain is a Holy Messenger

My Thoughts on “How We Live is How We Die”

How to Increase Your Capacity for Equanimity

How to Increase Your Capacity for Joy

How to Increase Your Capacity for Compassion

How to Increase Your Capacity for Kindness

Water the Root and Enjoy the Fruit: Living from Awake Presence

What You Really Want Is Already Here

Conversations with Depth Practitioners: Whole Brain Healing with Dr. John Britton

Slow is Smooth, Smooth is Fast

Help with Future Thinking: An Interview with Rachel Krantz from “Help Existing”

The True Magnitude of Gratitude

Waking Up via the Seven Factors: #7 Cultivating Steadiness and Equanimity

Waking Up via the Seven Factors: #6 Cultivating Concentration and One-Pointedness

Waking Up via the Seven Factors: #5 Cultivating Calm and Tranquility

Waking Up via the Seven Factors: #4 Cultivating Rapture and Joy

Waking Up via the Seven Factors: #3 Cultivating Energy and Vigor

Life is Amazing When You Align Your Actions with Your Aspirations

Waking Up via the Seven Factors: #2 The Art of Investigation (encore)

Waking Up Via the Seven Factors: #1 Establish Mindfulness (encore)

Are You Sure You Want What You Think You Want?

Choose What is Already Changing

Riding the Wave (encore talk)

Meditation: Soften Inward with Mindful Outbreaths (12')

To Live a Life of No Regrets