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August 13, 2025 68 mins

How to (constructively) lower the bar on your meditation practice.

 

Ofosu Jones-Quartey is a meditation teacher, hip-hop artist, and author based in the DC area. He’s a certified teacher with over 20 years of experience bringing mindfulness, self-compassion, and creativity to people of all ages. His stage name is “Born I,”, and his new book is called Lyrical Dharma: Hip-Hop as Mindfulness.

 

In this episode we talk about:

  • The definition of open-awareness meditation 
  • How it differs from classical concentration practices (such as focusing on your breath, or loving kindness phrases)
  • Why Ofosu chose open-awareness meditation (in direct response to his struggles with OCD)
  • How you can practice open-awareness meditation 
  • The benefits of a technique called “mental noting”
  •  The “practice self-assessment tapes” that we run in our mind
  • Self-compassion and “lowering the bar” in your meditation practice
  • The relationship between  neurodiversity and meditation in general
  • How to  depersonalize the experience of suffering
  • And we hear some of Ofosu’s music and the life experiences that inspired it



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Get ready for another Meditation Party at Omega Institute! This in-person workshop brings together Dan with his friends and meditation teachers, Sebene Selassie, Jeff Warren, and for the first time, Ofosu Jones-Quartey. The event runs October 24th-26th. Sign up and learn more here.

 

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