Explore the awakening power of Zen koans with Henry Shukman.
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Series
The Koan Way
Henry Shukman
The Waking Up Difference
Go beyond simple meditation
Discover the true purpose of meditation and experience the freedom of real mindfulness. Why stop at feeling calm when you can transform your worldview?
Learn to recognize the “spacious nature of impersonal, open awareness.”
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Series
Meditations for Awakening
Jayasāra
Investigate the fleeting yet infinitely rich character of the present moment.
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Series
The Nature of Now
John Astin
Develop a more intuitive mindfulness practice, as you explore various levels of awareness.
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Series
The Spectrum of Awareness
Diana Winston
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Guided meditations to help you experience deep relaxation and rest.
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Meditation
Meditations for Sleep
Jayasāra & Jitindriya
Sam, Dan, and Joseph discuss different meanings of nonduality across Buddhist traditions.
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Conversation
What Is Nonduality?
Dan Harris, Joseph Goldstein & Sam Harris
Simple and uncommon exercises to reveal what’s hidden in plain sight.
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Lesson
The Art of Noticing
Rob Walker
Explore Topics
Let content themes guide your journey and discover sessions and conversations about different life experiences.
Mindfulness and meditation: Meditation is a way of training attention. At its core, it’s simply noticing your thoughts as they arise and pass, giving yourself space to observe them without getting pulled into judgment or provoked to reaction.
Anxiety, worry, and stress: Anxiety, worry, and stress typically emerge out of repetitive thinking that’s rooted in resistance to what’s perceived as happening.
Life transitions are periods when familiar roles, identities, or expectations begin to shift. These changes—whether welcome or difficult—often unsettle how we understand ourselves by exposing hidden beliefs and habits.
Sleep is a natural biological process, not something you can force or optimize into existence. Meditation can change how you relate to wakefulness, restlessness, and the effort that often keeps sleep at bay.
Psychedelics can produce dramatic changes in consciousness, often making experience feel more open, fluid, or less centered around a fixed sense of self.
Explore Traditions
Dive into rich spiritual and philosophical traditions, interpreted through the lens of expert practitioners’ experiences.
Vipassana is a method of closely examining your thoughts, emotions, and sensations. These appearances constitute your experience in every moment, and they’re constantly arising, changing, and dissolving in awareness.
Zen is a Buddhist tradition centered on direct experience in everyday life. Through seated meditation and close attention to ordinary activities, Zen practices invite you to meet experience as it is.
Stoicism is a practical philosophy focused on distinguishing what you can control from what you can’t. It aims to reduce unnecessary suffering, increase resilience in everyday life, and prioritize what really matters.
Modern psychology and neuroscience study how thought, emotion, and behavior arise from the brain and mind. Waking Up draws on these fields to explain why we struggle, how patterns form, and what actually supports meaningful change.
Through stories, images, music, and language, arts and literature give form to experience, revealing patterns that feel simultaneously personal and universal.
Hear from 100+ interdisciplinary teachers
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Sam Harris
Sam Harris is a neuroscientist, philosopher, five-time New York Times bestselling author, and creator of the Waking Up app. He has practiced meditation for over 30 years and has studied with Tibetan, Indian, Burmese, and Western meditation teachers across the world.
Learn More“The Waking Up app has led to my most consistent meditation practice. Family and staff members also use it because we find it to be such a powerful tool.”
Andrew Huberman
Stanford neuroscientist, host of The Huberman Lab podcast
Ways to Start
Let your curiosity guide you through the Waking Up app. Start with our 30-day Introductory Course for daily meditations and insights from Sam Harris, or dive into topics and traditions that pique your interest.
Join 50,000+ Waking Up users across 26 countries in our member-exclusive forum. The Waking Up Community is designed and developed to help people deepen their engagement with ideas and practices from the app, both online and in person.
Frequently asked questions
Join 50,000+ Waking Up users across 26 countries in our member-exclusive forum. The Waking Up Community is designed and developed to help people deepen their engagement with ideas and practices from the app, both online and in person.
Waking Up combines meditation training with insights from neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology.
Alongside guided practice, you'll explore lessons and conversations that help you better understand your mind and how to live with more clarity, awareness, and purpose.
Both.
The app includes a step-by-step Introductory Course for beginners, along with deeper theory lessons, longer practices and more advanced conversations for experienced meditators.
Start where you feel comfortable, and move forward at your own pace.
No.
Waking Up takes a secular approach to meditation. No beliefs, ideology, or spiritual commitments are required—only a willingness to examine your own experience.
Many people use Waking Up to better understand stress, anxiety, anger, and other difficult emotions.
Rather than offering quick fixes, the app teaches practical skills for working with your mind so you can respond to life's challenges with more clarity and less reactivity.
Waking Up is available through an annual subscription after a .
Your membership includes full access to the entire library of meditations, lessons, conversations, and new content released regularly.
We offer a free membership to anyone who can't afford Waking Up.
If cost is a barrier, you can request a scholarship and get full access to the app—no questions asked.
Yes.
Members can join the private Waking Up Community to discuss meditation, share insights, and connect with others interested in living more examined lives. The forum includes discussions, local meetups, and opportunities to continue the conversation beyond the app.
Yes.
You can cancel your subscription at any time through your account settings. Your access will continue through the end of your billing period.
If you're not satisfied, you can also contact support to request a refund.