Start Here
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The 28-Day
Introductory Course
“Meditation isn't a quick fix. It's a fundamental change in how you see the world.”
Sam Harris
Neuroscientist, philosopher, bestselling author, and creator of the Waking Up app.
Most of us have some idea of what meditation is.
From the outside, it can look like merely a way to relax, to manage stress, or if you’re a busy skeptic, to waste 10 precious minutes each morning.
But there are real benefits to meditation, including many related to health and well-being. But they’re only the beginning.
At Waking Up, we take a far more ambitious view of meditation. Our aim is to help you discover fundamental truths about how your mind works and, in so doing, change the way you experience your life.
The Introductory Course
28 Days with Sam Harris
Where our approach to meditation becomes a practice.
Each day pairs a guided meditation from Sam Harris with a lesson that helps you understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and what you might discover.
Listen to a sample.
In “Start Here,” Sam Harris welcomes you to the Waking Up Introductory Course and explains how meditation can change your experience of the world.
“The goal isn’t to become a meditator, even a good one. Rather, it's to dissolve the apparent boundary between meditation and the rest of your life.”
Sam Harris
28 Days | ~18 min/day | Meditation + Theory
What to Expect
The course is divided into three parts, with each building on the techniques and ideas introduced before it.
PART 1 (days 1-10)
Becoming More Present
Build a foundation for your practice by working with the breath, sound, sensations, and emotions.
PART 2 (days 11-20)
Understanding Your Mind
Explore how thoughts and emotions shape experience, and begin investigating the sense of self more directly.
PART 3 (days 21-28)
Deconstructing the Self
Deepen awareness, examine the illusion of a separate self, and stabilize insight in the midst of ordinary experience.
“Truly life changing!”
See what our users are saying.
100,000+
5-star reviews
Most meditation apps just guide you. Waking Up will teach you why to meditate and the concepts behind why it works. Changed my life.
It is so profoundly refreshing to find a tool steeped in science rather than dogma. Sam’s approach is exactly what I needed in order for it to finally ‘click.’
Life altering. The theory provided alongside the practice has made this app substantially more beneficial to me than other meditation apps.
I finally was able to properly understand the benefit of meditation beyond a mere calming and relaxing tool.
This app has probably taught me the most important skill in my adult life. I can’t recommend this app enough.
It’s meditation without the mysticism. Has taken mindfulness to the next level for me.
An incredibly rich, layered and valuable resource for living a considered life. I cannot recommend it highly enough.
This app is stunning. Been using it for almost four years. Can’t think of anything else that has impacted my life and the way I think about myself and the world.
Most meditation apps just guide you. Waking Up will teach you why to meditate and the concepts behind why it works. Changed my life.
Adam
Google Play review
June 2025
It is so profoundly refreshing to find a tool steeped in science rather than dogma. Sam’s approach is exactly what I needed in order for it to finally ‘click.’
sjaygray
App Store review
January 2026
Life altering. The theory provided alongside the practice has made this app substantially more beneficial to me than other meditation apps.
Lyle
Google Play review
October 2022
I finally was able to properly understand the benefit of meditation beyond a mere calming and relaxing tool.
Payam2001
App Store review
September 2026
This app has probably taught me the most important skill in my adult life. I can’t recommend this app enough.
Anik Dey
Google Play review
April 2025
It’s meditation without the mysticism. Has taken mindfulness to the next level for me.
Sonia Therese
Google Play review
April 2025
An incredibly rich, layered and valuable resource for living a considered life. I cannot recommend it highly enough.
Rohan Saxena
Google Play review
February 2025
This app is stunning. Been using it for almost four years. Can’t think of anything else that has impacted my life and the way I think about myself and the world.
Dan from Across the River
App Store review
January 2026
This is only the beginning.
The goal isn’t to have meditation figured out—or even to finish the Introductory Course—in 28 days.
It’s to start noticing things that once happened almost entirely outside your awareness: how thoughts take hold, how they sustain emotions, and where your mind goes when you aren’t paying attention.
Some insights come quickly. Others come only with experience and can take longer. Many members return to the Introductory Course again and again. What doesn’t click the first time will become clearer with practice.
Beyond the Introductory Course
The Waking Up app brings together hundreds of meditations, lessons, lectures, and conversations from teachers and thinkers across a wide range of contemplative traditions and disciplines.
The Introductory Course gives you the foundation to make sense of it all. From there, there's no single path through Waking Up. Deepen your practice, explore different teachers and traditions, and follow your curiosity wherever it leads.
Questions you might still have.
None at all. The Introductory Course was designed for beginners, although experienced meditators can benefit from it, too. Sam Harris guides you step by step through the fundamentals of meditation, helping you develop the skills and understanding needed to build a practice of your own.
That's perfectly fine. You don't need to adopt any specific beliefs or take anything on faith. The course invites you to investigate your own experience and discover what meditation can reveal about how your mind works. Approach the practice as an experiment: Follow the instructions, pay attention, and discover the benefits of practice for yourself.
Waking Up draws on contemplative traditions such as Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta, but you don't need to believe in any religious doctrine to benefit from the course. The emphasis is on firsthand experience, exploring the nature of your mind through meditation.
The word "spiritual" means different things in different contexts. While our teachers do use this term, at Waking Up it has more to do with contemplative insight and wisdom than with conventional religion. We don't ask you to accept anything on faith.
Not at all. The Introductory Course was designed to stand on its own, so familiarity with Sam Harris or his work is not necessary. In case you’re interested: Sam Harris is a neuroscientist, philosopher, bestselling author, and the creator of Waking Up. He has practiced meditation for more than 30 years and studied with teachers from a range of contemplative traditions.
That's to be expected. Some insights come quickly. Others come only with experience and can take longer. That’s why many members return to the Introductory Course again and again. What you don’t fully understand the first time around becomes clearer with practice.
And if you choose not to revisit the course, you may find that the ideas you encountered there become more intuitive as you explore other content in the app.
No. The course is organized into 28 days, and later sessions do build on previous ones—we structured it that way on purpose. But there's no requirement to complete them consecutively. You can move through the sessions at your own pace, taking breaks or revisiting earlier lessons. If you feel that skipping around would benefit you, you’re free to do so.
What matters most isn't the order in which you listen to the sessions or how quickly you finish the course, but what you learn in the process.
About 18 minutes. Each day combines a guided meditation of roughly 10 minutes with a slightly shorter lesson explaining the theory behind meditation. You can listen to them together or separately, depending on your schedule.
Nothing. Simply begin again. Just pick up where you left off. There's no need to start over or make up for lost time. While regular practice can help you build a habit, missing a day doesn't mean you've lost your progress.
“For me, this journey started years ago. And I'm still on it. I've built Waking Up so you can join me any time you'd like.”
Sam Harris