Huberman Lab: How Meditation Works & Science-Based Effective Meditations

it's not just breath-centric mindfulness

TLDR

• If you tend to be inwardly focused, consider exteroceptive meditation

Practical

• Interoceptive meditation – focus on your internal state/breathing

• Exteroceptive meditation – focus on something in the environment around you

• General rules

  • inhales longer than exhales —> more alert

  • exhales longer than inhales —> more relaxed

• If prone to anxiety, exteroceptive meditation may be more helpful

Theory

• With meditation, we can either train interoceptive awareness or exteroceptive awareness

  • Interoceptive: internal awareness. Bodily sensations, thoughts, emotions, etc..

  • Exteroceptive: no self-awareness. Absorbed in the external world.

• High levels of interoception are not always helpful. High anxiety tends to correlate with high levels of interoception.

• Most meditative practices tend to promote/increase interoception

• Ideally, we want to be in the middle between interoception and exteroception and have the ability to move back and forth as appropriate

• Meditation is more about your ability to refocus rather than your ability to focus

• A wandering mind is an unhappy mind: being fully engaged in what you’re doing is the strongest predictor of happiness