Dr. Richard Davidson

And that is one of the really important prerequisites for all other forms of training, of mental training.

You know, it's a network of prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate, insula.

I think those are all structures that are participating in meta-awareness.

You can be meta-aware without being awkwardly self-conscious, if you will.

So, you know, you talked earlier about flow.

I didn't jump in then, but flow can occur with or without dancing.

meta-awareness.

Really?

Yes.

A lot of flow I think occurs without meta-awareness.

So, you know, Csikszentmihalyi who first studied flow, he studied rock climbers and like a rock climber who is, I mean think about this, why do people do stuff like rock climbing?

I think that the reason why people do stuff like that is to produce this state of flow where most of those kinds of states of flow I think are states of flow without meta-awareness where you're completely absorbed in the activity and for a rock climber if there's even a momentary lapse

in attention it could be potentially lethal.

And so by arranging one's physical environment in that way you are basically forcing the default mode to be suppressed.

And the default mode is a mode that we know is associated with a lot of self-referential thought and self-referential thought often is anxiety provoking.

And so this is a way to transiently suppress the default mode.

But flow can also occur with meta-awareness.

And it doesn't diminish

the quality of the flow.

And one analogy that we can use is in a movie theater.