Dr. Richard Davidson

The goal, if you will, is not to change or to fix anything.

If you will, the invitation is to shift from a mode of doing to a mode of simply being.

Exactly.

Yeah, so I think that the way you describe it is basically accurate with a little bit of perhaps tweak.

So if one is invited to do this and wants

one finds oneself ruminating or planning, for example, which is supposedly an activity you're not supposed to be doing, rather than trying to stop it, it's simply to be aware of it.

Wow, I'm now planning or I'm now ruminating about something that happened in the past.

What really is most important is the invitation not to change it, not to actively try to shift it, but to simply be aware.

And one of the, I think, conjectures in all of this is that there's so much going on under the hood that we're typically not aware of.

Our lives are moving at such a pace that the information that is transpiring is

is occurring at such a rapid rate that we are typically aware of only a small fraction of that.

And this is a practice that's inviting you to simply be aware of that.

And not doing is a helpful kind of thing because if we're acting in the world, we obviously need to navigate and there are things we obviously need to do to be safe and to protect ourselves and so forth.

And so that will engage other mechanisms.

Totally.

And you're naming something super important.

And, you know, I think that the way you characterize the second person who is more self-aware, there's more than just self-awareness in your description.

There's a kind of holding back

It's not just monitoring, but there's a kind of suppression almost.

It's a lot of work.