From: hubermanlab
Meditation is a powerful practice for enhancing focus, mood, and overall well-being. A nuanced understanding of how it affects the brain and body can significantly impact its benefits. A key concept discussed in recent scientific discourse is the varying focus between interoception and exteroception during meditation.
Interoception and Exteroception: Definitions
Interoception involves the perception of internal body states, such as heart rate, breathing, and the fullness of the stomach. It is essentially how we perceive internal bodily sensations. Conversely, exteroception relates to external perception—how we perceive the world outside our bodies, such as sights, sounds, and spatial awareness.
Meditation as a Dynamic Continuum
In the practice of meditation, interoception and exteroception form a continuum along which one’s focus can shift. Andrew Huberman suggests that recognizing where your focus naturally lies on this continuum is crucial for developing an effective meditation practice tailored to your needs.
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Interoceptive Focus: This type of meditation involves directing attention inward, focusing on bodily sensations and internal thoughts. For instance, focusing on the third eye (prefrontal cortex) during meditation puts an emphasis on interoception [00:12:17].
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Exteroceptive Focus: This meditation aims to channel attention outward, focusing on the external environment. Practicing open-eye meditation or concentrating on external objects can enhance exteroceptive awareness [02:00:55].
Benefits and Practical Application
Understanding your interoceptive versus exteroceptive bias can help you select the right meditation approach. For instance:
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Individuals with high levels of anxiety often have heightened interoceptive awareness, which may mean focusing outward could help them avoid becoming overly absorbed in bodily sensations that might trigger anxiety [00:40:06]. For more on addressing anxiety, see addressing_anxiety_and_confidence.
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Those who are disconnected from their physical sensations might benefit from interoceptive meditation, bringing their awareness inward to foster a better connection with their bodily states [00:39:00].
A Balanced Approach
Huberman emphasizes achieving a balance between interoception and exteroception to maximize meditation’s benefits. He suggests using meditation to deliberately shift attention along this continuum:
- Starting Point: Begin by assessing your current focus, whether it is more interoceptive or exteroceptive.
- Adaptive Practice: If you are naturally interoceptive, try focusing externally during meditation, and vice versa.
Conclusion
The balance between interoception and exteroception in meditation is essential for optimizing the practice to suit individual needs. Understanding and leveraging this continuum can help achieve a more profound sense of well-being, contentment, and adaptability in both meditation and everyday life.
For further exploration of these concepts and a practical guide to engaging with this continuum, consider implementing the Space-Time Bridging (STB) meditation practice suggested by Huberman, designed to exercise these perceptual shifts across different ranges of internal and external focus [02:16:46]. See our guide on spacetime_bridging_and_meditation_techniques for more information.
Interoception vs. Exteroception
The balance you maintain between focusing inward (interoception) and outward (exteroception) during meditation can powerfully reshape your meditation results, equipping you with a toolkit for better mental presence and emotional regulation. For insights into how meditation affects cognition, refer to effects_of_meditation_on_cognitive_performance.