Andrew Huberman· PhD
Time Perception, Tool: Space-Time Bridging Meditation
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Time Perception, Tool: Space-Time Bridging Meditation
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The simple way to state this is that, when we focus our visual attention on a very narrow point, that's close to our body and our immediate experience. We tend to slice up time, very finely. We're focused on our breathing. We're focused on our heartbeats. In fact, our breathing and our internal landscape and our heartbeats become the sort of seconds hand, if you will on our experience.
when we focus our attention, visual attention or otherwise, on things close to or within our body, we tend to be fine slicing time.
whereas when we tend to focus on things far away from us, we tend to parse or carve up time within bigger bins.
Why is the T in there-- the time? Space-time bridging, because this is space? But time is in there because when you focus in close, your slicing of time is finer. You notice the subtle fluctuations in your breathing and things that are happening up close. Whereas when you focus further out, your perception of time actually changes, which is why in panoramic vision we are calm.
Changing your visual perception changes your cognitive perception, which changes your emotional experience.
So my morning meditation, if you will-- it's more of a perceptual exercise-- is to step through these different time domains, to close my eyes and focus on my internal state, open my eyes and focus on something close by, look a little bit further, look a bit further, think about myself on the globe, the whole world moving.
When you open your eyes and you look at something in your immediate environment, when you move from so-called interoception to exteroception, your perception of time shifts fairly dramatically, and you now perceive time according to, believe it or not, the speed of images moving in your environment relative to you. And then as you look out further on to, say, the horizon, you extend the time domain even more.
when we focus our visual attention on a very narrow point that's close to our body and our immediate experience, we tend to slice up time very finely.