What is Awareness of Awareness?

2016

Finding: This research separates "knowing about your own awareness" from the raw ability to perceive a signal and from how much you simply say you notice, treating that self-monitoring capacity as its own distinct skill. It also points to a practical distinction: attending to inner experience with an anxious, reactive grip feels different from observing it with a calmer, non-judgmental stance, and that stance appears to shape how intense uncomfortable sensations become. For someone practising awareness of awareness, this hints that the quality of attention matters as much as what you notice. Keep in mind the work here was done on bodily (interoceptive) awareness in healthy adults, not on this specific non-dual technique, so it frames the idea rather than testing the practice directly.

2018

Finding: Reviewing more than 50 studies of classroom teaching, this paper found that explicitly teaching students to monitor their own thinking, noticing how they learn and where their attention goes, improved their learning results and some measures of wellbeing. That matters for this practice because it points to a hopeful conclusion: the capacity to watch your own mind is something you can strengthen with training, not a fixed trait. Keep in mind the evidence comes from schools and academic learning, not from contemplative awareness-of-awareness practice, so it supports the underlying mechanism indirectly rather than proving this technique delivers the same benefits.

2016

Finding: In this 9-month contemplative training study (the ReSource Project), healthy adults grew better at sensing their own heartbeats, a common gauge of body awareness, and those gains tracked improvements in how well people recognised their emotions. The change was gradual: only small-to-medium improvements showed up, and not until the 6- and 9-month marks, well beyond the length of a typical 8-week course. For a practitioner, this suggests that sustained attention training can slowly sharpen your read on internal bodily signals, but it asks for patience across months rather than weeks. Worth noting, the study measured accuracy at feeling the body, not awareness-of-awareness itself, so it speaks to this practice only indirectly.

2020

Finding: This study explored how closely tuned people are to their own internal bodily signals, like heartbeat and breath, and how that inner attunement relates to a stable sense of self in adults who experience functional seizures. The researchers were interested in whether a gap between what the body is actually doing and what a person consciously notices might be tied to feeling disconnected from oneself. Because the specific results and effect sizes aren't available here, this work is best read as an early look at the link between body-awareness and selfhood in a particular clinical group, not as proof that practising awareness changes seizures or dissociation. For a general practitioner, it mainly suggests why paying attention to inner bodily sensations may matter for feeling grounded in yourself, a question that still needs more direct testing.

2006

Finding: In a study of 102 healthy adults, how closely people tuned into bodily sensations helped explain the link between a person's baseline anxiety and how intensely they felt unpleasant emotions, and related work drew a line between an anxious, alarm-driven way of noticing the body and a calmer, observing one. In plain terms, it may not just be whether you pay attention to your inner experience, but how you do it, reactively or with a steady, non-judgmental stance, that shapes how strong difficult feelings become. This is early, observational work focused on awareness of the body rather than the broader awareness-of-awareness practice, so it points to a plausible mechanism rather than proof that the technique itself lowers anxiety.

2004

Finding: Using brain imaging while healthy adults tried to sense their own heartbeats, this study found that people with more activity and more gray matter in the right anterior insula, a brain region tied to sensing internal body states, were better at detecting their heartbeat and reported feeling more tuned in to what was happening inside their bodies. In practical terms, it points to a physical brain basis for the kind of inward attention that underlies practices like this one. It's worth being clear about the limits, though: this measured general body awareness during a heartbeat task, not the specific awareness-of-awareness state, so it shouldn't be read as the brain signature of this particular technique.

n = 724

Finding: This controlled study, combined with a meta-analysis of 724 people, found that experienced meditators were no better than non-meditators at detecting their own heartbeat, even though the meditators felt more confident that they could. In other words, long-term practice did not sharpen the objective ability to sense internal body signals, despite the subjective impression that it had. For someone drawn to awareness practice, this is a useful reality check: the practice may change how tuned-in you feel, but it has not been shown to measurably improve how accurately you read signals like your pulse. This looks at heartbeat perception specifically, so it doesn't rule out other benefits of the practice.

2014

Finding: This study tested how people sense their own bodies and found that "knowing how accurate your own perception is" works as a separate skill from either the raw ability to detect bodily signals or how attuned people simply believe themselves to be. In plain terms, being aware of your own awareness is its own distinct capacity, not the same thing as whatever you happen to be noticing, which is exactly the monitoring quality this practice aims to develop. Worth noting: the research measured awareness of internal bodily signals such as the heartbeat, not this specific non-dual technique, so it clarifies the concept rather than testing the practice itself.

2024

Finding: In this study, 66 people repeatedly tried to track their own heartbeat throughout the day, and the results showed that how confident someone felt about sensing their body often did not line up with how accurately they actually did it. People with weaker self-monitoring skill tended to overrate their own bodily awareness the most. For anyone practising awareness of awareness, this is a useful reality check: a growing sense that you are more tuned in to your body may not mean your perception has genuinely sharpened. Because this was a short study in a small group focused only on heartbeat sensing, it speaks more to how we measure awareness than to whether the practice works.

2019

Finding: This is a conceptual review rather than a hands-on experiment, and it makes the case that many meditation practices work by changing how the brain reads signals from inside the body, centred on a region called the insula that tracks sensations like heartbeat and breath. The authors suggest that different styles of meditation lean on different kinds of attention, and that this inner body-awareness may be a shared thread running through the benefits people report. For someone exploring awareness-of-awareness, it offers a plausible reason the practice might help you feel more tuned in, but it is a theoretical proposal about meditation broadly, not tested evidence for this specific technique, so treat it as a promising idea rather than a settled fact.