Signal Shift

The Neuroscience of Imagination: Cultivating Open Awareness to Navigate Discomfort and Future Uncertainty

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In this captivating conversation, Raakhee connects with Mary Martin, a trauma-sensitive mindfulness educator, ghostwriter, and fellow foresight practitioner from the Urgent Optimists community. 

Dr. Martin explains how the state of our nervous system directly shapes our capacity to imagine positive futures. While modern workplaces heavily reward intense, focused attention (convergent thinking), true creative breakthroughs require Open Awareness—a state of letting internal and external stimuli rise and fall without judgment . They discuss the psychological discomfort of examining "shadow futures," the cognitive cost of un-interrupted digital consumption, and why slowing down your roll with generative artificial intelligence is essential to preventing your mind from going completely numb.

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SPEAKER_00

Welcome to Signal Shift by Horizon Shift Lab. Explore the latest signals in technology, culture, and society. Uncovering insights that'll impact our daily lives in the future. Curious to learn more? Go to horizonshiftlab.com.

SPEAKER_01

Hello and welcome back to Signal Shift with me, Rocky. I wish I got to share more about my love for mindfulness, yoga, and meditation, and many other yogic and Vedic practices in the backbone of my life and for so many others. It's really about calibrating your energy, I guess if I could put it that way, and your nervous system. And I don't think I would be able to show up in the world with a sense of groundedness, hope, strength, and purpose, and a consistent reminder to stay in integrity in a world that is desperately trying to distract us from living in such a manner. So very important aspect of my life, but I don't get to talk about it often. And I am really delighted today to be speaking with a special guest, Mary Martin. Mary and I technically know each other through written word and online support, as we belong to a site called Urgent Optimists. It's a community led by the uh exceptional Jane McGonagall and an initiative from the Institute for the Future, where I have trained in Foresight and Mary has too. Mary is a trauma-sensitive mindfulness educator and guide. She educates people about mindfulness and its many benefits, and she supports them in developing their own mindfulness practice. She has trained in mindfulness-based stress reduction over several years through Brown University. She has a doctorate from New York University School of Teaching and Learning. She's also been a ghostwriter for many CEOs and thought leaders. And her mission is to help people identify and develop inner resources they need to face challenging times and extraordinary times and ordinary times too. Resources like self-awareness, resilience, inner and outer listening, and an expansive capacity to sit with uncertainty, ambiguity, and change. Her work lies at the intersection of foresight, imagination, and mindfulness. And as you all know, this is all so foundational to everything we do at Horizon Shift Lab. So, Mary, a very, very warm welcome.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you so much for having me. And it's so great to see you, and it's so great to hear your voice. And I look forward to this conversation.

SPEAKER_01

Absolutely. I'm I'm very excited.

Connecting Unnatural Dots: Introducing Mary Martin and the intersection of awareness, imagination, and foresight.

SPEAKER_01

You know, you've mentioned on your blog that you love making connections, right? That don't seem natural. I'm not sure people would kind of connect mindfulness, imagination, and then foresight work, right? They sit in three separate domains, um, yet they're so powerfully connected. So um, yeah, tell us a little bit about that, how you come to make these connections and a little bit about your work.

SPEAKER_02

Sure, sure. I think mindfulness, um, and I really do mean the awareness practices. So not necessarily just um, you know, repeating a mantra, but practices that cultivate awareness, interoceptive awareness, like what's happening inside your body, extraceptive awareness, proprioceptive, like all those, we have different practices to really focus on, you know, open awareness, focusing your attention. So all of those put together. Once you learn that your awareness at every moment is affecting what you see, way you know, what you hear, it affects your perception, it affects your action, it affects sort of everything. So there's a reason why when you go into the library or bookstore, there's mindful parenting, there's mindful eating, and there's mindful coloring, and there's mindful listening, and mindful singing. It's because it's all the same thing, really. And when it comes to imagination and futures thinking, you know, if you're using your mind in any capacity, your mind is constantly being affected by the state of your nervous system. So it's if you could put mindfulness sort of next to anything. And I and John Kabatzin actually said if you can name it, you can do it mindfully. The state of your nervous system affects your perception and you see and hear and imagine and think and relate through the lens of what's happening in your nervous system. So if you are entirely dysregulated, and we all have been, and you don't notice it, which is the key thing, you're then sort of going to go down a path in the next person you talk to, the next meeting you have, the work that you're doing, you're you're locked into a path that you don't realize that you're on because you're dysregulated. So when you notice, when you have a practice of becoming aware of your nervous system, and then you notice, well, I'm a wreck right now, and I have to get on a call, you can do something about that. And it just takes a moment. However, if you've never, and you know this, if you've never practiced before, you're not gonna just suddenly rando be like, I'm a mess. I need to do something about this. You know, it's it's less likely than if you have an established practice where you're noticing what's happening in yourself, not judging if just noticing. Like, um it's like this right now. You can do something about that. And the more you practice doing that when it doesn't matter, you know, in low stakes moments, the more you're able to call upon that when it does matter.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah. I think you know, we all have this perception um that it's just about slowing down. And so if I immediately just slow down before that meeting, before what I want to say, um, it does the work. But I think you called out something really important there, which is um it is also a skill, right? It has to be developed and built over time and then be able to pull it out when you need to. Um, but it's not something that is automatic, it actually goes against so much of how our brain is trying to work. What are some of the practices you use to help cultivate that sort of groundedness in your nervous system for, particularly for imaginative practices? Because imagination is particularly hard, um, more than you know, being present, more than um it is asking us to stretch our thinking, right? Especially when we're going into futures thinking and it make these connections that are unnatural. So, yeah, what sort of practices do you do to help cultivate that?

SPEAKER_02

The most the practice that has been shown

Focused vs. Open Awareness: Breaking down the functional difference between convergent and divergent thinking .

SPEAKER_02

evidence-wise to do that in particular is called open awareness. So, focused awareness is what people are uh familiar with, where I'm focusing on the sensations related to my breath or you know, my belly going up and down as I breathe, or a sound or a mantra. So there's that, and that that's for like convergent thinking. So that's for being focused. And then for divergent thinking, for more creative endeavors, open awareness is a lot more difficult for the average person for most people, and it is where you allow whatever is arising in sort of your field of consciousness to just arise and fall away. So for from any moment, and you don't have to note it. There's a practice called noting, but I'll note it right now just so you get you get a feel for what it's like. So right now, what's happening with me is air on my legs, cool air. There's a burning happening in my stomach, my feet on the floor, the dog is moving, I hear the dog moving. So from from moment to moment, things are happening in your field of awareness. You hear things, you feel it, you feel a sensation. Um, you uh you see something if your eyes are open. Uh, also checking in on what's happening on the inside. If there is, if the thing that is most present in your awareness is the burning sensation or the air on the leg, that is what you notice. And you don't concentrate on anything for any period of time. Even naming it is is like you're putting your attention on it. But I'm so I was just doing that just for an example, but you don't name it, you just allow everything to come and go, and here you are, you're sort of in the middle of all of this. We like to say it's like it's like the sky, you are the sky, and all of these things that happen are all of these clouds that are just coming and going and coming and going. And you just allow them to come and go. And the more you can just notice what occurs, what what that does in the brain is your default mode network, which is which is where all that stuff is, which is why people are like, oh, you don't want to be in your default mode network, because that's like mind wandering and that's like bad and is daydreaming, it's such a good, and it's it's good to tap into that, and it's good to just like bust it open and just allow whatever is occurring to occur. If you're constantly focused, then you're not developing the ability to bust it all up and imagine things that aren't happening or that haven't happened. And that's what open awareness really does. And you don't necessarily, you know, have any kind of aha. There's like there's no epiphany in open awareness. But what happens over time is you're in the shower, you're going for a walk, um, right before you go to bed, right before you get up, whatever. In those, in these moments, suddenly it seems, it appears to be that suddenly you're having all these ideas that you didn't have before. And things are coming together that you couldn't get together before. You remember things. You know, there's like that word you couldn't remember, and you're trying so hard to remember it. So of course you can't because you're trying so hard. And then when you relax or you're in the shower or you're going for a walk, suddenly the mind is open and you remember it. So it's it's like that, and it happens more the more you practice opening the doors, the more likely they'll open when you need them.

SPEAKER_01

It's interesting in the sense that there is so much of a focus on convergent thinking, right? And and focused awareness in our workplaces, in studying. Um I mean, we're online all the time. There's so much data coming at us. And so, you know, I really feel like that call for more of the time for just being and wondering is is becoming actually more critical, right? Um, I mean, yeah, do you do you feel the same way? How does social media play into this and how it's impacting our thinking and our presence?

SPEAKER_02

I um

Introducing Friction: Resisting the friction-free loop of endless scrolling and social updates.

SPEAKER_02

I am really not on social media. And that has a lot to do with my mindfulness practice. And I use AI a lot, and I use it in a very specific way, and I'm really paying attention while I'm doing it. And I I have the ability to intensely focus for decent periods of time, but I think that's related to A, my mindfulness practice, and B the fact that I'm not, I I just am not playing the game. And I I'm not addicted to my phone. Like I'm not on Instagram, I'm not on TikTok, I'm on LinkedIn because I sort of have to be. So it's a choice. I have a teenager, and and her inability to pay attention for long periods of time or to like sit with a like a book and read a book, it's it's very disturbing. And and I think of the way she grew up, and she didn't have a phone until she was like 15 years old, but still, and she's not on social media, but still. So we have something has happened, and there are obviously neuroscientists who are looking into this to our attention. They are our minds are being fractured by technology and by our various, not just addictions to them, but just the constant use and the constant being in the fray, and of course, what's happening in the United States, especially and in the world with the news, the news, the news. And is it real? And so I I I promise you, you can opt out of a lot of this. And I understand the position that people are in right now, and it's it's probably very difficult for most people to break free of that, but I can tell you that it's possible. If you have a mindfulness practice and you decide, you choose to pay attention to it, you can notice what you're experiencing in your body and in your mind as you are drawn to your phone or to the screen of some sort. So if you choose to, rather than just doing the thing automatically, part of our addictions to various things comes from no friction. So make it difficult for you to do the things that really aren't that good for you. This is why people in recovery don't have alcohol in the house. Like, you know, recovery one-on-one. Um, so if you have, if you notice that you have a compulsion, you're like physically drawn to whatever it is. It's the news, it's the emote, whatever it is, uh put space, physical space, make it hard. Like take the app off your phone and like say you have to go to the actual website and you have to log in and see what happens to your relationship. But I think the biggest problem is most people don't feel, they don't understand that what they're experiencing is a compulsion and they can do something about it.

SPEAKER_01

It's just become habitual and after a certain point, something you know was a trigger, and then you develop the habit and so normalized in our society that people are all here instead of engaging with each other. Um, so I think yeah, that awareness in um in our bodies. And I I see it as something as simple as you know, when you want to grab your phone in that moment of boredom, it might be a better choice and that chance to say, why don't I go outside for a walk? Um, you know, or keep a book nearby, be like, oh, let me just get an extra few words in, let me just read a chapter. Um, because you'll probably spend less time doing that than the amount you get sucked into um these little devices. So I love that. And I think you know, the other thing that I heard in what you were saying, or it certainly kind of gives us permission to say you don't have to do this, you don't have to be this way, you don't have to partake, you can opt out, like you said. Um, and I think hearing that from more and more voices, leaders, experts, um, I think hopefully is going to give us permission as society. So we can choose different and we can create different.

SPEAKER_02

Yes, yes. And also getting outside of, you know, your house, getting outside of yourself. Um, I, the past couple of months, I have taken up uh, I'm a volunteer dog walker at my dog and cat rescue. For three hours, I take dogs out for like walks in the woods. And so you're helping somebody who really needs help, who's also a social mammal, you know, whose nervous system can co you can co-regulate with, or you can actually help their nervous system. You're out in nature, you're moving. There are other people there kind of randomly. Um, so I found, and my mental health is pretty decent, but it's so helpful, like it's such a boost to not just volunteer, but I mean, of course to volunteer, but to be outside and to be moving. And you know, I go for walks a couple times a week with neighbors, I go for tea with neighbors, like get out of the house or the apartment, see human beings, you know, and and at first I had to I had to like set a reminder because I'm an introvert, I had to set a reminder like talk to somebody this week, like this week. And all of those things that you hear in all of the books about how you know longevity, you know, social connection is so crucial for longevity. It's like it's that's a real thing. So in addition to getting off the the phone and getting off of the apps because it's it's upsetting to your nervous system, heal yourself and somebody else. Do something for somebody. You know, go out and go out and see people or dogs or cats, but just get out, get out of yourself, get out of your head, uh help somebody and connect.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and through that process, it only just lifts your imagination.

Shadow Futures & Discomfort: The bravery required to visit dystopian possibilities for structural innovation.

SPEAKER_02

Absolutely, because as we you know learned in Urgent Optimists, you know, when you have that feeling of hope, and and and there's a group of wow, when you have a group of people who have a feeling of hope, the things that you can come up with, you know, right? The things that we were able to imagine and create. Um it was it was just so extraordinary of a time and so excited, it's exciting to be around like-minded people, be around like-minded people who are hopeful, be a light around like-minded people who are hopeful and imagine positive futures together. Like, what could be better than that? So I I highly recommend that that people try to train their imaginations, beginning with, you know, how how could imagine uh the best way this turns out? And it could be anything, it could be just like something that's happening with your family. You know, we don't we don't all have to imagine the year 3564 and and try to like go, okay, what's it gonna be like given AI the way it is today and robotics? And how could you even do that? How about like imagine the best way today could go? Imagine that I'm going to bed tonight and I think to myself, this was such a great day, and I feel so good because yada, yada, yada, yada, we'll make all that happen. So you can imagine, you can change, you know, every moment is sort of this opportunity to change your mindset. So you feel miserable, you just had a really bad meeting, you whatever, you don't feel well. See, and it's tough when you have physical stuff going on, but you can change your mindset in in a moment. You can have beginners' mind about anything if you choose to. You choose to see it all anew. And it takes practice, but it's it's absolutely possible. You know it's possible. I know it's possible, but it does, it does take practice. What one of the things that I don't love about when I'm invited in to do some kind of a training is invariably people are like, okay, so we use training and then what? And and it's like then you keep doing it for the rest of your life. Yep. You know, you get back your time that you were wasting away strolling or whatever you were doing. You know, you get back your attention, you get back your relationships, you get back your ability to choose what you're doing from moment to moment instead of getting dragged around by whatever your compulsions are.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

So I think that's worth it.

SPEAKER_01

I I know you were a ghostwriter for many, you know, many CEOs, many thought leaders. Looking back at your writing, which you've done so much of across a lifetime, is there any particular piece or even a moment in time where you know you were truly in pure flow, um, or you found it to be some of your most creative, imaginative work, something that really, you know, you think back on you're like, wow, um, what a time of connections, of neural connections.

SPEAKER_02

That that happens with like sort of interpersonally for me. So I'll be working with a client, I've and I have two right now for larger books, one's almost done, one's in the middle. And I I can tell, sometimes I meet with them in person, sometimes I don't, but I can tell by the way that they're speaking and by the way that they look that like they're not, there's something in their way. And if I ask them the right questions, if I push back in a in a way, because I can usually tell like what their problem is. Um and by pushing back and pushing back, they usually are not happy. Most people aren't happy when you really push back on them. But if you stick with it and you do it in a kind, compassionate way, they're able to have their own breakthrough. And then they're able to say, Wow, that was really like delightful how it ended up. And I would have never gotten there if you didn't push me. And and I say this because it's kind of simple. To what I wrote in one of those pieces for IFTF, in that when you feel uncomfortable, you don't want anybody to try to push back at you. When you're feeling uncertain, um when things are all kind of ambiguous for you, we experience that as well as change as discomfort. And what do we do with discomfort? We want to push it away. And so my invitation is to sit with it. Like, what's gonna happen? You know? So learning to sit with your own discomfort, which inevitably passes. I mean, it all just passes. But then once it passes, you have an opening. That's sort of the bonus of sitting with your discomfort and and experiencing it, it sounds like hyperbole, but it's not like you didn't die, you know. Like we feel like, oh, I can't go there, or I can't, you know, sit with this feeling because you we have this this we think it's gonna kill us, like this it's gonna be fatal. And it's not. And so when you learn that you can sit with whatever the thing is, that invariably will go, uh, it's it's emboldening, it's bolstering, it boosts the well-being and um and the resilience. So I experienced that with clients, and I encourage everybody to do that themselves, whenever you know, be curious about your discomfort.

SPEAKER_01

I love it. Be curious about your discomfort. Um, and I think that speaks to the IFT paper you wrote about shadow futures, right? And being able to imagine some of the harsher, harder things, which you know, it's part of the work of foresight, right? You do have to look at that. Um, but that that can be really powerful for us individually um as we work through that. So um I think that's important. I think it's hard. I think it's very hard. We almost want to run away from that, um, especially now, because there's so much in our present that is a bit stark.

SPEAKER_02

Um when you have the experience with yourself that things will pass, uh you can imagine, you know, because when we're imagining it's ideas and it's images in the mind, and you've already shown yourself that those things come and go. So when you're doing your foresight work, you have in your back pocket your experience that that things come and go, and that you will return and you can return to sort of baseline and you can be okay. So I'm gonna go visit this future that's you know fairly dystopian, similar to the present. Um, and and you've already experienced everybody has already experienced some pretty horrible things mentally, physically, um, psychologically, emotionally, and we're all here. So we have those experiences, and then we have the ability to be curious about exactly what it feels like in the body and exactly what thoughts are coming to mind, and then the knowledge that oh, I'm still here. I made it, I made it through examining the really, you know, uncomfortable feelings I just had and the really uncomfortable thoughts that I had, and here I am. So I understand the impulse to not want to, you know, go there, to not want to think about the possible horrible futures, but that's also where opportunities come for solutions. So if you're not thinking about how it's going to feel in this uncomfortable situation, how on earth are you going to imagine a way to get out of it? So your solutions and your innovations come from being able to sit with the discomfort.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Yeah. Oh gosh, Mary, I think we could talk about this for so long. It's so it's inspiring, right? It really is, because um I think that inner work is going to be the most critical work we have to do in the coming few years, um, outside of all the action we have to take outside, but it has to come from inside first, you know. I think um such an interesting time in the world. If I could ask just one last question that I get, again, I think is so pertinent um for the time. And you mentioned this, but your very intentional use of AI, what what does that mean? How are you using it intentionally or with awareness? Like how are you interacting with it in a way that seems to be more you know, very intentional, you're very deliberate about what's happening with your own mind in that process.

Numbing Your Mind with Prompting: Why outsourcing your written expression damages cognitive evolution.

SPEAKER_02

If you're paying, if you decide to pay attention and you learn how to pay attention, you can then bring that attention to the moments when you're using social media, and it's AI is the same thing. I feel my I can feel my mind sort of um becoming numb. And I can easily see how those studies that show that the kids, you know, use the AI and they make these amazing essays, but you ask them what they wrote and they don't know because you know they were prompting, but they really weren't paying attention. So I would I would urge everybody to uh be very involved in everything that you're doing with the AI. Don't don't be like go do this thing. I mean, I guess people do that, but particularly when it comes to writing, you know, don't ask AI, you know, please don't ask AI to write something that matters. You if it's if it's supposed to be yours, you know, have it, have it really come from you, and you can work with the AI, but uh having them do things for you, you're missing out. I'm telling you, your brain is missing out on its development, on its connecting, um, on its complexity. There's a reason why that's what the studies show, and you can feel it if you if you're used to feeling what your mind feels like, which is weird, but but you can do that. So I would just urge people to A, develop a practice of what does my mind feel like when I'm doing this? And you would sort of have to know what it feels like when you're not doing it, so that you can feel the difference. And then when I'm do when I'm using this tool, what is happening? And even in my body, am I getting like anxious? Um, I don't know, am I getting tired? Am I checking out? So learn what's how to learn how to access your inner world and where you are in space and what your attention is like, and then bring that that ability to pay attention to those things, to the things that affect them. Even food affects them. You know, we when you eat, your head will feel a certain way, and your body will feel a certain way. When you drink things, is ditto, when you exercise. So, why wouldn't that happen when you're using AI? Everything affects your mind and body, everything that you're doing. So, you know, slow your roll on the AI and pay attention to what it's doing to you.

SPEAKER_01

I fully agree. And I think you can test for it. I mean, if you go and take any one of your tasks and you use AI for it for a month, and if you go back to doing that task after that month, you're gonna struggle, right?

Availability of the upcoming Imagination Lab

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

If that happens, you need to step away from the computer. Yeah, I mean, it's everything is coming out of so fast. I get why it's a mess and people don't understand where their brains are or what's happening to them. And I would just, I would, I would urge the not just slowing down, but something has to come with that. And that thing is gonna be awareness, awareness of the boredom. You know, sit outside, do nothing. Look at the trees, look at the sky, look at the ocean, and just learn how to be without feeling like you must compulsively do.

SPEAKER_01

Awareness, but not boredom. Um, I think if we can just do that, that'll be pretty powerful. So um, that's our work for this week, everyone. Um, Mary, thank you so much. This is such a beautiful discussion. Um, I so appreciate your presence and the way you speak to all of these subjects. It's really beautiful and very inspiring. So um thank you for being here today. Thank you so much. In today's episode, we speak about so many interesting things like convergent thinking versus divergent thinking, kind of awareness in the body, and those moments, you know, open awareness, those moments when we are able to make neural connections to um to really gain insight, right? Or to have these insights pop into our mind, to have new ideas come up, um, those moments of flow as well. And this is everything that we cover in the imagination lab that we are playing with. In the imagination lab, you'll find two things is one, you'll understand and learn how these things work, but second, you actually get to play with this in many other tools that you will utilize not just in the lab but beyond in your career. So, um, as you all know, the beta for that is in progress right now. Um, and of course, there's been questions about when this will be available as a paid offering, and that is coming down the line. So um, hopefully in two or three months, that is something that everybody can participate in. So, thank you so much for being here and uh bye for now.