Five sessions of mindfulness training, compared with an active listening control, led healthy young adults to report a decreased sense of body boundary dissolution and a more allocentric (less self-centered) spatial frame of reference. The effect on spatial frame of reference was mediated by the reduction in perceived body boundaries. The findings suggest that even brief mindfulness practice can shift the experience of self, relaxing the boundary between self and environment and extending the spatial frame of reference beyond the physical body.
A two-stage study examined how metacognitive processes of decentering—meta-awareness, (dis)identification with internal experiences, and (non)reactivity to thought content—relate to self-transcendence experiences in daily life, including self-transcendent emotions, flow proneness, and an interconnected identity. The first stage validated the French version of the Metacognitive Processes of Decentering Scale (MPoD-t) with 374 participants. The second stage, with 294 participants, found that meta-awareness mediated the link between meditative practice and self-transcendent emotions or flow, while (dis)identification with internal experiences mediated the link between practice and an interconnected identity.