Seeing the Void: Experiencing Emptiness and Awareness with the Headless Way Technique
Mindfulness April 1, 2024 Brentyn J. Ramm, Anna‐lena Lumma, Terje Sparby et al.
Twelve of twenty adults who had never practiced the Headless Way exercises reported a void-like experience after being guided through them, and five reported an experience of awareness itself. These experiences were categorized as subsets of perceptual absences and the sense of not being person-like. The exercises can effectively induce experiences of emptiness and awareness in participants without prior meditation experience. The findings suggest that such experiences can be elicited outside a traditional meditation context, and that the sense of not being person-like and perceptual absences may be precursors to recognizing awareness itself and the void-like nature of the mind.