07/20/2025
Did you know that even when you’re doing nothing, your brain is doing a lot?
In fact, some of the most energetically expensive mental activity happens when we aren’t focused on anything in particular. This is the work of the Default Mode Network (DMN), which is the neural circuit responsible for your inner world.
It’s not just “background noise.” It’s the narrating voice, the autobiographical storyteller, the part of your brain that fills the quiet with meaning…. or dread.
The DMN is a highly active set of brain regions that switches on when you’re at rest, unfocused, or turned inward.
It includes several parts of your brain…
The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) – involved in self-referencing and emotional meaning. The posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) which is important for memory and integrating past and present. The precuneus, angular gyrus, and hippocampus, which are all regions associated with memory, imagery, and spatial awareness
These areas form a coordinated network that enables us to reflect, imagine, wander, and weave mental narratives.
The DMN activates during times when we aren’t focusing on completing a task. Times when we are daydreaming, or thinking about the past.
Imagining the future? There’s the DMN!
Mentally going over that chat you had with your boss? There it is again!
It’s essentially the neural origin of your inner dialogue. It is the place where thoughts arise, unbidden, like the aquifer of a spring in the forest.
I’m sure you’ve heard me say it before….
“Thoughts think themselves.”
This is what I mean.
You’re not always choosing to think. Often, the DMN is doing it for you. It’s completely on autopilot, and essentially shaped by our experiences through our lives.
The brain is estimated to generate 6,000+ individual thoughts per day, and much of this happens when the DMN is active. That’s an immense volume of neural activity….. and most of it is repetitive, self-referential, and unconscious.
This is the explanation behind why we can get mentally exhausted doing “nothing”. It is also why thoughts can seem to loop, repeat, or spiral in the absence of conscious focus. Or why our minds drift unless deliberately anchored on a point of focus.
The DMN doesn’t need a task. It defaults to autopilot…. and that autopilot is you.
The DMN is not inherently a problem…. but if left to its own devices it can lead to issues like rumination, anxiety spirals, over- identification with our thoughts (and essentially our ego), and ultimately disconnection from present moment awareness.
This is why certain practices have such powerful effects on the nervous system and mental clarity….
Meditation is scientifically proven to reduce DMN activity, especially in the mPFC. It shifts attention from self-referential thought to immediate sensation, breath, and awareness. Over time, this rewires the brain toward stillness and spaciousness.
Journaling (I wrote about this yesterday a little bit) helps externalize the DMN’s raw output. It gives shape and structure to the otherwise chaotic stream of thought. By choosing what to write, you engage an executive network in your brain, helping to regulate and redirect DMN activity toward clarity.
Both practices allow you to observe your inner world without being consumed by it.
The Default Mode Network is your brain’s built-in narrator, and it is constantly stitching together memory, identity, and imagined futures.
It’s why silence isn’t always quiet, and stillness can feel like too much.
But you can learn to notice it.
You can create space between you and the stream of automatic thought.
And in that space?
There’s power.
🙏🏼✨🪬🧘🏼♀️
