A recurring observation, and probably the most practically useful: presence in the present moment is not obtained through an effort of concentration. On the contrary — wanting to be present creates a contraction that distances what one seeks.
Presence comes when one slightly forgets oneself as an object of attention. When one stops monitoring whether one is adequately present. When the inner commentary — “am I in the moment? is it working?” — fades in favour of a simpler attention to what is.
This paradox is central. It means that techniques taking the form “to be present, do X” are ineffective as soon as they become wanting. What works is rather the slow habit of an attention that no longer worries about itself.
Contemplative traditions have formulated this for a long time. Contemporary psychology, through the concept of flow, rediscovered it in the 1970s. The Laboratory finds it, by its own path, as a descriptive and reproducible principle.