answer:Zen practice involves a lot of work on situational awareness. It’s absolutely a skill that can be learned and expanded. It’s rooted in the ability to disengage the attention from one’s thought process. When your attention is occupied by what’s going on in your head, it won’t be tuned in to your environment. There is a correlation between introversion and getting “lost in your thoughts”, primarily because that interior world of thought feels like a safe refuge from the uncomfortable over-stimulation of social interaction. It’s just more comfortable “inside” than “outside”. In Zen training, we begin with learning not to get stuck in the thought process. We keep the attention on an element of the “situation”—often the breath—and redirect the attention there whenever it gets drawn away by thought. We learn to notice the coming and going of thoughts, but without engaging them. With lots of practice, the thought world stops feeling so much like “home base”, and what’s going on here and now—the situation—feels more relevant. It’s not necessarily that an introvert becomes an extrovert (I certainly haven’t); it’s more that the separation between “inside” and “outside” becomes less distinct, as if the walls of that little internal hideaway become permeable and transparent. They even disappear at times. And that’s OK. Instead of the world happening around you, all of that is you.