Yunn-Wen Lien
Associate Professor of Psychology, National Taiwan University
About
Yunn-Wen Lien is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at National Taiwan University, where she earned her PhD in cognitive psychology after doctoral study at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research spans reasoning, rule discovery, attribution, creativity, mind-wandering and mindfulness, and the influence of culture on cognition. In recent years her work has centered on how body awareness shapes cognition and emotion regulation, leading her to develop a locally grounded Body-Mind Axial Awareness (BMAA) method drawn from classical Chinese ritual dance. Taught at NTU for over a decade, the course studies its effects on interoception, psychological resilience, sense of agency, and well-being. Her work argues that the body, not the brain alone, is foundational to psychological functioning.
Key Contributions
- Developed the Body-Mind Axial Awareness (BMAA) method, a decade-long NTU course showing measurable gains in sleep, attention, emotion regulation, and resilience
- Bridges Western cognitive psychology with Eastern contemplative practice, studying how body awareness cultivates higher-order reflective thinking
- Researches dual-process cognition, asking when and why people engage deliberate 'System 2' reasoning
- Investigates mind-wandering and mindfulness, including their definition, measurement, and predictors
- Argues that psychological well-being is grounded in the body, offering a counterpoint to brain-centric and model-centric views of the mind
