My smarter and hipper younger sister is loaning me her Muse brain sensing headband, knowing that I have developed a recent interest in meditation.
I have to say, I went through some rapid-cycle opinion changes on this device:
- Hey, cool a new technology of some sort.
- Wait, this is for meditation?
- Neat, it has galvanic skin sensors to detect brainwaves maybe.
- Why do I need a technology to help me disconnect from technology?
- I’m already pretty good at meditation; now I can have an objective measure of how good I am.
- Hold on, isn’t meditation about not judging oneself and accepting ourselves for who we are? How is this helping?
- Oooh, neat, this fits my big head pretty well. And hey the app plays ‘rain’ sounds that calm down and get quiet as my brain waves relax. Actual biofeedback without a neuropsychology appointment and a $1000 rig?
- Hey, I’m not very good at this. I’m getting thunderstorm sounds from my iPhone speakers. Ironic on several levels.
- I’m pretty sure that I’m good at meditation but the app is just a lousy, poorly written piece of code that can’t appreciate my type of calmness. That’s it.
- I got the rain to calm down! and heard my first chirping bird, indicating a few seconds of continuous calm! Way cool! These designers are geniuses.
- Uh oh, my excitement triggered more rain.
- This is pretty cool.
Despite my schizophrenic waffling on this, I convinced my generous sister to offer the headband to me on a long-term, no-collateral loan. Best middle sister ever.
CMIO’s take? Sometimes it is fun to use technology to disconnect from technology and look inside yourself. Yes, I know that I am a collection of clashing contradictions. That’s my thing.
