VR Meditation

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VR meditation: awe, avatars and psychedelics - The Washington Post

Virtual reality meditation: Awe, avatars and psychedelic designs  LOTS OF PHOTOS

In January, I sat on a mountain, savoring the panorama. I could hear soft music, and crystals swirled in and out of my mouth with every inhale and exhale. Several feet away, a boulder projected a beam of light into the sky, and rocks in the distance produced the same beams. This signaled that other people were on the mountain, which gave me a sense of connection — a rarity during the coronavirus pandemic.

I was using TRIPP, a virtual reality meditation app that encourages users to focus on their breath while viewing engaging visuals. During the pandemic and mental health crisis, VR meditation apps have increased in number, which partly explains why videogaming has dropped from 72 to 64 percent of the overall VR pie, according to Polaris Market Research.

The uptick in VR meditation parallels an avalanche of smartphone apps for mental health, which <a href="https://www.apa.org/monitor/2021/01/trends-mental-health-apps">total</a> about 20,000. VR is more immersive than smartphones and, some say, can enable feelings of awe, relaxation, mindfulness and connection with fellow meditators— or their avatars, at least.

I tried six of these relatively inexpensive VR apps (all are compatible with the popular $300 Meta Quest 2 headset) and talked with entrepreneurs and researchers to learn how they compare with regular meditation and whether I should plug VR into my mental wellness routine.

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With its surreal stimuli, TRIPP aims to stir feelings of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02699930302297">awe</a>, defined as the emotional response to something so vast that it shifts one’s worldview. Some research suggests that experiencing awe can <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29927260/">improve</a> well-being. In a recent <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02158/full">study</a>, 44 percent of VR users got goose-bumps, a physiological sign of awe.

TRIPP’s otherworldly realms go beyond just replicating tropical beaches. “We focus on stimulating, not simulating,” said Nanea Reeves, TRIPP’s CEO. Each of TRIPP’s “calm” sessions, like my mountaintop meditation, concludes with a few minutes spent hovering in fictional galaxies bathed in warm hues. Up there, users can experience the <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02158/full#B104">Overview Effect</a>, sensations of awe and wonder felt while gazing down from the cosmos that have been reported by <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02158/full#B92">astronauts</a>.

Another option: journeys through undulating, hyper-colorful pieces of art, beautifully rendered works of geometry and psychedelia. These awe-inducing “trips” seem comparable to using hallucinogenic drugs, which may have <a href="https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/psychiatry/research/psychedelics-research.html">benefits</a>, but Reeves distinguished TRIPP from drug experiences. “TRIPP is coming to you” through the VR headset, “and [the drug trip] comes from you.” TRIPP doesn’t make any therapeutic claims, though it’s <a href="https://www.mobihealthnews.com/news/tripp-acquires-psyassist-move-psychedelic-assisted-therapy">being used</a> to ease patients into psychedelic-assisted therapy, which overwhelms some people at first.

<a href="https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsptsci.1c00034">Research</a> suggests that meditation can increase openness to drug-induced transcendent experiences, and meditation could similarly increase openness to VR, said Jacob Aday, a psychologist who studies <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2045125320948356">psychedelics and VR</a> at the University of California, San Francisco. A single VR meditation probably won’t transform your mind-set, “but with repeated use, the benefits could be powerful,” said Aday. He emphasized that more studies are needed.

Many VR meditation apps are more about relaxation than awe. “Some apps are like, how can I blow your mind,” said Josh Farkas, CEO of Cubicle Ninjas, which makes the popular app Guided Meditation VR, which offers virtual beaches, waterfalls and other soothing landscapes. “Our app is like, how can we make you feel like you’re getting a big hug?”

A recent review <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34120220/">found</a> that VR meditation might promote relaxation; it reduced <a href="https://hsrc.himmelfarb.gwu.edu/gw_research_days/2019/GWSPH/13/">stress</a> for isolated people during pandemic lockdowns, for first-year <a href="https://hsrc.himmelfarb.gwu.edu/gw_research_days/2019/GWSPH/13/">medical students</a>, college students before big <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8520331/">exams</a>, British <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20552076221084473">office workers</a>, and in comparison to <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frvir.2022.764745/full">audio</a> and 2-D video meditations.

But mindfulness meditation, in which people practice being present in the moment, involves two stages, said Zindel Segal, a University of Toronto clinical psychologist who researches mindfulness-based interventions. VR is a “powerful technology” for achieving the first stage: settling your mind, he said. But it interferes with the second stage, “investigating whatever shows up in your mind with curiosity and kindness with the goal of getting to know your mind itself.”

That’s because “VR is like putting a curtain between you and your capacity to watch how your mind moves,” he explained. The breath crystals in TRIPP, for instance, are forming “two degrees of separation from what your breath is actually doing,” said Segal.

He also has concerns about the practicality of VR meditation. If someone cuts in line at the bank, “you’re not going to have crystals or high-resolution graphics,” he said. “What you have is your breath.”

But Judith Amores, a Harvard <a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8329668">research</a> fellow and VR designer, thinks that meditating in busy VR realms prepares you for just this situation. “VR trains you to stay mindful in the moment despite distractions,” she said. And as companies design lighter, more transportable devices, more people may strap on VR headsets while waiting in line and elsewhere.

Farkas believes the pleasing sensory stimuli of his app could also encourage many people who wouldn’t otherwise meditate to give it a try.

Amores was such a person; she was inspired to use and design VR meditation after struggling to meditate regularly. “I felt more productive when I meditated, but actually doing it was tough,” she said. “I thought, how can we make this experience more engaging for novice users?”

Another hook for newcomers is gamification. With the app Maloka, your avatar, or “Spirit,” evolves and looks stronger the more you meditate.

A handful of VR apps enable group meditations. Whereas many Westerners see meditation as a solitary endeavor, Buddha taught that meditation should be anchored in community, said Jeremy Nickel, who started <a href="https://evolvr.org/">EvolVR</a>, a social platform used for VR meditation that was recently acquired by TRIPP. “Group meditations get you outside of your head,” he said. “They make it easier to return to your own practice.”

I’d never meditated in a group and felt nervous about doing so in VR; this emotion was only heightened when, upon entering my first session, I immediately found myself invading another avatar’s personal space. We finally disentangled and headed for opposite edges of a bluff overlooking a pixelated beach for the session.

Another group meditation happened inside a virtual cave. There, I accepted that I would occasionally bump into other avatars and managed to focus on my breath and realized the instructor was giving very helpful guidance. I can see why Segal, the Toronto psychologist, hopes VR can increase access to qualified mindfulness teachers.

Meditation alone and without VR remains my daily go-to, but VR is an important change-up. On days when I lack willpower to sit down and close my eyes, the novelty of meditating in space or the ocean depths reels me in.

“VR is just another tool for mental health,” said Farkas. “It may be scary for some. For others, it’s the incentive to put some self-care on the calendar, get excited to sit on a virtual beach and breathe.”

Matt Fuchs lives in Silver Spring, Md. In addition to writing about health and technology, he is editor in chief of <a href="https://leaps.org/">Leaps.org</a>, a journalistic platform that covers health innovations. Follow him on <a href="https://twitter.com/FuchsWriter">Twitter</a>.

Matt Fuchs lives in Silver Spring, Md., and writes about health and technology. 

Matt Fuchs

VR meditation: awe, avatars and psychedelics

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Virtual reality meditation: Awe, avatars and psychedelic designs  

Cold Shower

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He tested the health benefits of cold showers. Here’s what happened. - The Washington Post

Remember those kids at summer camp who seemed to enjoy nothing more than jumping into a freezing pool with reckless abandon?

That wasn’t me. I dipped my toe while praying for a thunderstorm to force us all back inside. As an adult, I continued to find the idea of subjecting myself to icy water about as appealing as walking in front of a moving car.

Yet I kept hearing wellness pundits rave about “cold immersion.” They made it sound fairly simple. You pop into a really cold lake, ice bath or shower; stay there for some extended period of time; reemerge, shivering and bluish; and magically reap a wide range of supposed health benefits, such as more energy, better metabolic health and happier moods. Cold showers seemed slightly better than submerging myself in ice, and the concept was intriguing, if not exactly tempting.

But I became more interested in trying it this past winter. I’d begun to feel vaguely depressed, with the sunless skies, the pandemic marching on like an evil Energizer Bunny, and my occasional overwhelm from adjusting to a new career path — all while trying to cut back on my coffee addiction. I needed a boost.

Before I tried to conquer my fear of chilly water, I spoke with experts to see if it was worth it. One of them was David Sinclair, a Harvard biologist and leading researcher of longevity whose “<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4209489/">metabolic winter</a>” hypothesis would explain why cold immersion supports long-term health. His hypothesis, he said, is based on the fact that, for tens of thousands of years “our status quo was being cold.” That was because our ancestors lived outdoors in seasonally cold temperatures, <a href="https://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/nercAFRICA.html">endured the ice age</a> and migrated to colder climates. Human metabolism, therefore, was designed to adapt to uncomfortable weather (hot temperatures may have had the same effect). But these days we live almost entirely in climate-controlled luxury. The new status quo derails our health because it eliminates the biological challenges our bodies had adapted to.

Sinclair’s hypothesis draws from a principle, well accepted by biologists, called hormesis: Some amount of pain is good for us. In addition to cold-water immersion, other examples of hormesis include exercise and dietary fasts.

Another expert I spoke to, Anna Lembke, a Stanford professor and psychiatrist, prescribes various forms of hormesis including cold-water immersion instead of pills to some of her patients suffering from addictions. “It helps them tolerate withdrawal,” she told me. “The body responds to cold water by up-regulating feel-good molecules like dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine, as a way to compensate.”

These theories sounded plausible. Missing my usual caffeine bump and feeling especially lethargic one cloudy afternoon, I turned my shower handle to its coldest setting, took a deep breath, and stepped in.

I gasped. Then I screamed and quickly stepped out.

“Are you okay?” my 6-year-old asked from the hallway.

“I don’t know,” I said, before reassuring him — and myself — that it was just cold water.

Take two: I turned the handle to a saner, more inviting temperature, and got back in the shower. For about six minutes, I brought the pain gradually, turning the handle in increments, allowing my body to adjust. That is, until the handle would turn no longer, and the showerhead unleashed its deepest chill. I screamed again and reached out for the handle like a drowning man grabbing a rope, shutting off the water.

Never again, went the refrain in my head. But as I got dressed, cranked up the heat in my house and stood next to my space heater, a profound sense of relief spread through me, a rebound effect that lasted several hours.

Save your skin: How you shower matters more than when, dermatologists say

Even so, I remained skeptical. I’d just finished reading “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01C1LB09U/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1">Suggestible You</a>,” Erik Vance’s book about the placebo effect. Beyond theoretical explanations and my own subjective take, what did scientific experiments actually reveal about the benefits of cold water?

I talked with Heather Massey, a physiologist in the <a href="https://www.port.ac.uk/research/research-centres-and-groups/extreme-environments-research-group">Extreme Environments Research Group</a> at the University of Portsmouth in Hampshire, England. Research on cold immersion is “an emerging field,” she said. “There’s a desperate need for more studies” and funding to do them.

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A handful of studies do show a link between cold exposure and upticks in various brain chemicals associated with well-being. For example, <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs004210050065">one study</a> found that immersion in cold water — 57 degrees, to be exact — raised people’s blood levels of the neurotransmitters noradrenaline (by 530 percent) and dopamine (by 250 percent).

<a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18461718/">Some</a> <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3131098/">research</a> suggests that noradrenaline helps counter anxiety and depression, and dopamine plays a key role in feelings of motivation and reward. Other research indicates that higher levels of noradrenaline could <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1845768/">reduce inflammation</a>.

Sinclair mentioned to me that enduring cold temperatures <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140623091949.htm">may also</a> <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3726172/">increase</a> so-called “brown fat,” which is associated with <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19357405/">lower body fat percentage</a>. Notably, this research involved cold air, not water. Other studies suggest that cold water immersion can buffer the <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34428265/">immune system</a>.

The anecdotal evidence, however, has been enough for some scientists to take the plunge themselves. Massey <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HGB-ZlkvO0">swims outdoors</a> in cold-weather months. Before the pandemic, Sinclair dunked himself regularly in 39-degree water for five minutes at his gym. Kenneth Kishida, a Wake Forest neuroscientist and dopamine researcher, told me that he likes to take rugged camping trips in state parks, subjecting himself to frigid showers and other hormetic stressors. He returns from these trips in higher spirits.

Wendy Suzuki, an NYU neuroscientist, takes cold showers every morning. “I can tell the difference when I forget to do it,” she told me. “It’s just generally activating. I feel so alive.”

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I’ve gotten into a rhythm of taking cold showers two or three times per week, usually after lunch. At first, I couldn’t stand the shock of the coldest temperature — 48 degrees, according to my thermometer — for more than a few seconds. With more of these showers, though, my endurance has improved; I can now persist through the worst pain for several minutes.

“That tracks with the research,” Massey told me. “Cold shock” is the body’s natural response to sudden cooling of the skin, involving faster breathing and heartbeat, she said. But as you expose yourself more, these defense mechanisms start to relax, <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11072768/">research</a> <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00365510701516350">suggests</a>. “You can extend your time in the water because you have far less discomfort,” said Massey.

Recently, my thoughts have even drifted to random subjects, as they do during warm showers, rather than obsessing over the pain. But I last longest when focusing on the boost I’ll get afterward — a strategy backed by <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4201897/">research</a>. Plus, longer cold exposure seems to intensify the benefits.

I asked my wife if she’s noticed any changes in my mood lately. “Possibly,” she replied, very diplomatically. Hoping for a more definitive answer, I asked my 6-year-old the same question. “Not really,” he said. But then he added, “I have noticed, when I look over at you, sometimes you’re just smiling at me.”

I shouldn’t need cold showers to make that happen. But if they do the trick, the pain is worth it.

Matt Fuchs

Silver Spring, Md.

Virtual reality meditation: Awe, avatars and psychedelic designs

Are ice-cold showers good for you? I tried it for two months.