Ive been practicing meditation, on and off, for the previous 14 years. The strategy I found out in meditation class several years back is austere and old-school: Find a location to sit, close your eyes, feel your feet on the flooring, and concentrate on the in-and-out breath at the suggestion of your nose. No music, no mantras, simply the moment-by-moment battle of bringing your interest back to breathing whenever your mind stray (which is practically each time you breathe). The point, and the difficulty, is to train your mind to let go of interruption, to separate from ideas, to merely be here now.
Mindfulness meditation is a welcome (some state needed) break from the hustle and tension of contemporary life, and from the perpetual pings, ringings, and chimes of individual innovation.
So I was interested when I got an invite from the folks at Oculus, the virtual truth store at Facebook, to check out the most recent application for this thriving innovation: assisted meditation. I questioned: If being conscious necessaries disengaging from the diversions of modern-day life, can we really practice meditation while mind-melding with cutting edge computer system processing power? Is it possible to be here now if that here is a digitally-synthesized someplace else?
At Oculus pop-up display room in New York City, I wased initially offered a fast trip of the abilities of their high-end Rift system. I was alarmed by a life-size Tyrannosaurus Rex (trembling in virtual fear as the monster stomped past/through me) and dropped onto the ledge of an 80-story Times Square high-rise building (dropping reflexively to knees and hands and crawling in reverse to security).
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After the tension test heat up, I strapped on the Samsung Gear VR, for a downshift into Oculus meditation offerings.
The Guided Meditation VR app, established by Cubicle Ninjas, offers you an option of environment, voiceover, and chill-out music. I chose a fall foliage setting called “Autumnshade” to begin, and the “Relaxation” audio track.
The 360-degree view was superb: Crisp brown leaves drifted from trees in between shafts of golden sunshine. In the narrative, an English female compared our ideas to hummingbirds, and certainly, my mind was sweeping from voice to scene (with numerous point of views offered at the push of a button) and back once again, with nary an idea of my breath.
I changed to a tropical beachfront setting (“Costa del Sol”), with waves sloshing on the coast, then toggled once again to an icy mountain (“Snow Peak”): Blood red sky showed in a rainbowlike blue lake. Someplace behind me I heard a crunching noise, like the calving of icebergs (or the tramp of a starving snow leopard). Each time I chose a brand-new setting, the gadget asked me to push my finger to a sensing unit to determine my heart rate, part of the app’s biofeedback function. I started around 76 beats per minute, and floated because variety throughout the experience.
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I moved one last time to a warm bamboo grove (“Hanna Valley”), leaves swaying in a mild breeze, a pagoda in the near range. There was even a tubby panda dozing on the rocks behind me to contribute to the snoozy ambiance.
Now that Id discovered a calm setting, I switched on the lulling Loving Compassion voiceover, which was a lot more favorable to relaxation than the hummingbird talk, and more in keeping with my own experience practicing loving-kindness meditation. A voice prompted me to think of an enjoyed one with the following recitation:
May you be safe/ May you be serene/ May you be healthy/ May you deal with ease and health and wellbeing.
Good something to chew on, yet I still discovered myself charmed by the landscapes, watching out and around instead of inward.
My Oculus buddies prompted me to attempt another app, so I dove into Perfect Beach, established by nDreams, which provides an option of 4 seaside views with an audio track. The most intriguing function here is that the app lets you choose a lower upper body (personalized by sex and complexion) as part of your view, probably to assist you find your drifting head in the VR area. That concept makes good sense, considered that groundedness is among the beginning points of a lot of any meditation practice, though I discovered it offered me yet another thing to take a look at: swelling waves tossing flecks of golden sun, plus a set of well tanned legs and muscular pecs, simply listed below my view.
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After an undoubtedly short trip, I pulled off the headset and defogged my glasses. The decision: Is virtual truth immersive? Obviously. Diverting? For sure. Is it unwinding? It would be, if you had sufficient time to high in the experience.
Is it meditative? That’s a hard one, and it depends upon ones meaning of meditation. If by meditation you imply getting beyond yourself for a couple of minutes to zone out, decompress, and escape, then virtual truth would suffice. If youre brand-new to meditation, and do not have access to an instructor or a class, and youre aiming to find out a few of the fundamentals of an assisted practice like loving-kindess, an app like Guided Meditation VR (as a type of jacked-up audio program) would assist.
But if youre aiming to practice meditation in the more orthodox, hard-way-in styleto tune in instead of out; to be here, today; to awaken into realityyou face something of a problem. It appears that an innovation that pries your ears and eyes large open to take in as much sensory input as possible is working at cross-purposes with a discipline that asks you to give up diversion, to close your eyes and guide your interest inward.
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Oculus VR meditation is an enjoyable journey, no doubt, however if I might create a setting, it may sound and look like the class where I initially found out ways to sit: careworn wood floorings, mismatched chairs, a rattling a/c, with an instructor at the front of the space offering terse guideline then silence. Possibly this spectacular innovation, positive enough in its verisimilitude, might likewise be modest adequate to slip into the background, so you ‘d have no qualms about losing out if you simply closed your eyes, and tuned in to the genuine.
