#111: The Future of Meditation: AI, Neurofeedback, & VR - Steve Haberlin, PhD

28:01And what it did was very fascinating. It synthesized all of kind of the evidence-based practices from, you know, breath work and physiological sigh. It brought in like the works of Andrew Huberman, the works of all these great mindfulness teachers, Kabat-Zinn of Transcendental Men. It just synthesized all of these techniques, and then it laid out like a seven-phase kind of plan to go through. And then you could go in and you could say, well, what about this? Or I want some yoga added to start my practice, some physical movement. So I did that, and it built that in there. And it just was very interesting that it just can synthesize all of the evidence-based practices and then put them in a way that you can try them, and maybe they work for you.

28:49You might have to tweak them or, you know, change the sequencing. But it pulled from, you know, a lot of different science-based sources, a lot of wisdom traditions, and just put together this. That would be meta meditation. It put together this, to me, almost like a new approach to meditation that was more gauld in, more focused. And then imagine if you could put on top of that, if I was using, you know, biomarkers, if I was using neurofeedback sensors, right? and HRV track, you know, trackers and those kinds of things. And I tied that to this dialed in meditation from, from chat and then just worked with that.

29:29You're in a, it's a whole new ball game, so to speak, right?

29:34Steve Haberlin, PhD:Yeah, absolutely. And, and even just the ability to share that, of course, it's not like, um, the same as in a actual study, but there might be certain trackings of like personality types or current brain state or how stressed we are that could hopefully create a pool of some like increased efficiency or more effective feedback because yeah the more people i i sit with and the more people i see in meditation i realize that everybody is so different i've been so caught in that kind of there is what you know there is a best technique somewhere and just classic nettle uh western approach in some ways i guess just trying to like optimize optimize optimize but i do think there's probably more of a generalist approach that this kind of technology really could help to elicit on a much broader scale so yeah i think what it could do just is it could further personalize each day because as you practice right they could it could gather that data you could have this conversation and it could just keep fine-tuning and fine-tuning um to your personalized results and your preferences whereas yeah years years ago it was like this is a mantra technique this is a heart-based technique this is a breath set right and everybody's supposed to kind of adjust to that but we know the research shows a couple of things it shows that different meditations first of all have different effects on the brain in physiology they don't do the same things there was a was it as tara singer out of uh it was researchers out of yeah oh did you ever yeah there were great great research where they showed uh like compassion meditation mindful you know breath meditation they have different distinct effects but then there's also research if you just kind of look at the qualitative findings that people have different preferences for meditation like something might just not resonate with them it makes them feel really uncomfortable or they can't get their head around or maybe they're they need movement based movement based type practice because they're very you know kind of fidgety or they're very athletic so there's there's all of that so i think the ability to further personalize and find techniques that work for you as a human in this point in time and your age, your disposition, your personality is going to be an incredible asset or benefit.

31:50Steve Haberlin, PhD:Yeah, I absolutely agree with that because I think a lot of the people in my close vicinity that I see drop away from meditation, it's often just because they don't enjoy it. I mean, there is also an amount of time I think you should give before you give up, but just you don't enjoy it or you don't find it interesting or fun or you're not curious with the approach, which often I just think would be solved by just changing practice. And if you've got some guidance on that from technology or otherwise, then I think it's such a great thing. That's true. It might be changing practice. And the other benefit is if you could figure out how to maybe get greater benefit with less time or you could find kind of that sweet spot of time where you're still getting benefit, but it's not taking as much time.

32:36I dare say I don't want to really call it a hack because it's it's become so cliche but if you could find a way you know to do the meditation or combine meditation is where it takes less time but you but you still gain benefit that would also help maybe people stick with it because they're like oh I have to put in you know an hour I can put in less time you know 10-15 minutes and maybe still derive benefit yeah definitely so a lot of our listeners are curious

33:04Steve Haberlin, PhD:about neurofeedback and we did we did touch upon that um i wonder is there anything more to say in regards to neurofeedback and also the the kind of vagus nerve stimulators i wonder what your thoughts on on them are as well i've been looking at them recently i'm very curious i haven't uh i haven't researched vagus nerve stimulators i've read some things about them so I don't have enough to really speak intelligently on that topic. The neurofeedback, I can just talk about a couple of studies. We just did one this past summer with undergraduates, and we tested the Muse 10 minutes of meditation once or twice a week with a guided Muse meditation versus a control group.

33:53We don't have, we're still crunching the data, so I don't have the outcomes. I can tell you a little bit about accessibility. Undergrads, you know, these are digital citizens, right? These are people that love, you know, they generally take to technology very quickly. So they'll generally have high accessibility rates for using these kind of things. And we did a previous pilot study with Amuse, and one of the interesting aspects was they would tell me that once they got into the meditation, What they were, the guided meditation jobs we used, they heard rain. Rain was the audio cue, right? So the rain would increase when your brainwaves were more beta, was kind of, you know, out of the meditation, calm state.

34:38And when you learn to calm them down or slow the brainwave activity down, the rain slowed and you almost heard like just drops. So you calm the storms, so to speak. And they would tell us after the sessions that some of them would change their approach. approach. So while they were doing it, they would realize that, right, they needed to slow their breath. And then they made the connection that, oh, wow, the brain is starting to slow. So then they would start to train themselves to slow the breath, or they would change their mindset, maybe the kind of thoughts they were thinking, or they would adjust their position, their posture, which I thought was really fascinating, because we didn't give them instruction on that.

35:17They were figuring out that on their own, they were cooperating, they were working with the live feedback into making adjustments in their technique, which then changes their outcomes. So that was interesting. It was a small pilot study. Now, this other study as well, the accessibility, I'm sorry, the acceptability rates are high. It seems like they perceive a lot of benefit, but we don't, like I said, we don't know the outcomes. We looked at stress and mindfulness. But I think it is a quick story, Josh. So I was doing a workshop, and this will drive home the point. I was doing a workshop and I had out of 40 like undergrads, they were pre-service teachers.

35:57I offered this as part of a small grant. I offered a mindfulness meditation training for them that helps with, you know, stress as a teacher that they all have stress. And only about nine or 10 of them stayed out of 40. So that tells you because it was voluntary. So that tells me right there is like, well, they're not interested. So about the nine, I was teaching them like, you know, heart base and breath meditation, a couple of basic techniques. and they seemed kind of sleepy. They were, they were being polite and they were there. They weren't that into it. So I had brought it and used, I brought a neurofeedback headband that I slept and I threw it on the table and I said, you know what this is?

36:33And they were like, no. And I started explaining how it works. And then one of them tried it, you know, what they're and hooked it up to their phone. And then, and it was like, you know, kids and kids at Christmas, it was like opening Christmas presents and Christmas morning. They were just came alive. They all wanted to try it. And now all of a sudden they all want to try, you know, mindfulness. is. So I don't think we should shy away from that and say, oh, that's not traditional. And I think we need to adapt and evolve and understand that younger people and younger generations are going to maybe be more apt to try meditation, mental training, things that can help their mental health and well-being.

37:10And we have to go with it, go with the flow. We have to develop that out and make that work and see if that does help them.

37:18Steve Haberlin, PhD:I agree. And like to measure, it's just another more concrete data point to measure your mental fitness, essentially. Like if you can see that you are tracking in a certain direction over time, then it's easier to recognize than I think, at least for some people, oh, I didn't react in the same way in that situation. like maybe maybe it shortens the gap for you to get kind of hooked in or interested so yeah i think it's really really important yeah higher engagement levels yeah definitely and yes it's really interesting what was it you said in that about the first study again the first study we just looked their stress level did did go down uh statistically did go down and we just and then we just talked with them about how they responded during the session to the live feedback.

38:11So how they were able to adjust their, adjust their technique. And these were novice meditators. They had no meditation experience. They just started to realize I have to change something in my physiology or, or in my mental awareness or state to make something change with this noise, with this rain. And so to me, that's, yeah, that's just fascinating that, um, they can just almost they were almost teaching themselves to get to that state.

38:38Steve Haberlin, PhD:That I think would be so effective. And yeah, if you can't access a lot of natural sound effects, I think that's very well established. So it's interesting if you play and have the direct feedback of the rain, how they are like self-teaching through that, because that's how, I mean, that's usually the role of the teacher, isn't it? And like you said, now, often just with growth of meditation, there aren't enough. I mean, there might not be enough good teachers to help everybody. So I think it's just another amazing and very exciting reason to keep going and looking at this technology. So you said that technology both can enhance and complicate meditation.

39:30Steve Haberlin, PhD:What are the biggest complications or pitfalls that people should be aware of? Well, I think like anything, it has advantages and disadvantages. So it provides more accessibility, maybe higher engagement levels. You could get some live feedback, but you don't have the guidance of a personal instructor. You don't have somebody right there to share your experiences with. Maybe you don't have a community to kind of bounce off. You know, this is what I was experiencing. Is that normal? so you know some of those things and then there's always the fear i think that people will use it as a crutch and now you're just putting on a gadget and you're listening to it and you're not meditating or doing anything so i like the two words integrate integration i think we have to integrate integrate the technology into practice and see it as something that enhances practice not replaces practice.

40:25The core of practice is always going to be there. And then the second element, I think, with like meta meditation framework is balance. You have to, and this is something that we're still exploring and it's so new that people are going to have to try to figure this, some of this out, but balancing between how much technology is too much assistance when you're developing meditation practice and it's taking over. So back to the first point on, you know, just fusing it into your meditation could be something as simple as you already have a meditation practice and then maybe you alternate with a neurofeedback device or you use a smartphone maybe maybe you jump on a vr headset and you do a virtual reality meditation um you know you might try it every other day or maybe it's a couple minutes of your practice or once a week but it doesn't have to replace your practice and you you it can't you're still doing it's helping you uh like the vr we didn't I didn't mention this, Josh, but the VR, you can see your breath.

41:25It'll have like visual cues and you kind of see your breath going in on trip. You can see the breath going in like these little sparkles and going out. So these visual cues and everything can assist you. Meditation has had assisted technology. It's had tools. You know, they use the beads, right? And they would count with the beads and move the mala beads or you had a cushion behind you. So it wasn't, you know, obviously the technology we have today, but there's always been assistive tools. But they're just to do that. They're assists. You still have to do the meditation. And I think a good analogy would be like, say you're going to go running.

42:00You could get these great running sneakers. You could put on your earbuds and have this great motivating music and have this great outfit that, you know, you feel comfortable in. But you still have to run. Like you still have to do the running. These are all enhancements, but you still have to run. So it's the same thing. You still have to make time to sit down and do whatever meditation technique that you're doing and then just allow these things to enhance it. And then the second, I'm going to jump back to the second aspect of balance. I write in the book the metaphor or the analogy of a e-bike.

42:35And have you ever read one, Josh, the e-bike where it's the electric bike? I haven't actually. I've done the scooter but not the bike. It's very interesting because you don't realize how fast you can go. But so I'm a mountain biker. And then I ran across these guys that would fly by me and they would go up the hill. And I would say to my nephew, how is it that they just go on? We're just, you know, we're out of bed. We're trying to get up this this this climb. We call it a climb, right? You're trying to do a climb and they just fly up. And he goes, oh, they have, you know, electric motors. Those are e-bikes.

43:04So the e-bike is something that if you use it, great, it's fun and it can enhance and you can go up the hill. And then maybe you pedal down the hill or do some other obstacles. But if all you do is the e-bike, if all you do is allow it to pedal for you, you're not getting the cardio, right? Workout that you want. You're not getting working the leg muscles and you're not maybe burning the, you're definitely not burning the calories that you would burn if you were doing traditional mountain biking. So I think you have to find the balance. It's like, how much do you pedal and how much do you let it do a little bit of pedaling for you as you're learning and coasting?

43:37But if you let it do too much pedaling, right, if you if you all you do is you stick on those gadgets and just listen to them or let them do the work and you're not really vested in learning the technique of meditation, investing the energy and time in it, then I don't know. I think maybe you're out of balance. I don't know if it's going to have the same benefit.

43:56Steve Haberlin, PhD:With these new technologies emerging, like how can the non-scientists tell the difference between like a research back tool and just a gimmick? Yeah, it's really challenging because there's so many meditation tools that are coming out on the market very quickly. There's a lot of, you know, there are feedback headbands out there. We mentioned music, but there's a whole host of others, a lot of apps out there that continue to come out. And now there's going to be AI-assisted devices. I would say, you know, obviously you can read reviews and what others are saying about them. But, you know, you could look at some of the research.

44:36Some of these devices are being more researched than others. That doesn't necessarily mean that they're better. But, you know, if you look at some journal papers, if you look up some different studies on, I'm not going to name what device, but X device, and you see that maybe it is having some benefits over time and, you know, they've done multiple studies and it has good strong outcomes, then maybe that might be something that you want to try. you gotta look at price some of the prices that you know really fluctuate and differ in what you can afford um there's a lot of youtube type reviews there's people now doing all the time youtube reviews on the different ones and again you know you're listening to their opinion of the device right they might like the device and you might not like the device i wouldn't go spending a lot of money i would say that why don't you start simple small and maybe maybe you try one device, one app, and you just, if you've never meditated before, just try that.

45:37Maybe try a meditation first for a month or so, and then maybe try to add that to it, or maybe it can guide you a little bit for the first few weeks. If you're already experienced meditating, I would say get one tool, learn that tool, and then see if you can weave that into your current practice, or maybe see how it supports or maybe it doesn't support your current practice. But just start small. Start with one tool. You don't have to go crazy and try all these different tools. It's expensive and you don't know. Some of them, you know, some of them are questionable and may not work as well as others.

46:11Steve Haberlin, PhD:And how would you recommend someone to balance the kind of traditional no-tech meditation with these neuro tools in a more sustainable way? I put a framework in the back of the book, a couple of options. I think you could do an alternating type thing where you don't have to completely throw out your old school meditation, traditional meditation. You could meditate one day and then alternate and add a tech-assisted meditation the next day. Or you could do one week of traditional meditation and the next week you flip it to tech-assisted and then see. And you could track. You could journal or you could do it with others in a community and see if it, is that tech-assisted week?

46:51Do you feel any different? and does that seem to work or not? So I think it's just a matter maybe of alternating, but not completely, don't throw out your practice. You don't have to throw out your existing practice to add something. It's just you're putting on, what is it, the running example? You're just putting on some new sneaks, right? You're just like, hey, let me try these sneakers on. But your running program essentially is the same.

47:16Steve Haberlin, PhD:Yeah, and there's sneakers that everybody keeps winning marathons in, isn't there i think they all tend to wear the same technology as you use at this point i think they've just banned some for the sub two hour i'm not sure if it got passed or not but yeah it's a it's a really good analogy so to make it really practical as we start to wrap up if the listener just has 15 minutes practice what would a tech supported practice look like for someone trying to improve focus and how would that differ from somebody that was trying to reduce anxiety I think you want to look at some of the neurofeedback.

47:54There's also the music. It's also Mendy. Mendy is another mental training device. Maybe something like that where you just take a 10 or 15 minutes where you're doing one of those training techniques where it has you coming back to your breath, coming back to bringing your awareness back and trying to deal with that mind wandering. And then it will usually give you some kind of analytics at the end where, you know, like a calm score rate or how you did. I think something as simple as that might work. If you use an app, Josh, if you do like a guided meditation app or something and you're trying to train up your focus, you don't know.

48:29It could help. It could work, but you don't have the necessarily maybe have the biomarkers or any kind of feedback, real data, you know, that'll tell you. Well, there's the same thing with the VR right now. I don't think there would be anything that would say, well, I'm kind of moving in the right direction. With anxiety, that's a little bit trickier. There's nothing, you know, you can look at your heart rate or your pulse and very basic things like that. If you're just the average person, you know, meditating and not a scientist or with with different technology devices. So that's a little bit trickier to measure.

49:05You know, you can look at something like a score after the neurofeedback, but I'm not sure necessarily that means that you're less anxious. you know there's always like what the meditation teachers have taught the the over the years has always been um i love this one was you know let let your day be the measure let you the rest of your day be the measure of your practice i love that because you know it's not so you know it's not scientific empirical but it's uh more subjective or qualitative but you know your day Did you, were you more on point? Were you focused? Were you more relaxed? Were you able to kind of pick up information faster and not overreact?

49:46And like, how did the rest, how were your relationships? Did you connect with others? So how did the rest of the day go? That might just be a very simple measure for anything, anxiety or stress. Definitely.

49:58Steve Haberlin, PhD:And I love Vante Vinla Ramsey used to say that the hindrances are your teachers. So it's really an opportunity for anxiety. And if you look back at your life, we always change. Like there is no set way of me being that I have persisted. Yeah. And we don't always need technology. Like, you know how you feel. Like you have a lot of, you know, you have the aura ring and all these sleep trackers sleep, you know, to tell you how you slept and everything. But when you wake up in the morning, even if you didn't have the ring or an app on or something, you know how you slept. You can wake up and you would feel terrible, right?

50:35You had a terrible night's sleep. You didn't need technology to tell you that. You just have that subjective feeling. So I think meditation in some ways can be the same. We don't always need technology to track everything. You can just say, how do I feel? Definitely.

50:50Steve Haberlin, PhD:I took the whoop off because I was waking up some days feeling so refreshed. It would be like, we've had a terrible sleep. And then other days, I'd just wake up feeling terrible. And it would say that I'm like 100 % sleep score. Right. You don't need it to tell you that you didn't get a good night's sleep sometimes. Indeed. And what's one innovation on the horizon that excites you most? The next joke. The question of mental tools. Yeah, what would they let us do that we can't currently? I'd put a chapter in the end of things that you can't really quite buy yet or maybe an average person can't access, but they're cool stuff.

51:29There's things coming out that were very innovative. There was one prototype where they're working on a yoga mat and they put sensors in the yoga mat and the yoga mat kind of talks to you as you're like moving into different poses and coaches you. So I could see I could see AI being infused into those kind of devices like a yoga mat. They could train you and kind of coach you and put music, you know, and collect data as you're doing your as you're doing your yoga. I can I can see something like that expanding the transcranial. the sound where they put the sound waves into you and then you get the benefits of meditation without kind of meditating.

52:11That's very interesting to me. Magnetic stimulation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Resonant, like magnetic resonance, resonance, resonance.

52:21Steve Haberlin, PhD:Yeah, my friend, I just had that done. I haven't spoken to him yet, but he just visited Jay Sanguinetti's lab in Wisconsin, I think they're curious to see how, how that went, because some of the, uh, subjective reports are extremely interesting, but he also said that for some people it doesn't work. Okay. I'll look at that. Yeah. To get, it's almost like popping a pill to get benefits, right. You don't have to put in the practice. So I don't know. I know there was a pilot study or two done on it. So I don't think we can definitively say, you know, that we can just get the benefits of meditation without meditation yet.

52:59There was one more. There was a prototype of a... This was just kind of out there. They have a plant, and they have these sensors in the plant. And when you meditate and you're getting more to a calm state, the plant will water itself. You'll nurture the plant. So you have these plants around. I could imagine at the mall, and you sit there, and you're meditating, and you're watering the real plants at the mall. It's very fascinating. I don't know how far some of these prototypes are going, but I think anything with AI that's going to serve as an avatar, a teacher that contains all the wisdom and the knowledge of collective society and is going to be able to deliver that, that's what excites me the most.

53:45I think to have a supreme meditation teacher that is not human, but can have the knowledge of, you know, that can really accelerate people's kind of evolution and development. That's pretty fascinating to me. That's sci-fi stuff right there coming to reality.

54:07Steve Haberlin, PhD:Definitely. I think even, I don't know if I've even seen anything like that in sci-fi. We're like almost post-singularity. I think it's exciting. Even if it can help, if we're talking about people's well-being, even if it can help in a small way, then it's just so worth looking at and using. And I would expect it to be a lot more than that. So, yeah, I'm very excited as to where it takes us. So if listeners were to remember one thing about the future of mental training, what would it be? I'll come back to balance. I come back to don't, don't throw out the ancient methods that have been around 2000, 3000, sometimes even longer.

54:54Don't throw out those ancient traditional methods. There's a reason why they've been around so long, right? They're time tested and their true wisdom. So don't be so quick to just throw those out. And then on the other hand, don't be afraid to at least somewhat embrace the technology. and the adaptation and the way we're evolving as humans. Don't be afraid of some of the technology and things that are coming that might be able to really benefit you. It's always about integrating. If we can marry the two and make them work together, it's wow. We take the past and the future and you create something brand new.

55:32Steve Haberlin, PhD:I love that. That was a beautiful recap and way to finish. So your book, Can you please tell us about your upcoming book, Meta Meditation for Mental Health? And what can readers expect and where can they find more about your work? Sure. So the book is published by Rutledge. It will be pre-sales going out on March 17. You can start to pre-order the copy. So we're a little bit ahead, but they can find it on Rutledge website. I think we're going to put some links, I think, Josh, right? And also on Amazon now and also on my website. The book really looks at this whole phenomenon of, like I said, neuroscience, AI, VR, smartphones all coming together.

56:15It provides the research, but it does it in a way where I think faculty can enjoy it because it's as current as you can get with a book, research. But also just the average person who's not in academia can also digest some of this research and say, okay, what do we know that's working? What's not working? What do we still have to find out as far as all these meditation technologies? And then it provides guide. At the end of each chapter, there's steps and guided practice and things you can do. And there's resources. We talk about tools. There's different tools and gives you all the information.

56:51So it's really just a book to help you navigate the future, help you navigate this digital meditation phenomenon.

57:00Steve Haberlin, PhD:Amazing. That's exciting. And I look forward to reading it. Steve Haberlin, thank you so much for joining us. Oh, thank you, Josh. I enjoyed it. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to the episode. If you enjoyed it, please, if you could give us a like, a subscribe and hit the notification bell, that would really help us out. Or just share this episode with a friend, share the course with a friend. Anything would go such a long way. Thank you so much and I hope to see you soon.

57:36so