Is VR + meditation a solution to mental illness with "metalogy" a good business?

Mental disorders as a by-product of productivity

For modern people, daily life is more or less subject to mental stress, work, emotional, historical experience, and fear of certain things, and even PTSD (post-traumatic stress) Syndrome).

According to a survey conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health in the United States, one in five Americans is diagnosed with mental disorders. The direct economic impact is that medical and production expenditures amount to US$ 467 billion. This figure has been extended to the world. The range is 2.5 trillion US dollars.

Serious mental health problems may require drug intervention, but in most cases treatment with "technical" means is already very effective. For anxiety disorders, phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorder and even PTSD, cognitive behavioral therapy and exposure therapy are coping strategies.

Although the time for VR to enter the public view is still very short, it has been used for many years as a treatment method in medicine. Expose the patient to a safe controlled VR environment, which is a common exposure therapy. Because of cost reasons and technical limitations, this method has not been widely promoted. But nowadays, VR devices that can be purchased for hundreds of dollars or even several tens of dollars make the popularity of this therapy possible.

However, one of the difficulties facing the promotion of this therapy is that there is not enough clinical evidence and data to prove whether and how VR can be used effectively.

In spite of this, keen entrepreneurs are already impatient, and they want to get a share of this market as soon as possible. For these entrepreneurs who want to eat “crab”, time is both an ally and an adversary—designing, optimizing, promoting, and liaising with medical institutions will all take a lot of time.

If there is no scientific evidence and guidance, tell the user about the relevant application: You can use VR to solve your PTSD - this is extremely irresponsible. Will this kill all entrepreneurial ideas?

From meditation to medical meditation

The Independent, the UK online media, wrote: Meditation and nocturnal yoga have become a huge wave, they help you relax and promote sleep. We look forward to the emergence of a stylish meditation room in 2017, even virtual, to help you stay awake for a moment.

That's right, virtual meditation room. On the iOS and Android platforms, a large number of meditation teaching aids have emerged in the past two years. Their forms are almost identical: the female voice guides you step by step in the white noise of running water or birds. The revenue model is also very much the same – according to the course fees.

Meditation and “Zen” (Zen), originally a Buddhist concept of oriental culture, were easily adopted by Westerners in the culture of the Western Hemisphere in the last century. In particular, in the United States, the anti-cultural movements and the new era movements that emerged among young people from the 1960s to the 1970s all borrowed a lot from the mysterious east.

Dharma meditation on Ukiyoe

However, after the technical school represented by Silicon Valley became popular, the data and evidence stood on the opposite side of mystery, making meditation and other acts a mystery.

Data from Wikipedia shows that since 1950, hundreds of meditation studies have been conducted, but many of the earlier studies were flawed and the results were unreliable. Research on the process and effect of meditation is a sub-field of continuous growth in neurological research. According to an article in the March 2006 issue of the Journal of Psychology, doing meditation activities slows down EEG-related activities. The human nervous system consists of the parasympathetic nervous system and the sympathetic nervous system. The former regulates heart rate, breathing, and other involuntary motor functions. The latter is to arouse the body to prepare for violent activities. The National Institutes of Health said: "Some types of meditation may be effective because meditation reduces sympathetic nervous system activity and increases the activity of the parasympathetic nervous system." In other words, meditation results in reduced activity and increased relaxation.

As a way to reduce stress and pain, meditation has entered the mainstream of healthcare. In the medical community, there are more and more people agree that such a point of view - psychological factors, such as stress, tension is part of the body's lack of health, in mainstream science, there are more and more people to provide funding for research in this area.

As such, "VR + meditation" has paved the way.

VR + meditation, in the end how to present?

Dan Harris, a prominent reporter of ABC Television, is an advocate of modern scientific meditation. In fact, some meditation apps were born from his 2014 bestseller. However, he was skeptical about VR+ meditation. In an interview with CNET, he said: In the concept of meditation, entering a virtual environment full of visual effects is actually counter-productive because you should have used your mind to create an environment. The rich details of VR meditation app remind you all the time: This is VR to help you create, not your own.

Josh Farkas of Cubicle Ninjas Studios does not agree. He believes that for those who are difficult to sit in a chair and close their eyes, providing a virtual environment of a forest or temple can make these busy people easily distracted by VR, and this is focused meditation first step.

Josh Farkas has this view because his design studio developed the most famous meditation app in the VR platform, Guided Meditation VR. The APP's mode of operation is to provide multiple high-precision virtual environments (Yokosuka temple, Costa del Sol, Spain) and sound guidance for 2 to 10 minutes. The APP is priced at $15 on Oculus Rift and Vive, and Gear VR has a free version.

Some built-in scenes of Guided Meditation VR

Farkas' Cubicle Ninjas is a design consulting company. Like the companies we are familiar with, they provide customers with modern design services including UI and UX. One of the designer’s capabilities and responsibilities is to explore humans in new media and technologies. Cubicle Ninjas's design services range from traditional printing to digital media, and is now VR.

Speaking of the idea of ​​developing Guided Meditation VR, Farkas said in an interview with Recode: “The turnaround is positive. We think that social isolation is a good thing. The Americans are simply incapable of taking time off. We just want them to get home from work.” After wearing a VR headset, relax for ten minutes.”

The Americans are so, why do Chinese people not?

Today's VR content is divided into three categories: interactive games, 360-degree panoramic videos with almost no interaction, and VR videos that are looking to explore more interactions. Obviously, content such as Guided Meditation VR does not fall into any category. It doesn't need to be interactive because the purpose is clear before you open the APP - go to another place, meditate, and adjust mood. The senses that meditation needs to be mobilized are only ears and eyes, that is, you only need to listen and only need to see.

Perhaps the future of VR + meditation should be as much as Dan Harris describes himself as creating an environment - the environment you think of can be rendered in real time by the computer. But if this is true, the question is - is this still meditation or is it just another Tilt Brush?

In recent years, fitness has become a trend. From the offline fitness store to the APP based on mobile Internet, the prosperity of an industry reflects the exploration of lifestyle after the improvement of the material life. This is the same background as the new era movement of the United States in the last century. Yoga and meditation, this kind of exercise from the body to the heart, is an evolution of fitness. Maybe we will see more Cubicle Ninjas here, more Guided Meditation VR.