Oct 15, 20172 min read

Meditation for Mental Health | Muse

Updated: May 2, 2019

In the mental health field, it's not often you hear of all the new and exciting advancements. Technology and medicine are rapidly advancing, and the psychology and mental health fields are moving right along with these advancements.

For some reason, and maybe I'm just in the dark about this, I don't hear about different therapy treatments, medications, and technologies in the mental health field. This is most likely because I'm not a mental health professional, and I'm not submersed in the environment, but I've been looking into some of the products that are arising. Some of them look pretty cool!

This post contains affiliate links, for more information, see my disclaimer!

Muse Headband

Muse headband is a new invention, made to calm your mind by paying attention to your brain activity, and guiding it back towards a calm state. Here's why you should try meditating with Muse:

1. It's an awesome motivation towards better mental health

It gives you actual, real-time feedback on your brain activity!

2. It helps with stress

Meditation is known to give people a feeling of deep rest, slowing the heart rate and lowering blood pressure. It relaxes the muscles and helps with future responses to stress!

3. Meditation has powerful and long-lasting effects

Research has found meditation:

Increases grey matter density (a healthy brain!)
reduces thinning of the prefrontal cortex
decreases the amygdala activity associated with stress responses
the same or better effects on stress than regular somatic relaxation practices

4. Muse headband gets you in the habit of forming healthy practices

Because the headband comes with access to an app, you get to start with 3-minute meditation sessions, and build your way up to a health habit. You get rewarded with each achievement, keeping meditation practices fun!

So what exactly is it, and what does it do?

Here's the description straight from the website!

"Muse is a powerful, compact electroencephalography (EEG) system. By leveraging improvements in dry sensor technology, Bluetooth and battery life, as well as significant advances in digital signal processing, Muse makes it easy to access and use brainwave data, inside and outside the laboratory and in real world environments."

"The accompanying Muse app, one of several apps available for use with Muse on smartphone or tablet, uses real-time brainwave information to measure states of focus, relaxation, and mind-wandering. It delivers information through audio feedback to help users improve their ability to maintain focus, as part of a meditation practice or cognitive training program. (Research tools also are available on Windows.)"