Meditation promises an impressive array of benefits. Physical effects like lower blood pressure and increased energy, mental improvements such as enhanced happiness and reduced anxiety, and even spiritual changes like deeper gratitude and personal transformation – all these are said to flow from meditation practice.
To a beginner, meditation can feel less like a path to enlightenment and more like sitting around fighting boredom. You can sit, breathe, and try to hear one hand clapping. How do you know you’re doing it right? Starting meditation often feels frustrating rather than calming.
One solution to the challenges of learning meditation is the Muse 2 headband from Muse. It promises to measure physiological signals and provide real-time feedback on your meditation quality.
How the Muse 2 Works
The Muse 2 is a headband equipped with multiple biosensors. You wear it on your forehead during meditation, and it monitors your body’s responses. The sensors track:
- Brain activity
- Heart rate and blood oxygen
- Stillness or motion
- Breathing speed and depth
The headband syncs with your phone via Bluetooth. The Muse app receives the data and delivers audio cues indicating when your meditation is on track or drifting. Muse claims this feedback helps you meditate more effectively.
The app includes several different modes. While it tracks everything simultaneously, it only provides feedback for one system per session. You choose whether to focus on mind, heart, breathing, or stillness while you meditate. Muse alerts you when your chosen activity is flowing well or veering off course, allowing you to make adjustments and improve your meditation.
Advantages of the Muse 2
- Makes it easy to feel when meditation goes off-course
- Users report that it leads to a quick improvement in the quality of meditation
- Once you get the hang of meditation with the Muse 2, you get good results even if you don’t have it
Disadvantages of the Muse 2
- Cost – meditation is free. The Muse 2 is not
- Bringing in a gadget and smartphone adds complexity to an activity that is supposed to be simple
- The sounds used for feedback strike some people as weird new-age schtick
The Company Behind the Muse Headbands
The Muse 2 is manufactured by InteraXon, a Canadian company specializing in brain-sensing equipment. Their Muse product line consists of three headbands. Besides the Muse 2, they produce the simpler Muse headband and the soft Muse S. They also develop the meditation and mindfulness app that powers the Muse 2.
Muse exists solely to advance brainwave monitoring and enhance meditation practice. Beyond the meditation training app, Muse headbands are also sold to brain researchers and therapists.
Researchers value the headband and app because they deliver high-quality medical data. The Muse 2 provides an excellent way to monitor brain activity in research subjects and capture precise data.
Therapists employ it as a teaching tool to enhance therapy sessions. Patients can explore various treatments and receive real-time feedback on how each practice affects their physiological state.
Muse 2 Technology
The Muse 2 uses the same brainwave-sensing technology that hospitals and scientists have relied on for years. Like many electronic devices, these sensors have become smaller and more affordable as technology has advanced. Compact, cost-effective tech enables retail sales, while Bluetooth and smartphones give consumers convenient control.
The app guides you through meditation sessions – nothing revolutionary here, as mindfulness instructors have provided such guidance for centuries. The app reads signals from the headband and adjusts the guidance accordingly. It also plays sounds across a spectrum to indicate your meditation state.
The sound spectrum works like this: Say you selected weather sounds for your meditation session. Deep meditation sounds like gentle rain, while an active, scattered mind sounds like a thunderstorm. Hearing thunder signals that your thoughts are wandering, prompting you to refocus.
Is it Safe?
The technology in the Muse 2 isn’t new. It’s been used in hospitals for years, and you can trust it won’t cause harm. While the Muse 2 isn’t medically certified, it operates the same way as hospital-grade devices.
Perhaps the biggest concern involves privacy and security. After all, this device is reading your mind. Muse maintains a strict privacy policy and stores any transmitted data on secure servers.
Where to Buy the Muse 2
The Muse 2 is widely available. You can purchase it directly from InteraXon at their website, or order from Amazon. Be sure to download the free app – the headband won’t function without it. You can also access additional guided meditation routines through an annual subscription, though it’s optional.
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Is the Muse 2 Worth It?
On one hand, people have mastered meditation for centuries without apps or brain sensors. Nearly everyone who has learned to meditate did so by simply sitting still and practicing. Many pay for coaching, but just as many have learned meditation for free. If you want to meditate more but aren’t particularly committed, skip the Muse 2 and just practice.
On the other hand, rapid progress is achievable using the Muse 2. Someone who needs to master meditation quickly – for example, someone managing panic attacks or extreme stress – could genuinely benefit from the Muse 2. If tension or anxiety are controlling your life, the feedback from the Muse 2 could be transformative.
