Can Neuroscience Accelerate The Benefits Of Long Term Meditation?
- By Paola Telfer, CEO of Sens.ai, British Columbia, Canada
Hello Fellow Meditator,
I built something for you. Sens.ai was made with dedicated meditators in mind, in hopes that your efforts would be accelerated. But it was designed for all humans putting lots of love and attention into bringing ease and fun into a regular meditation practice. Ultimately, meditation is brain training - purposefully creating positive habits of mind. I have a sincere belief that technology-assisted meditation is the next step required to accelerate and scale our species’ awakening. And I think time is of the essence.
I was inspired by my decades practicing Tibetan Buddhism, studying Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory, and the work I did at week-long neurofeedback retreats; plus the breadth of powerful meditations I learned from Dr. Jeffrey Martin’s Finders course and Dr. Joe Dispenza’s work. Sens.ai is a gift for my son and his generation.
Sens.ai aims to democratize enlightenment, backed by neuroscience. The bar we have set for ourselves is a scientific vehicle for enlightenment that is reproducible, measurable and scalable. We have embedded neuropsych metrics and biometrics for measured progress. We are excited for the journey towards this ultimate goal which will undoubtedly yield an increase in mental wellbeing, creative insight and social harmony for those willing to invest the minimum of 20 minutes, 3 times per week.
At the inception of Sens.ai, we invested in research and development to ensure a high integrity reading of gamma brain waves. It’s been well documented that long term meditators tend to have higher levels of synchronized gamma brain wave activity. So we knew it was imperative that we train gamma. In one study, monks who had meditated 50,000 hours had some of the highest observed gamma levels. Sens.ai overcame a significant engineering challenge to be the first to infuse gamma and its harmonics into brain training for home.
For those of you that are curious about the details of how Sens.ai supports the meditations styles you are already familiar with, please refer to our Program-to-meditation mapping in the image below. A Sens.ai Program is a neurotechnology frequency configuration of neurofeedback, photobiomodulation (tPBM) and heart coherence. Each Program has its own unique mental state that it stimulates and trains based on over 1M EEGs analyzed; pairing these with specific meditation tracks will amplify that mental state experience. We have included guided meditation talk tracks for each Program, which can be toggled on or off. Our App can also run alongside your own favorite talk tracks.
Our experience so far with our beta testers is that we can ease people into a direct experience of altered states which opens up a sense of wellbeing and deeper knowing. Some of our early testing was so powerful it led our participants into recalling deeply stored memories from childhood. Since then, we have created a curated and guided experience in our App. We added guidance through meditation talk tracks and 16 Missions.
Each Mission is a course that runs 4-12 weeks with purposeful unlocking of new Programs, ensuring a gentle stabilizing and building of mental skills. Each mission is your guided personalized exploration of a given meditation style.
In addition to supporting the multitude of meditation styles, it was important to me that we include Programs for doing intentional rewiring to let go of the past, as this has been so critical in my personal growth. It was also essential to me that we include programs for Group Synchrony as we are stronger together and our world needs more harmony.
Sens.ai trains you in both pillars of meditation - concentration and awareness. As you no doubt know, without awareness one develops a dull concentration. Gamma training allows us to enhance your awareness.
In addition to supporting the multitude of meditation styles, it was important to me that we include Programs for doing intentional shadow work, as this has been so critical in my personal growth. It was also essential to me that we include programs for Group Synchrony as we are stronger together and our world needs more harmony.
We are familiar with the evolution of obstacles to one’s meditation practice. As you move from keeping awake and calming the body to quieting your inner chatter and then increasing the power and duration of your concentration, we provide metrics for you to objectively understand your progress.
Our goal is to get you exponentially more focus, awareness and happiness out of your mind training efforts compared to meditation alone. Sens.ai will keep gently nudging you along with personalized training, just for you.
At Sens.ai we believe that developing concentration and awareness will help all people, regardless of philosophy, to live bigger, fuller lives by enabling them to pay attention to what is important at a given moment and live with a full-minded presence.
Sens.ai takes the wondering out of meditation: Am I meditating correctly? Have I chosen the right meditation technique for me? Sens.ai can quantify, personalize and accelerate the benefits of long term meditation. Sens.ai seeks to make each stage of practice fun and rewarding, allowing room for you to proceed without striving and agitating yourself with expectations.
Underpinning the Sens.ai app design is the core belief that the mental training path to peak performance and transcendence are on the same continuum. And that interleaving this personal path with social harmonizing will maximize the results for our world. The pyramid below maps Sens.ai’s Programs to evolving consciousness, which we define as a growing circle of concern. Our Sens.ai community is empowered to lucidly tap into non-ordinary waking states to awaken life flow and intuitive guidance.
I am grateful to the Sens.ai community, a dedicated group of creators, makers and innovators, passionate about sharing the awakening power of advanced neurotechnology with the world.
With Love,
Paola