With a new year underway, many of us are looking for ways to improve our health in 2015. While lifestyle factors like diet and exercise typically come to mind first, there’s much more to achieving well-being.
Mounting evidence suggests that greater physical and mental health can be achieved through effectively leveraging the mind-body connection. With the continued growth of the digital health and wellness sector, people are increasingly taking their health outcomes into their own hands. By using the power of their minds, combined with the improved ability to measure and track individual health metrics, people are improving themselves physically and mentally like never before.
Mindfulness & EEG Technology in the News
An example of this was recently featured on 60 Minutes when Anderson Cooper went on a mindfulness retreat and compiled his story for CBS. The full story and video is available here.
There are dozens of studies that show the positive changes meditation can bring about in the brain. Cooper wanted to see if his own practice had any measurable effects. As part of the story, Cooper allowed himself to be hooked up to a multi-sensor EEG (electroencephalography) machine, which measures the brain’s electric potentials through the scalp. Cooper wanted to see if the recordings could capture the moment when he dropped into mindfulness—and it did.
While the EEG technology used by Cooper was a clinical model, similar technology is available to everyday users looking to leverage their mind-body connection for better health. In fact, NeuroSky’s EEG headsets, the MindWave and MindWave Mobile, are the world’s most affordable EEG headsets with the widest range of mindfulness and meditation software available.
Improving Healthy Habits with EEG Headsets & ZenZone
NeuroSky has several different partner apps that can help encourage mindfulness and other healthy behaviours that improve overall well-being. One example, the ZenZone suite of apps are designed to receive feedback data via NeuroSky’s EEG headset.
ZenZone defines well-being as “a good or satisfactory condition of existence; a state characterized by health, happiness and prosperity”. Their suite of apps addresses a range of subjects across these three topics. Some of ZenZone’s apps, currently available on the Apple iOS platform via iPad and iPhone, include:
- Mindfulness: Trains your brain to quickly and easily enter a calmly attentive, mindful state. The more you use this app the more you’ll naturally find yourself bringing a heightened, mindful attentiveness to whatever you’re doing, so that you can appreciate and savor each moment of your life as it happens.
- Reduce Stress: Guides you into a profound state of deep relaxation. Regular use of this app will help you feel much calmer as you go about your daily life, and much better at unwinding when the workday is done.
- Positive Attitude: Teaches you how to develop an attitude of unshakable optimism that will give you the best chance to succeed at whatever you do.
- Self Discipline: Helps you develop a will of steel, so that you take consistent action in your life and do what needs to be done.
To produce optimal results, ZenZone is able to adjust the visual and auditory experience it delivers based on how focused or mentally calm you are. During that time, an auditory guide walks you through a session to adjust and improve your personal behaviors.
For more information about ZenZone, browse their suite of apps in the Apple App Store and iTunes.
Opportunities for Developers in Health & Wellness
The continued growth of the digital health and wellness sector presents developers with an incredible opportunity to harness the power of biosensors and create truly life-changing software. To learn more about how ZenZone seized this opportunity by leveraging NeuroSky’s retail and developer-friendly EEG technology, download the success story, ZenZone: Harnessing the Power of the Mind to Achieve Personal Well-Being.
