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Why You Should Meditate in VR for Well-Being and Creativity

Health
Zach
June 10, 2021
14 minutes read

Meditation can be difficult. Staying focused is hard enough for the mind, let alone the endless distractions in the world. Here’s why you should try meditation in VR for well-being and creativity. VR provides new immersive opportunities to support mindfulness and inspire creative thinking.

In 1935, Stanley Weinbaum wrote Pygmalion’s Spectacles and imagined the first VR headset. He imagined an immersive experience where all five senses guide storytelling. We’ve come a long way since then. Now, VR applications go beyond storytelling and into health care, education, travel, and more. But how can VR help meditation, which hasn’t changed much over the centuries that it’s been around?

Meditation is the practice of training attention and awareness to achieve a calm and clear state of mind. It’s a simple practice, but not without its challenges.

It can be demanding to juggle so many things to stay focused, awake, visualize, and even relax. Not to mention distractions that can disrupt attention. There’s a reason why it’s called a practice because no matter how experienced a person is, meditation still takes a lot of effort and patience. Finding ways to support and personalize the practice can help maintain the longevity of this healthy habit. VR opens up a whole world of possibilities to support and personalize your meditation practice.

Immersion Supports Well-Being and Creativity

Immersion is a perception of presence. When immersed in the present moment, a person is not focused on anxieties of the future or regrets of the past. They’re focused, aware, and have a positive mind/body connection. Meditation helps ground oneself in the present moment by directing the five senses. But this can be difficult due to issues like distractions and boredom.

A study on VR for pain rehabilitation therapy found positive effects when there were high levels of immersion. If immersion is crucial in the effectiveness of an experience, then VR can help people better focus on their goals.

Immersion helps people learn, improve experiences, be more aware, and even heal. VR has taken off for exposure therapy to treat phobias, pain management, PTSD, and more. VR provides an immersive experience that people can personalize to overcome challenges and calm the mind.

Tips

Use your body to play and interact with the virtual world
Prepare for motion sickness, but don’t push through it
- Ginger can help
- Start small and build up
Make sure you’re comfortable and have plenty of space
Measure and setup your IPD ‘interpupillary distance’ before starting – the distance between the center of your two pupils
Optimize your VR tracking to make sure immersion is not broken

Reduce Mind-Wandering and Distractions

Distractions, internal or external, are the most challenging part of practicing meditation. A wandering mind is natural, but reducing distractions, especially at the beginning, can be the difference in building the habit.

Meditation is about recognizing thoughts and learning to let go. One could even say distractions are needed to grow and improve in training the mind. However, distractions are much harder to manage at the beginning. VR can support the wandering mind by removing external distractions. This allows more support and focus to work on internal distractions. Training focus is the heart of meditation, and VR can be a great way to support attention training. One study found it was easier to focus in VR because 80% of the brain is concentrating on visual and auditory pathways. Even when internal distractions become too much, you can open your eyes to a space that inspires calm.

When practicing meditation to overcome the monkey brain and its love to follow distractions, start with compassion and baby steps. Practice guided meditations and VR to build up to the imagined monk state of a clear mind.

Tips

Practice letting go in a virtual environment with water to help visualize the process
Make sure you are comfortable with your position and VR headset
Try guided VR meditations to support focus

Sensory Stimulation Enhances Experiences

For VR to be immersive, the senses need to be stimulated to convince the brain. The five senses help us understand and perceive the world around us. Currently, VR only engages the visual, auditory, and touch senses, but this is already pivotal in creating a sense of presence. Not to mention, companies like OVR Technology are already working on adding other senses like smell.

Presence and immersion go hand in hand. Whether it be a story, gameplay, or meditation, stimulating the senses can enhance the experience and immersion. They can also trigger chemical releases like dopamine to relax the body and mind.

Meditation is a great way to train the body and its senses for well-being, but external distractions can work against you. In VR, not only can you block out real-world distractions, but you can direct the senses towards your goals. By stimulating the senses, you can direct the mind and body to a more relaxed and focused state. Also, despite certain senses still missing from the VR experience, you can still engage them in the real world with candles, incense, essential oils, fans, etc.

Tips

Match your meditation with different scents
- Try an ocean breeze candle or incense for an ocean meditation
- Create a calming breeze with a fan
Try different types of meditation in VR
- For example, nature, guided, experience, etc
Practice mindfulness and meditation in other unique VR experiences and games
Practice mindfulness and stimulate senses in VR travel experiences

Contextualized Learning and Visualization

VR growing as a learning and visualization tool. From schools to businesses, VR is transforming how we learn, think, and create. Immersion has always been a way to improve learning. For example, a person can learn a language better if they are immersed in it.

Meditation can be a difficult skill to learn. One challenge in learning meditation is having an environment that supports the early stages. VR can create an atmosphere that enhances the learning process. A recent study found that a high sense of presence during the VR simulation might contribute to learning skills faster.

VR is also a wonderful tool for visualization. VR has become a new medium for artists, musicians, and other creatives. Using VR for visualization opens up a whole new world and approach to the creative process. Visualization in VR can be relaxing or productive.

Autonomy Over Surroundings and Experience

Surroundings and autonomy play a significant role in creativity and well-being. Studies show that surroundings can impact how you think and feel. A sensory-rich environment with new sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touch, spark different synapses in the brain. This can stimulate new ways of thinking and generating original ideas.

VR is perfect for this because you can change your surroundings to match your goals. You can add intrinsic motivational cues, which can produce higher novelty and flexibility. The more novel the cues, the higher the level of originality of the ideas. For example, say you live in the city surrounded by noises that can disrupt a meditation practice. You can jump into VR and meditate at a quiet beach since water inspires calm.

Tips

Pick VR surroundings that evoke positive feelings
Change surroundings when you feel too comfortable
Pair real-world senses with the virtual senses, i.e., candles/incense/fan

Perspectives and Interactivity Deepens Empathy

VR is a powerful storytelling device because of the interactivity and perspectives a person can engage. Some even calling VR “The Empathy Machine.”

Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. It isn’t only a trait. Anyone can learn and train empathy. Empathy improves social connections, regulates emotions, reduces stress, cultivates curiosity, and more. VR offers new applications to enhance the conception, ability, and practice of empathy through the guidance of reason. Mindfulness practices like meditation can have powerful effects on cultivating compassion and empathy.

Tips

Try VR experiences that provide different perspectives
Make any VR experience meditation by practicing self-awareness and curiosity
Watch VR videos for different perspectives

Biofeedback for Improved Interactivity

Virtual reality is here to stay, and it’s growing fast. It has one of the highest projected potentials for growth. As it continues to become cheaper and easier to access, more applications will emerge. The future of VR will be more immersive and personalized. One way companies are seeking to make VR more immersive and personalized is with biofeedback.

Biofeedback mechanisms are interactive systems that use sensors to measure body functions and provide real-time feedback and control. It’s popular in therapy to manage many physical and mental health issues, such as reducing pain and anxiety.

With VR, a person could manage their body’s response to the stimuli and enhance experiences. The more connected one is with the virtual world, the more empathic one can be. Devices like haptic gloves that help you feel the virtual world could help with learning. For meditation, biofeedback could track breathing and the distracted mind to improve practice and focus. The potential is exciting, to say the least.

Collaboration and Community Engagement

VR may seem like a solitary experience, but community applications are growing fast. There are already many ways to hold meetings or play with others in VR. It’s only a matter of time until there are group meditation apps.

Collaborating with others in VR for meditation could improve accountability as well as variation. Do you have a business trip that’s going to disrupt your access to a yoga or meditation class? Join in VR. With biofeedback, a teacher could see who is having issues and could personalize the experience. Or imagine joining an international class or convention that you wouldn’t have had access to without VR.

Using VR for collaboration removes barriers of geography and access to people and knowledge. This access can speed up the learning process and provide different points of view. Many companies are already using VR for remote working and meetings. Adding meditation to this could open up new well-being practices in the workplace and brainstorming methods.

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Zach

Zach is an international writer, photographer, filmmaker, martial artist, and creator of Creative Enso, the Zen art of creative living. His goal is to empower and inspire creatives to live healthier, happier, and more creative lifestyles.