45: Ariel Garten | Rest and Reprogram Your Mind

Here is an area of health I have not succeeded well in. I like to exercise and workout and tear my muscles down, every day, I don’t enjoy or give enough focus to resting and recovering my muscles so they can build back stronger. Likewise, I like to train and stress and grow my mind, my brain. I do not, however, give much focus to letting it rest and recover. Our topic today is meditation and it’s a strong argument that it is the key method for rest and recovery. But as you’ll hear today, they are also finding it is key in actually reprogramming our minds. How would you like to reprogram and recover from past trials and tragedies and traumas that have negatively affected you? Our guest is Ariel Garten. Ariel is a neuroscientist, innovator, and entrepreneur on a mission to help people understand how the mind works and empower them to live their best lives through meditation. She is the co- founder and visionary of a highly successful tech start-up called Muse, which tracks your brain during meditation to give you real-time feedback, guiding you into true rest and letting you know when you are actively allowing your mind to recover. Randy and I have been using Muse leading up to this. Muse is a multi-sensor meditation device, a headband, that syncs with an app on your phone and provides real-time feedback on your brain activity, heart rate, breathing, and body movements to help you build a consistent meditation practice. I use the “desert” mode and as I try to rest, it tells me how I’m doing by the level of the wind. As I slow down and settle my mind I hear the tell tale birds chirping. The app monitors my progress day to day so I can see my accumulative results and progress. It’s really ingenious and takes the guesswork out of wondering if you really have your mind at rest. This episode is about the benefits of resting your mind and being present, not the Muse app and technology. That said, you’ll likely be interested in getting one yourself. If you visit choosemuse.com/welcome, you can get 10% off by using the code, choosemuse. 

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