Virtual Reality, Meditation, & Neuroscience

I designed and studied virtual reality experiences in the early 1990s. I have been designing and studying meditation experiences since 2013.

In 2013 Josh Farkas (CEO of Cubicle Ninjas) created Guided Meditation VR—an innovative, award-winning collection of virtual worlds designed for meditation. He invited me and Marcel to create meditations for some of his environments.

The challenge for me was how to combine eyes open in an elaborate animated virtual world with eyes-closed deeply internal yoga-based meditations. Ideally the result could be the best of both worlds. Connecting internally with body, breath and mind could enhance the experience of being in a visual and auditory virtual world. Perhaps the sense of being there could be heightened.

This web page tells the story of that creation.

Read about our process.
Scroll down to listen to the first two minutes of Marcel guiding the Beach VR meditation.
Scroll down further to watch the conference presentation I gave at Foundations of Digital Games where I demo-ed the experience.
Further down you'll find excerpts of our academic publication Being There: Implications of neuroscience and meditation for self-presence in virtual worlds.
At the bottom of the page I describe some of the early VR experiences I created.

We spent time in the real and virtual environments

Before designing meditations for Cubicle Ninja's Yokosuka Garden and Costa Del Sol virtual worlds, we spent time exploring the virtual world. And we visited the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco as well as visiting the ocean to gain a sense of the dominant, meaningful qualities of the physical world locations.

This photo montage shows Marcel Allbritton having just spent about 10 minutes in the virtual Yokosuka Garden. The VR headset is off now, resting on his head. On the left behind him is the Japanese Tea Garden we visited earlier in the day. On the right is the virtual world.

With these experiences in our hearts and our background designing meditation, we began to create the experience.

Here are the first 2 minutes of Marcel Allbritton guiding the Beach VR meditation in Cubicle Ninja's Costa del Sol VR environment.

In this recording the waves are animated but the view does not change. The two rectangles show what the left and right eye see through the VR headset.

The actual VR experience allows the user to move their head and look up, down, around and behind them in the 3D beach environment. They can turn and look 360 degrees in any direction.

Here is a wider angle shot of the Costa del Sol beach environment.

There are plenty of other things to see in all directions.

This video is a talk about the design of the Beach VR meditation I presented at the Foundations of Digital Games conference in 2015. Our goal was to maximize the experience of embodied presence at the virtual beach.

Being There:
Implications of neuroscience and meditation
for self-presence
in virtual worlds

by Carrie Heeter and Marcel Allbritton

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, October 2015, Volume 8, No. 2.

What is it that experiences virtual reality? It's the same thing that experiences physical reality–the human system.

1 / What We Do with Our Mind Affects Our Body

Where we direct our attention constantly affects our body, regardless of whether we notice changes in bodily sensations. Stress is an obvious example of the mind affecting the human system. When we ruminate about a stressful situation, our body responds by tensing muscles, changing heart rate and breathing patterns, and releasing stress hormones. Our mind may be so busy with self-reflective narrative thought that we are not conscious of these physiological changes. If we happen to direct attention to the body, we might notice we’ve been holding our breath or clenching our jaw.

2 / We Can Use Our Mind to Change How We Feel

It is possible to purposefully direct attention to change how we feel. For example, looking at pictures of nature or remembering being in a favorite place in nature also activates bodily sensations, this time in pleasant ways including reduced blood pressure, reduced cortisol levels, reduced pain sensitivity, and more relaxed breathing

3 / Neuroscience Explains How Feelings and Thoughts Are Embodied

Neuroscience discoveries contribute to understanding how humans experience emotional states, thoughts, and the subjective feeling of the moment. Sensitivity to and conscious awareness of bodily sensations vary across individuals, but we all receive sensory inputs from the whole body, including skin, viscera, muscles, joints, teeth, vestibular and endocrine systems, and more. This is known as interoception – the process of receiving, accessing, and appraising bodily sensations.

Our bodies physiologically embody thoughts and experiences. Those changes in bodily sensations provide emotional motivation that (if we learn to pay attention) can help guide decision-making. Interoceptive

awareness is the source of feelings of being alive, of our felt sense of self.

Feeling present requires focused attention on the rich soup of bodily sensations (including thoughts and feelings) we inhabit and create.

4 / Virtual Experiences Affect the Human System, Not Just the 5 Senses

Our minds interpret but they also constantly engender (create) bodily sensations, such as bodily responses to being in nature or to stressful thoughts. This means that user experiences in VR also take place throughout the body, not just the mind. When a VR system supplies visual and auditory sensory inputs, those external stimuli are components of a much larger integrative system of experience that is deeply grounded in bodily sensations.

5 / Neurologically, Attention to Bodily Sensations Creates the Feeling of Presence

As humans our bodies are the lens through which we experience life. But a lot of the time, we manage to ignore the bodily sensations of experience because our minds are off wandering somewhere else. Neurobiological presence involves becoming consciously connected to the human system that is experiencing the reality. We feel more present when we direct

our attention to present moment bodily sensations. Embodiment (awareness of present moment internal bodily sensations) promotes an increased sense of bodily ownership, control, agency and presence

6 / Meditation Trains the Mind to be More Embodied

Studies show that meditation helps train the mind to quiet ruminative

thought and heighten attention to the subjective experience of the moment. In the viniyoga tradition of the yoga sutras of Patanjali meditation refers to practices that 1) regulate the human system and 2) refine the state of the mind so that the mind can be more receptive 3) in order to bring about a change in the human system as a result of the meditation experience. When the human system is agitated, the mind is not refined. An unrefined mind is scattered and difficult to direct. Meditation practices use different approaches to regulate the human system and still the fluctuations of the mind. In this refined state, the mind becomes directable and we are better able to link with an

object of meditation and to experience a change in our human

system.

Carrie's early work with VR

Long Ago and Far Away Work with VR

In the early 1990s I created virtual reality experiences to explore what was possible in this emerging technology. I was explored new ways to evoke a sense of presence in the virtual world and innovative ways for users to interact with virtual worlds. I also studied the subjective experience of presence in my own and other VR worlds and published scientific articles.

A lot of my work used a system where users stood in front of a green screen facing a large screen TV. They saw themselves inside of a virtual world and could interact with objects by touching them.

I was the first to use 3-D video environments instead of typical 2D TV. The videos were shot by Michael Miller of Enter Corporation. In the Undersea Adventure you saw yourself in a 3D underwater kelp forest that was moving with the waves. A graphical octopus swims toward you and when it reaches any part of you it grabs on. Users reported that they felt like they were being grabbed (even though nothing was touching them).

Once Upon a 3-D Time used the metaphor of a Viewmaster (that ancient red plastic toy viewer). You put on a (real) white doctor's coat (it helped the video work, to have good contrast) and you saw yourself inside of a Viewmaster. Reaching up and touching the ADVANCE button made the actual Viewmaster click and changed scenes. In one scene you are Godzilla, terrorizing downtown Tokyo by waving your arms around. Your image is big, the people on the street in the 3D video are small, and screams ensue (though the video of people walking calmly does not change) as you enact your terror. Change scenes and you are in a 3D Japanese garden. Your movements play music. Touching different parts of the screen plays different instruments. Some users danced using rhythmic movements to make music. Others tried to figure out exactly where to touch to trigger different sounds. We learned that participants prefer more direct, predictable interactions.

In Hands on Hawaii, we build a contraption with lots of mirrors so that you could sit down and slip your hands underneath a monitor and see your real hands in the virtual world. Your hands touch different graphical objects on the screen to go on "hike" on Mount Haleakalā to explore the Hawaiian ecosystem. Oh and we installed the device inside of a 12 foot "whale" made from PCR pipes and fabric. In the photo below I am demo-ing Hands on Hawaii to Dr. Lynn Margulis, evolutionary biologist co-creator of the Gaia hypothesis.

Seeing your real hands in the virtual world, instead of seeing computer graphics representing hands, increased the experience of presence.

Michael Miller of Enter Corporation and I worked with Ford Motor Company to create a prototype system to deliver smell to VR. They were hoping to use elaborate VR-supported "dashboards" to sell cars. So when driving in their real front seat seeing the virtual dashboard, as you drove by different objects their smell would appear. It was difficult to get rid of a smell once it had been released, to be ready for the next one. But it was pretty fun. I still have 300 small bottles of different smells.