Neurofeedback and Meditation: The Future of Brain Health with Muse

Hello, my friends, and welcome to Perfect Practice. Today I have somebody who has made a big impact on my life, whether she realizes it or not, and that's Arielle Garten. And Arielle is from a company called Muse, which some of you might be familiar with. Muse is an EEG device that actually detects brain waves. It's a great, powerful tool and it's a wonderful resource for your practice, as you'll soon come to learn after our conversation today. Welcome, Arielle. Thanks for joining me today.

Thank you, Sachin. It's so nice to be here.

Well, we had a chance to meet a few months ago now, and it was a time where we met in Giovanni Marcico's group, the Archangel group. And when I saw you there, I was like, oh, my God. I have to thank you because your device has made. And your team's device has made a huge difference in my life and giving me better self awareness and of how to be a better leader and how to. To kind of see what my brain is doing. So thank you for that and thank you for offering your time today to kind of share with me and my community how Muse can make an impact for them personally, but also in their practices as well. Now, since we.

I'm sorry, I'm getting kind of choked up hearing this. I didn't know that. Thank you. That's so wonderful.

Well, thank you. Yeah, my pleasure. Uh, in fact, when Muse first launched, I bought one for my entire team. So we, we had it all. The whole team was musing. It was, it was, it's really fun. So you've created a wonderful device that again, gives us insights into ourselves. Now, what I wanted to say is that after we met, you encountered a concussion. And that even, I'm sure, sent you even further down the rabbit hole of not only how to scan a brain, but how to heal a brain. So I'd love to talk about that in our conversation today as well. So we're gonna. We're gonna talk about a whole bunch of things brain related. How to measure its activity, how to use it as a. As a tool in your practice, and how to get amazing outcomes that we may not have even thought possible before the conversation we're gonna have today. So what I would love to start with, Ariel, is what, what got you into this space? Like, what inspired you to work and focus on brain health?

So my background is neuroscience. I was always fascinated by the brain and how it worked. I then was trained as a psychotherapist and had a private practice for a decade. And I was trying to guide people to shift their thinking, their beliefs, their perspective on the world. And meditation was one of the kind of frontline approaches that you'd use. But meditation was really hard to do. I couldn't do it. I was both a, you know, entrepreneur and a practitioner and a neuroscientist, and I knew of all of the benefits of it, but I couldn't myself meditate at the same time. I started to work in the early 2000s, is like 2001, 2002, with Professor Steve Man. He's the inventor of the wearable computer, and he had an early brain computer interface device in his lab. So we started to experiment with this early brain computer interface and see what happens when you sonify your brain activity. You know, what happens when you connect your brain activity to the lights in the room and you can start to see what goes on in your mind. And what we really recognized was, you know, as we would get people to, you know, focus really hard to make the lights go brighter as a form of, you know, biofeedback, or, you know, relax a lot to like, make, you know, make the music get quiet. What we were really teaching them to do was how to meditate, how to focus and relax. And what we had was this neurofeedback device. You know, we really didn't know what we were doing at that point, but what we realized was we had this neurofeedback device that could give you real time feedback on your brain during activities like meditation. And that kind of opened up the whole space that I was working in, trying to get my clients and patients to understand what was going on in their own mind, trying to give them tools to shift their perspective. And here, finally, we had a tool that literally could show you what your brain was doing when you were focusing, when you were relaxing, give you feedback. And this was kind of like the jumping off point to opening up the ways that we could actually interact with our own, not just our own mind through psychotherapy, but actually our own brain.

That's pretty cool. Have this visual of the lights kind of pulsating the room or even flickering or strobing. When people are having different types of thoughts. What was the thing that shocked you most? What was something that, you know, just you weren't expecting, that you discover through this process?

So many things. So, so, so many things. But when you first asked that, the kind of moment that came to mind was as we were testing this out, we had just a little, like, slider on the screen. And when you focused on the slider, when you focused, it would actually just move a few inches to the side. And it was that first moment of like, oh, my God, like, I can actually have something happen in my brain and then see that in the real world. That was the first, like, whoa. And then when I look back now, you know, it was kind of the most surprising and the most shocking. To date, half a million people have used Muse to meditate. Over 200 research studies have been published with it. Mayo has, like, seven studies that they've been running with Muse. And so I think what has been most shocking and surprising is kind of the level of impact that it's been able to have. I didn't know that you had used MUSE and that it had such an impact in your life. So that continues to be both the most amazing and meaningful part of it.

What are some of the studies that are taking place or what have been some of the discoveries through these studies that. That have occurred?

So many. Okay, so MUSE initially started to become used by neuroscientists in order to do distributed neuroscience. And so a few of the examples, one of them, a group took MUSE into rural Malawi to track the EEG of children there. Places where you wouldn't normally take eeg. Two separate groups, one in Israel and one at the University of Alberta, they brought MUSE into emergency rooms, and they created an algorithm that could identify whether somebody was having a stroke or not. And they were able to do it in three minutes or less. So, I mean, that's really not a consumer use case in any way. You know, this is just a lab experiment, but able to demonstrate that. So MUSE has been used both as a clinical grade EEG to be able to track brain state, like in those two examples. It's also been used as a meditation tool. So the majority of Mayo Clinic studies have been using its meditation intervention, and they have demonstrated in Cushing syndrome, improved outcomes. The first study was with breast cancer patients. Improved their quality of life and reduced their stress and fatigue in the cancer care process using muse. They now have three other cancer studies running using muse. A menopause and sleep study, long Covid study. So they're about to publish on that. And they've demonstrated that MUSE significantly improves long Covid symptoms to the point where it's now part of their recommended protocol for long Covid.

Wow.

And then the other sort of suite of studies is sleep studies. So we have two devices, Muse 2, which does meditation and brain assessment, and then Muse S, which does all of that as well as sleep. And so it tracks Sleep as effectively as a sleep lab. So there's sort of 50 plus studies using Muse to do distributed sleep tracking. So looking at using MUSE with Parkinson's patients with and without stimulators to track their sleep with kids with autism, there's three different studies running with individuals in depression. So it's been like quite extraordinary being able to open up at home sleep tracking scientifically to be able to answer really important research questions.

It's amazing that, you know, devices like this, we use an oura ring in our practice. I know some people use a whoop band that we can collect all this data on individuals and decentralize the whole research process. I would imagine that, you know, I've got. I think this is the Muse one. And it still works.

Yes, it is. That came out in 2014. Wow.

So it still works. It just shows you the longevity of it and quality of it. And so I'm curious as to. Like, I noticed that when I'm. When I do my muse outside in nature, in front of a river and the wind is blowing and everything, what I would consider the perfect conditions, my brainwave activity is different. And. And I would imagine that the environment that we're in obviously changes our. Our brain activity. That being said, I think this is really revolutionary because a lot of times when people are being hooked up to EEGs, they're usually in very clinical settings. So we kind of get a skewed perception. It's like trying to do a sleep study on somebody and they're sleeping with all these wires hooked up to them in a lab with a whole bunch of people they've never met before and, you know, they're trying to go to sleep, which is the most vulnerable thing that we do. So it'd be. I'm curious if there's been any revelations of environment playing a role that have actually made significant change the conclusions of specific studies or ideas or thoughts that we used to think about the brain.

Totally. So there's actually A study by Dr. Olaf Kriege Olsson looking at just that. So he had people walk around in nature versus in the city and looked at their EEG activity. And the findings were so profound, it was actually published in Nature. So we have really significant study. And he demonstrated that being in nature truly does make you calmer, that there's a real change in your brainwave activity.

Wow. Did he. Did they use that. Do you use the Muse for that study?

Yep, they used Muse, Muse 2. So, okay, the. The next version up from the one that you have. So Muse Muse 1 is just EEG. In Muse 2, we were able to add a PPG sensor to it so you can get heart rate as well. And then in MUSE s, it has everything as well as sleep tracking and sleep intervention to help you fall asleep and stay asleep.

Okay, I'm gonna have to track that article down, because that's one of the prescriptions that we have for our clients, is to spend more time in nature. And it's one of the fastest ways to get into a flow state as well, is to be surrounded by, you know, mother Nature's fractal beauty, which helps the nervous system calm down. It's great to have that evidence and demonstrate that to people, because sometimes people need that hard proof. Right. And when we can double down on what we're saying because we have evidence for it, it's. I think it really helps solidify that argument.

That's very much what we believe. So, I mean, that's. That's one of the bases of Muse. You know, we can show people, look, you can track your brain activity. You can track it during sleep, and you can see in incredibly great detail what's going on with your sleep. How deep was your deep sleep? Is your sleep intervention working? You know, in meditation, we as practitioners, I certainly experience this myself. You know, you recommend to your patient to meditate. You have no idea if they ever do it. Likelihood is low that they will. And often, as practitioners, we ourselves are not the best at meditation. And so, you know, part of why we built MUSE is you could simply hand somebody a muse and say, here, go meditate. And then they can see their progress. They can actually see little graphs and show them, whoa, this meditation thing is real. Like it's doing something. And then we have dashboards for practitioners. So your practitioners can actually. The practitioner can monitor the patient and say, yes, they meditated. Look, it's working. Or if they haven't, like, you know, send them a message and say, you've fallen off the bandwagon. Come on back. You know, this is real. You see the data?

Amazing. So let's talk brass tacks, then. If a clinician, which is most of the audience here, is listening to this, what's a way that they can start implementing the muse into their practice? I would imagine it starts with them perhaps getting a device, trying it for themselves, understanding the detail and the benefits of utilizing it. But what are some of the tools that you guys have created to help practitioners implement this into their practices?

Sure. So we actually have bespoke practitioner tools. One is the dashboard. So when any of your patients start on their news journey, you put them on the dashboard with their consent and you're able to track their meditation and their sleep. We also have a suite of assessments. So we have brain health assessments, basically like a basic QEEG as well as quite a number of other assessments. All of this can be done remotely. So you can have your patient send them a MUSE device, they do their brain assessment, they get a brain map, and then they can go through your program and your interventions and at the end see the change, how their brain has changed, and be able to track their own brain health. We also have custom programs that use with the Muse to for sleep and focus meditation. And so you can provide your patients with a six week program, track their progress and also charge them for it. So we have packages that make it really easy to provide the Muse, provide the content and track their progress and also make it, you know, financially viable for you, in fact, lucrative.

Share with me if you have. Sounds like you have a ton. But what's a great clinician case study that you can share?

I have a lot of clinician case studies, so the first one that comes to mind is a clinician. I don't have permission to say names because I hadn't thought about this beforehand to clear it. So one clinician who wanted to really get into neurofeedback and so we have a whole protocol with Muse that allows you to, to do at home neurofeedback. So she really began an entire neurofeedback business virtually using Muse. And it's a program called Mindlift and it allows you to send the device to somebody, do the assessment with them, and then it automatically recommends the neurofeedback protocols. And so you don't need to be as skilled as a neurofeedback practitioner. It allows you to really start in the neurofeedback journey easily. Other practitioner case studies so this is like a huge example HO hospital.

They.

So Mayo Clinic did a study using Muse with their own practitioners demonstrating that using Muse with their doctors and HCPS reduced burnout by 54% and improved their cognition and resilience. And so on the strength of that Hoag Hospital, which is a hospital system in California, they purchased Muses for their clinicians and then the clinicians loved them and kept requesting them. So 500 of their clinicians requested Muses and now have them. And now they've brought it into their concierge medicine practice. So now they offer Muses meditation, focus and sleep programs to their concierge medicine patients. Mayo does it as well. It's part of their executive health program.

Wow. So you said something about mindlift, so maybe you can unpack that a little bit. Is that built into the Muse ecosystem, that whole, that whole process you just mentioned?

Yeah, sure. So within the Muse ecosystem, we have. So all you need is the Muse Device. So either Muse 2 or Muse S. We don't make Muse 1 anymore. You've got a rel, you've got an antique there. Hold onto it. And so either with Muse 2 or with Muse S, and then you use that with the Dashboard, which is our partnership platform. And then from there you can use the programs like the meditation, sleep or focus programs, or you can do neurofeedback with Mindlift, which is a third party software built on top of Muse that offers at home remote neurofeedback interventions that are quite powerful and then also offers assessments. We have both assessments in the Muse app as well as in the Mind Lift ecosystem.

Hmm, that's pretty cool. I'm thinking of an application for myself and my community. We get to, we gather every, every week and there's usually about 30 of us on a call and it'd be so cool if they all had a Muse and we could like collectively, you know, meditate together and go through a practice. So that's the visual that's coming up for me is even practitioners who are facilitating group meetings. This could be a group activity. And because you get the feedback right away, it'd be really neat to see, you know, how, how, how, how people respond to the intervention and, and improve over time. I'm curious, when you mentioned Muse, it almost seems synonymous with meditation. But I'm curious if there's other interventions that we can identify that could be helpful to the brain. I, I've recently read studies that breath work can be really helpful for changing brain activity. Perhaps there could be certain supplements that could be helpful. Perhaps even injuries can be identified. Or different changes in brainwave activity might detect inflammation or early Alzheimer's or Parkinson's type conditions. Can you elaborate on that, if you would? Sure.

So with Muse, we have a new feature called alpha peak. Alpha peak is looking at your alpha peak frequency and it's a measure of performance. When we look at, looked in our large database, we did a study demonstrating that alpha peak frequency actually varies kind of decade by decade, and that your alpha peak is a pretty well known metric to indicate the performance of your brain. The higher your alpha peak, the kind of better your performance typically. And it varies a little bit throughout the day. It varies a little bit over time, and it varies dramatically decade by decade. So it drops each decade you age. So, you know, that's one metric that is a pretty good indicator of the health and performance of your brain. We have a number of studies running with MUSE looking at people with age related cognitive decline. So, you know, those kinds of metrics are not available to a practitioner yet. But we have in the app something that we're currently building, ERPs, event related potentials, and the shape and curve of your ERP is actually again, a very good indicator of your cognitive health. In age related cognitive decline, you see the peak of the ERP shift. And so that's something that we are still working on and validating on the scientific side, but something that is, you know, ultimately a very, very useful tool to identify brain health. And then on the sleep side. So you can, you can see when somebody does interventions that improve their sleep or decrease their sleep. If you have caffeine, you've probably decreased the depth of your delta sleep, if you have it too close to nighttime. And that becomes a very obvious marker that you can see. It's fascinating to be able to experiment with different interventions and really be able to see the impact that it has on the brain.

Amazing. I'm curious, you're probably familiar with Dr. Amen's work.

Of course.

So I haven't had the scan. My brain hasn't been scanned through that system. So I'm curious, what's the difference between the information that you could collect from a MUSE versus a SPEC scan of your brain?

Yeah, yeah. So those are two very different technologies when you're looking at what you collect and inspect. So with the muse, what we're looking at is your eeg. So your neurons communicate electrochemically. The sum total of the electrochemical information can be read on the surface of the head. And so in a SPECT scan, you're looking at activity in particular regions. And it's at the moment in time when you have that scan. With eeg, what we're looking at is the overall electrical activity is red on the surface of the head. So SPECT is very good at localizing. Okay. We see in this region here, there's an increase or decrease in activity, whereas EEG gives you a general sense of the overall performance of the brain because it is kind of a. It's almost as if it's averaged over your brain. And we have a lot of information about what different EEG characteristics suggest in me. So in eeg, for example, I talked about alpha peak. So we're not necessarily looking at one part of your brain, is it performing highly or low? We're looking at the overall kind of coherence and resonance of your brain at alpha. Are we seeing that there's a lot of activity in that band, you know, in your brain, singing together as a concert in that moment versus this particular part of your brain. And as whereas a spect you'd get, you know, once and then maybe if you're lucky, many months later, EEG you can use throughout the day, over the weeks, over the months to really see overall trends and changes.

Yeah, it sounds like they'd be really complimentary to each other.

Totally, totally. And it's definitely not an either or. You know, the more tools that you have, the better. And with EEG and Muse, what you're doing is neurofeedback. So you are retraining the parts of your brain that may be not as strong. So you're really engaging in the activity of, you know, figuring out what's, what's a little bit off and then improving it and working on it regularly.

Like exercise for your brain.

Yes.

Okay, wonderful. Versus like a just a test that's diagnostic, right?

Exactly.

One question. I wrote this down. So I was curious because this has become a more and more popular topic in the neuroscience space, especially our plant medicines. So I'm curious if there's been any studies or any insights that you have on the use of things like DMT or psilocybin or cannabis and how it affects our brainwave activity.

Sure. So we actually have three or four studies, not with us, but third party researchers looking at effects of cannabis on the brain. And then we also have a number of other studies in ketamine. So in ketamine assisted therapy, it not plant medicine per se, but in the same vein, ketamine assisted therapy. So in ketamine, for example, use tend to see an increase in delta activity and that is a marker that the ketamine is setting in and working. So there are clinics that actually use MUSE as part of their ketamine infusion protocol to be able to identify when the delta is increased and when you've sort of hit that point. So EEG is frequently used, you know, in anesthesia, for example, to be able to identify when you've moved into the anesthetic state and there you're seeing a decrease in beta activity, a decrease in beta activity and a significant increase in delta. Likewise in cannabis you also tend to see increase, decrease in. So it depends. So cannabis is interesting because if cannabis is triggering anxiety, you can see an increase in high beta. Though typically in cannabis, what you're seeing is an increase in the lower brain wave frequencies.

Okay. I imagine different strains of mushrooms and cannabis and, you know, things can have different effects as well.

Totally. And certainly we've had people individually experiment on themselves and, you know, track what happens to their brain on various substances and both come up with their own conclusions based on the data, as well as been able to have novel insights and perspectives when using psychedelics with these meditation programs.

Yeah, I mean, coffee is probably.

I've received a few emails about that actually last night I tried this thing.

And yeah, you know, it's, it's funny. My, my wife and I have spoken openly about this. Like, we did a, a mushroom journey a few years ago and we saw her HRV just like go skyrocketing up. And it was like, to us, it was like a clear indication, hey, something shifted in you and it stayed up. It didn't come back down after that. So I'm sure she released something. But it would have been really cool to see, you know, how her brain changed. Because I know that when people do things like psilocybin, the brain restarts, reorienting itself and re establishing new or establishing new patterns and connections. So I can only imagine that it would make a huge impact. But it'd be cool to, to have people wearing one as they're going through the journey to see how through the journey, their brain waves change.

Yeah, we don't have any research on psilocybin and muse, as far as I know. I'm super curious as well.

Well, I can round up a group of people if you want to bring the muses. That's awesome. I love that. I, I love that we can decentralize this process and we can bring it into people's homes and learn about ourselves. Right. Because a lot of times we're, you know, just kind of to your point of what you shared earlier is we can do an N of one experiment and see what works for us. Because what worked for people in the study doesn't always mean it's going to work for us. We all have unique experiences, backgrounds, beliefs, genetics, environments. Like all of those things can influence, you know, the outcome. So it's cool to be able to really figure that out for ourselves. I'm curious about your muse practice. Like, how often do you, do you muse? What time of day do you muse? Can you share a bit of that?

Totally. You saw the big. Anybody watching the video will see the big smile that came across my face. So this is almost embarrassing, but I actually learned to meditate with Muse. So when we started, it was like about a deck more than a decade, 15 years ago at this point. And I was, as I've admitted, a terrible meditator because I was also an entrepreneur and my brain would go all over the place. And I was like, I don't want it to be quiet. And so it was actually using Muse initially in our. At first, all we had was our focused attention meditations. And the focused attention meditation, you focus on your breath when your mind wanders, you hear it, and that becomes your cue to come on back. So it teaches you to notice your wandering mind and then learn to let go of your distractions and come back to your present moment. Bodily felt awareness. So, you know, initially all we had was me is mind meditation, and that's what I'd be doing. And that was the thing that got me to be like, oh, that's what I'm supposed to do while I meditate. Okay, that makes sense. And then over time, kind of our canon of available programs expanded. So we built in heart meditation, where you can listen to the beating of your heart like the beating of a drum, breath practice, body meditations, and then a huge content library of guided meditations as well as. So over time, you know, it began to expand into these other forms. And then sometimes I'll even just use the app without the Muse and I'll listen to like a two minute morning inspiration meditation to get my day started. Right now my current practice is doing a go to sleep meditation with me. So I take a 10 minutes and I do go to sleep meditation. Then I sleep with Muse because I'm currently testing some new cool data features we have. And then if it wake back up in the night, which I sometimes do, I have a baby. So if I wake back up in the night, then the Muse brings back in the same intervention that helped me fall asleep in the first place. And then in the morning, I get to see all my data. So that's one of the things that I do. And then I'll often take a Muse break in the middle of the day. So always before I go to bed, because that's also when the kids aren't bugging me. Then the overnight Muse experience. And then during the day, I'll sometimes do a five or ten minute focused attention practice. And then, you know, as needed, I will bring up just a guided meditation just in the app to give me that moment of inspiration or sparkle or Reframe or after I have a fight with my husband. We have a cool collection about that, helping you return your day, your perspective. So, you know, it becomes very integrated. And then, of course, once you are a meditation practitioner, it. It's a skill that you carry throughout the day with you without any technology. You know, taking those moments of self reflection, releasing the tension in your body, grounding the moment before you start a podcast or do something else that's meaningful. So it's a very integrated experience in your life.

Yeah. You know, so I would do it first thing in the morning. I would. Well, not first thing, but, you know, after I take care of my bodily functions, I would sit at my desk and before I open my computer or start any work, that's when I would do the Muse. It's usually, you know, nowadays it's dark outside in that case, and it just. There's. The house is quiet, there's no noise. And it's just a great way to warm the brain up, so to speak. Right. Just like warming up your car on a winter day. That's what it feels like. And it's great to get that feedback, great to get that insight and kind of see where you're at. And if I'm not where I want to be, then I'll just meditate a bit longer. Right. They say that, you know, the people who need it the most, you know, need to do it the most. Right. So for me, it'll just get my brain humming. And I know that I'm centered and focused, and it makes everything else that I do so much more impactful. And Instead of taking 90 minutes to get through a list of to dos, I can get through it in 25 to 30 minutes because I took that extra effort to stretch my brain and warm it up and get it dialed in and clear the cobwebs, so to speak. Now, you had a concussion pretty recently, and I'm sure you learned a lot about your brain through that process. So I'd love for you to, you know, perhaps share some insights that you picked up along the way and perhaps shed some light on if and how Muse helped you in your recovery. Sure.

So I've had a few concussions. The first one was after I gave birth to my first child. So eight years ago, about five weeks after giving birth, my brain was very underslept and very delicate, and it got hit and I got a concussion with a small child. And so that, you know, was the first. The beginning of understanding what happens to the brain when it dysregulates and, you know, you learn about this in school, but there's nothing like actually having it happen to yourself to recognize that, wow, you know, I'm dysregulated in every system. My visual system is dysregulated, my auditory system is dysregulated. You know, my cognitive functioning is not great, and also my gut is dysregulated. And why am I running to the bathroom every hour? Because that system was also dysregulated. So, you know, the first surprise is just what it means for your brain to be dysregulated. And it's not simply that aphasia. You're having difficulty finding words or, you know, your memory is not great. It's actually a deep understanding of how the brain really governs your entire experience of life. And I also really felt very not smart and for a good long period of time had difficulty doing stuff effectively, which gave me great compassion to people that I meet. Who you're like, why do you feel a little bit checked out of life? Or like, you know, why? What's going on? And it's like, wow, when you have a brain injury, it's really hard to, to show up and be present and do what you need to do. So, you know, incredible amounts of compassion for just how difficult that situation is. Any physical or cognitive injury can be so debilitating to our ability to engage, you know, socially, et cetera, in terms of interventions. This is not medical advice, but this is what I did and was incredibly effective for me. One, my meditation practice served me incredibly well because what you need to manage and do is first of all, manage your emotions. Those also become dysregulated. People who are familiar with concussion will know, you know, often there's anger and irritability that comes with concussion. So being able to, for me, I had an existing practice and, you know, a lot of experience of being able to notice the changes in your emotions and be able to not be reactive and actually be responsive and say, wow, I'm really angry for absolutely no reason at this moment, what is going on, and to be able to self regulate in that way. So Muse became an incredibly important tool for that self regulation. It also became an important tool to be able to downregulate my brain activity and, you know, close my eyes, come into focused attention and strengthen my brain. So part of what you're doing in your retraining from a concussion is to be able to do gentle exercise for the brain. So meditation became key for me to both, you know, drop into a Space of downregulation as well as a practice where I was retraining my prefrontal cortex, my inhibition, my focused attention. And so that was very meaningful. Other practices that I did. One your sleep becomes very dysregulated. We didn't have the MUSE sleep tool initially, so melatonin was really important eight years ago. Now the most recent concussion MUSE was the thing that was really helpful to get me to sleep and keep me asleep from a supplements perspective. Again, this is my perspective. Not, not, not medical advice but high doses of fish oil. Your brain needs DHA. So 3,000 mgs DHA. Not just fish oil, but 3,000 mgs of DHA. High amounts of vitamin D, vitamin B2 is grab a floven. Really, really key. NAD, NAD plus Trin, any of those things that are going to upregulate. NAD. And then I also did hyperbaric oxygen which turned out to be not very successful red light therapy which with Dr. Kahn, he's like a, like one of the founders of this. That was very successful and really carefully monitoring my abilities and just pushing myself to the edge of my abilities and not over. And the key for concussion recovery for me was not buying into the anxiety and frustration that comes from my state and not allowing it to limit me and not feeling like I needed to lie in bed for days because I was not fully capable. It's like you're not fully capable and that's okay. And you're still going to go out into the world and you're still going to do these things a little bit at a time. So the, the, the ability to manage the anxiety and disappointment and frustration that came out of it was key to allowing me to exist in the world with the sensation of overwhelm that comes with concussion because the world's, you know, you're not processing properly, so things feel really overwhelming. And the best recovery is one that allows you to not shut down from that sensation of overwhelm, but simply to open up to what you're capable of and then gently retreat and then open back up again to what you're capable of.

Yeah. So huge. You know, one of the things that you mentioned is that you have a lot more compassion for people and you know, just people probably already know this, but there's so many people that are walking around that have either physical concussions or chemical concussions. Right. Because of the way they eat or the environment that they're in or the traumas that they've had. I think it's just a call for all of us to be more empathetic and compassionate. Because a lot of people's struggles, they don't wear their injuries. Right? And especially brain and cognitive injuries, they look perfectly normal on the outside, and we might be losing our patience with them, not realizing how much they might be struggling just to kind of get through the day. Right. Or carry out basic functions. So perhaps a. A call to action for all of us to be more empathetic and compassionate, because, as they say, other people are fighting a battle we know nothing about. And, you know, why not be the. The bright part of their day instead of the dark part of their day?

Completely agreed. Yeah. I've. I've never. You know, it's very easy to judge people until you end up in that situation, and then you're like, oh, I'm really not capable, and that has to be okay. And there's a lot of people in the world that are not capable and not through laziness or, you know, lack of desire to be, but because the world is really hard to process at that moment in time.

Yeah. Well, glad you're feeling better, and it's great to see that you had a great recovery. And one of the things I learned from my. One of my dear colleagues, Dr. Dies Karazian, is he would say that the state of your brain health when you have the concussion is vitally important. So he would always encourage us to take good care of our brains, because you never know when, you know, lightning strikes, so to speak. So I'm glad that your brain was in a healthy state so that it was able to recover adequately, and you had amazing tools, you know, like the Muse, to help you in that journey.

There's two more things that I have to mention. One is exercise. And I mentioned it because most people feel like they shouldn't exercise when they're in the that state. So exercise is one of the main things that has improved me in both concussions. And the other is neurofeedback made such a palpable difference. I could see on my brain scan what was off, and I could do neurofeedback specifically to train it, and it, like, sharpened me right up.

I love that. So you talked about two different devices. Let's maybe you can discuss the difference between them. So if somebody's interested in grabbing one or both, where would be a good place for people to start?

Sure. So this is the Muse 2. And the Muse 2 has a PPG sensor on it, accelerometer, gyroscope. So this allows you to do meditation as well as the Neurofeedback interventions. And this one is Muse S. So this one does everything that Muse 2 does, plus sleep interventions. So you can wear this to sleep. And it also is the digital sleeping pill that helps you fall asleep and fall back asleep, and both of those you can find on choosenews.com and then if you're a clinician, actually, just reach out to me directly, and I can. We don't have on our website any of our fun clinician stuff. It's sort of in the back end. So really just reach out to me personally, and I can direct you to what might be best for you in your practice.

Okay. And we'll put the best contact information for you.

I will tell you it now. Yeah, it's Arielle choose muse.com c-h O-O-S e m u s e so a r I e l@choosemuse.com okay.

Super easy. So there you have it, folks. Garten just dropped some amazing knowledge on us, and she's created a wonderful device and tool that, as I mentioned, I've been using for many years now and have greatly benefited from. And I hope that all of you explore this as a modality that you can use in your practice. What a time to be alive, to have access to this type of information on our clients. And I can assure all of you that those of you that are working with biohackers or high performers or executives, entrepreneurs, they realize their most valuable asset is their brain, and they want to tap into it. And so if we can give them a tool to, you know, kind of help them understand how their brain works better and give them, you know, a way to keep track and keep score, they absolutely love that. So start off with yourself. That's a great place for all of us to start. And then see how you can incorporate this into your practices. And I myself am excited to learn more about how to incorporate this into our practice for our clients. So I'll be reaching out to you and discussing what some of those tools are. So thank you for taking the enlightening conversation today and. And appreciate your time and energy and all that you've done to bring this product to the public.

Oh, thank you. It's been such a joy and pleasure and an incredible honor. So thank you for your time today, too.

All right, well, have a wonderful day, and here's to amazing brain health.

Indeed.