by Jennifer McCartney
What if you could take your meditation to the next level by incorporating technology into your daily routine?
Jean Widner, co-owner and national sales manager of Wild Divine Inc., shared with listeners of the “Living an Elevated Existence Mind, Body & Soul Summit Season 2,” how we can tune into our bodies natural rhythms — like breathing and heart rate — and improve our heart’s coherence cycle to meditate easily or deepen our existing practice. She explained how combining the ancient wisdom of meditation with Wild Divine’s modern technology can help train our mind, body and spirit to self-regulate; tap into our own personal power; improve our mental focus, creative thinking and intuition; and more.
Wild Divine Inc. specializes in designing and developing unique, whole-body relaxation training programs that help people reduce stress and live happier, more well-balanced lives—and is a leader in the emerging lifestyle technology market.
“What we have is a very simple sensor,” Widner explained about the hardware involved. This sensor, called an IomPE, works with a standard Mac or PC. “It’s just a simple little gadget about three inches by one inch. You basically just plug that into a USB port, and the other end of it has an ear clip, which you put on your earlobe.”
It’s hands free—allowing users to sit and meditate, while the software tapes the heartrate signal and inputs the data into the program allowing users to monitor not only their heart rate, but also their breath cycle. There are also a number of exercises, some spiritual and tapping into emotion, and others focused on breathing techniques, and the program provides feedback on a person’s meditation.
“You can see it live on screen,” she said. “When you’re graphing yourself, you can see your resting heart rate, along with two different visuals—a numerical representation of your coherence score, your heart rate, and your color spectrum. At the beginning it will be yellow. Then when you move into the heart breath it moves to green, then to deep blue.”
The breath is even represented by a butterfly icon in one program that opens and closes with each inhale and exhale. This ability to see concrete results means even on a mediation day that feels unproductive, or you realize through the meditation that you’re distracted, the program offers concrete evidence that the meditation has had a physical effect on the body. And it isn’t just about relaxing! There are also exercises for stimulating breath to gain rejuvenation and energy, Widner shared with the audience.
Using the Software
The Wild Divine program offered to listeners of the Elevated Existence Summit uses 15 steps, which includes 30 guided meditations, and 13 inspirations around all different topics, and led by a variety of practitioners such as Zen master Nasim Aman, Dr. Dean Ornisch, Dr. Andrew Wild, Joan Borysenko, and Sharon Salzberg.
Widner broke down each of the 15 steps for listeners and explained each step was designed to work on a different area.
Step 1: Quieting the mind
Step 2: Observing your thoughts
Step 2: Working on inner balance
Step 4: Releasing physical tension
Step 5: Cultivating positive emotions.
Step 6: Revealing your inner wisdom
Step 7: Subduing your inner critic
Step 8: Opening yourself to others
Step 9: Practicing compassion for others and yourself
Step 10: Discovering gratitude
Step 11: Opening up to connect outside yourself (the collective consciousness)
Step 12: Setting your intentions
Step 13: “Taking your daily supplement”
Step 14: Learning to commit to a personal practice
Step 15: Finding a rhythm that works for you
The program can work for both beginners and seasoned meditators, along with everyone in between, and Widner offered a potential meditation schedule of about 10-15 minutes a day, 3-4 times a week.
“I don’t believe that we need to meditate for hours to get benefits,” she told listeners, recounting the story of a man with prostate cancer who had no background in meditation—but who found the tool “invaluable.” The program can also help if you’ve “meditated for years and you’ve never been able to find a practice that you could make stick,” Widner said.
“The great thing about meditation is that when you first start to carve out 10 or 15 minutes of your time in the morning, at first that feels like this sacrifice, that you’re greedy to have this time back laying under the covers trying to squeeze out a few more minutes of sleep,” Widner noted. “But once you really understand meditation and you start to gently embrace it and fit it into your daily routine, you find the reverse is true. You’re greedy for those 10 or 15 minutes of mediation time if you don’t get them in the morning. You find yourself out of sorts in the middle of the day.”
She likened the benefits of meditation to athletes who practice constantly to improve their performance. “You’re training yourself into a muscle memory reaction so that then you have more control,” she said. “If you’ve had a really busy and stressful day but you need to go to sleep, you can train muscle memory so that you can put yourself in a relaxed state. Just by knowing how to breathe.”
Widner also shared how the company will be launching, Wild Divine Online, a virtual world with group or individual meditation activities—and once a person has the hardware, they can sample other Wild Divine products.
“It’s a portal to a mindful world,” she told listeners. “People are demanding technology at their fingertips that will help them stay on track with their healthy habits. This is just the beginning.”
For more from Widner and the other 25 experts in mind, body and spirit topics, sign up FREE to Season 2 of the Living an Elevated Existence Summit.