#meditative-gaming

#meditative-gaming

"We want to make the Graham Norton of video games," says Kirsty Rigden, the chief executive of Brighton-based FuturLab, which makes PowerWash Simulator. Aspiring to emulate a talkshow host who has a reputation for being affable rather than for setting pulses racing is perhaps an unusual ambition for a gaming studio.

"For the ones who are confined in certain spaces or cannot do it independently, this is a great opportunity to transport them to a different reality from the ones that they are currently living in while keeping them active," Munoz told CBC Hamilton from his lab on Laurier's Brantford campus.

Calm has had more than 180 million downloads and is growing in more than 190 countries and seven different languages. We've really made strides in health outcomes.

It makes sense, right? Every day, we're told how shitty our attention spans are because of our phones. We can't get through 90-minute movies anymore without a quick scroll. We can't just sit down and read a book off our shelf. We have decision fatigue trying to pick a recipe to cook instead of just looking in a cookbook. So turning to more analog things for the betterment of our bodies and minds makes total sense.

You settle in for a quick scroll through your feed, maybe just to unwind for a minute or two. But somewhere between a cooking hack and a clip you've already forgotten, forty minutes vanished. It's all a blur. Welcome to the era of infinite content and finite attention, where our brains are working overtime just to keep up with the deluge.

I am a professor of public health who studies health behaviors and the gap between intentions and outcomes. I became interested in this self-care paradox recently, after I suffered from a concussion. I was prescribed two months of strictly screen-free cognitive rest-no television, email, Zooming, social media, streaming, or texting. The benefits were almost immediate, and they surprised me. I slept better, had a longer attention span, and had a newfound sense of mental quiet.

When I first read that, I was skeptical. But after trying it myself and digging deeper into the studies, the mechanisms started making sense. When we actively look for things to appreciate, we're essentially rewiring our brain's default mode. Instead of scanning for threats and problems (which our brains love to do), we're training it to notice the good stuff. It's like changing the channel from a disaster documentary to something that doesn't spike your cortisol.

The idea of floating in a sensory deprivation tank has always appealed to me. I am a huge fan of fancy spa sessions and most things woo-woo, and floating-a service that invites you to submerge your body in super salty water in the dark, ditching your senses in favor of an anti-gravity experience-sounded like the ultimate meeting of the two. Spa-ish mindfulness! Good for my skin and my mind! Sign me up.