“We have these physiological experiences that we create a lot of fear and meaning around but it's all just physiology. It's just feelings in your body and thoughts in your mind. When you can accept that, it becomes extremely freeing. You can just go through life, not get caught up in them, and be able to exist with them so that you can truly focus on what you really care about.” – Ariel Garten
Wellness + Wisdom Episode 310
Neuroscientist, entrepreneur, and Co-Founder of Muse: the brain sensing headband, Ariel Garten, returns to share her own journey of navigating fear and uncovering unparalleled freedom, how meditation and neuroscience can allow you to break through your fears, and how to shift your mindset for powerful new beginnings.
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[click_to_tweet tweet=”‘When you meditate, you will learn to sit with the physiological experience of a feeling such as fear without creating a dialogue around it.' – @ariel_garten of @ChooseMuse ” quote=”‘When you meditate, you will learn to sit with the physiological experience of a feeling such as fear without creating a dialogue around it.' – @ariel_garten of @ChooseMuse “]
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Get 20% off of your Muse purchase with code “JOSH20”
Meditation Like You’ve Never Imagined. Muse 2 is a multi-sensor meditation device that provides real-time feedback on your brain activity, heart rate, breathing, and body movements to help you build a consistent meditation practice.
- Mind – Real-time brainwave feedback (EEG) teaches you the art of focus.
- Heart – Tune into your heart rate to optimize performance.
- Body – Discover how your meditation posture can bring you physical relaxation.
- Breath – Learn how to use your breath to find calm and fight stress.
How does it work?
Muse is an EEG device widely used by neuroscience researchers around the world. It uses advanced signal processing to interpret your mental activity to help guide you. When your mind is calm and settled, you hear peaceful weather. Busy mind? As your focus drifts, you’ll hear stormy weather that cues you to bring your attention back to your breath.
An Introduction to Muse
Listen To Episode 310 As Ariel Garten Uncovers:
[1:30] Why 85% Of The Population Has Low Self-Esteem
- Get 20% off of your Muse purchase with code “JOSH20”
- Awakened Futures Summit
- Leave us a review and enter to win a 90-Day supply of Organifi! (6:30)
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Her experience working as a private practice therapist for over 10 years.
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The fact that 80-85% of adults in the world have low self-esteem and what she believes is the root cause of that high statistic.
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The importance of being open to hearing both sides of a political, economic, or other current topic and come to a point of acceptance in order to heal and move forward.
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Our incredible ability to gather, apply and embody knowledge.
[12:00] Her Own Revelations Of Love And Acceptance
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Her shift from art and fashion to academia and understanding the power of meditation.
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How she's used her childhood upbringing and knowledge of art in meditation, neuroscience, and technology.
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Her recent revelations that she never felt completely loved as a child even though her parents did love her.
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Why she constantly sought out other ways to be loved and viewed it as a metaphoric bucket that needed to be filled.
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The good-girl perfectionist complex she and many people grow up experiencing which suggests that every time they do something bad or aren't perfect, they're somehow less of a person. (14:00)
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How to shift your mindset to yes, you are loved and are worthy as a human being. (16:30)
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Steps she took to return to her childhood and view it with a new perspective, wisdom, and sense of love as a parent herself. (18:50)
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The new capacity for love and compassion that new parents have for their child despite the frustration, problems, and discord they experience.
- Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller
[21:00] Healing Our Childhood Wounds
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Why you get to love, care for, and parent your inner child now as an adult.
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What emotional intelligence skillset she has now gained as a young mother. (23:00)
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Why we want to mimic a child's reaction when they're throwing a tantrum, yelling, or screaming but that is the exact opposite of what you should be doing as a parent.
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The power of self-calming yourself before approaching and helping a child calm down themselves.
[25:30] Our Default Mode Network
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What metacognition is and what it actually means to hold space for one another.
- How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan
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Our default mode network i.e.internal dialogue and how to decrease its activity through meditation. (29:00)
- NCBI PubMed – Meditation leads to reduced default mode network activity beyond an active task.
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Why meditation is such an instant, powerful tool for reducing the inner dialogue in the mind. (31:30)
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How to begin incorporating a mindfulness and meditation practice to your daily routine.
[34:00] The Latest Changes With Muse From 2015 to Now
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What Muse is, how the headband works, and why it's a total game-changer for your meditation practice.
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How Muse guides you back to focus when your mind has wandered during a meditation.
- Research Projects Involving Muse
- A Study of a Mindfulness-Based Intervention with a Wearable Wellness Brain Sensing Device in Newly Diagnosed Breast Cancer Patients Undergoing Surgery
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How she has personally used meditation to understand and let go of fear as well as embody greater confidence.
[42:00] The Practice Of Systematic Desensitization To Combat Fear
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Why we try so hard to avoid our feelings but sitting with them to better understand them is a much more powerful action.
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The fact that so many of us don't do what we want in life because the barrier of fear is so big.
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The tool of systematic desensitization by going to the thing that scares you in a progressive manner
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How systematic desensitization can help someone who has OCD.
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Why you don't have to sit in a state of discomfort to ease your way into a meditation; you can just work on the breath and moving away from your thoughts.
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How you can accept that feelings are just feelings and thoughts are just thoughts without making too big of a deal about them. (54:20)
Power Quotes From The Show
[click_to_tweet tweet=”‘A meditation practice doesn't mean sitting in discomfort. You can begin a meditation practice that focuses on moving away from your thoughts and coming back to your breath.' – @ariel_garten of @ChooseMuse ” quote=”‘A meditation practice doesn't mean sitting in discomfort. You can begin a meditation practice that focuses on moving away from your thoughts and coming back to your breath.' – @ariel_garten of @ChooseMuse “]
Fear Is Just A Feeling
“Through my meditation practice, I was able to recognize that every time I was experiencing fear, it was really just my body generating an emotional reaction. Fear is just a feeling and something that I won't allow to rule over me.” – Ariel Garten
What Meditators Can Learn About Their Emotions
“As a meditator, what you learn is that emotional experiences rise, fall, and move on. So, for a non-meditator, an emotional experience can feel very overwhelming and thus they try to not have emotional experiences because they don't want to be overwhelmed by them. As a meditator, what you learn is to sit with the physiological experience of a feeling without creating a dialogue around it.” – Ariel Garten
Facing Fear Head On
“When I made myself do the things that I was afraid of and felt the fear that was associated with it, I realized that I was fine once that emotion washed over me. Fear is just a feeling and it has no power of you. If you want to break through the fear, you can. Ultimately, I believe all of us want to do just that – to break through the fear of our lives. When you start to do it, you realize that it's really not scary at all; we've just built up a bunch of stories around it that made it feel scary.” – Ariel Garten
First time Mom and real-life Muse User, Liza tells her story.
Links From Today's Show
- Get 20% off of your Muse purchase with code “JOSH20”
- Awakened Futures Summit
- Leave Wellness Force a review
- Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller
- How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan
- NCBI PubMed – Meditation leads to reduced default mode network activity beyond an active task.
- Research Projects Involving Muse
- A Study of a Mindfulness-Based Intervention with a Wearable Wellness Brain Sensing Device in Newly Diagnosed Breast Cancer Patients Undergoing Surgery
- Jordan Peterson
- Women && Tech – Ariel Garten
- Exponential Medicine – Ariel Garten
- Untangle Podcast – Ariel Garten: Your Brain On Meditation
- Michael Pollan | Dissolving the Default Mode Network
- Know Your Brain: Default Mode Network
- The meaning of freedom | Ariel Garten | TEDxGatewayWomen
- Ariel Garten
- Muse
About Ariel Garten
Ariel Garten is a neuroscientist, innovator, and entrepreneur whose driving purpose is to empower and help others overcome mental obstacles in order to live healthy, happy lives and reach their maximum potential.
Garten is Co-Founder of InteraXon, the makers of Muse: the brain sensing headband. Muse is the award-winning wearable technology that assists and trains meditation and mindfulness. Before founding InteraXon, Ariel was not only trained as a neuroscientist and psychotherapist but also started her own international clothing line while she worked in labs researching Parkinson’s disease and hippocampal neurogenesis.
The Story Behind InteraXon
Her creativity and entrepreneurial head combined with her fascination with the brain lead her to join forces with two like-minded friends Chris and Trevor to start InteraXon. Together they founded a Silicon Valley backed startup that allowed people to control computers with their minds, the technology that sparked the creation of Muse. Her team’s technology has been featured in over 1000 media pieces, as well as was the feature showcase at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, an installation that allowed over 7,000 people control the lights on the CN tower, Canadian parliament buildings, and Niagara Falls with their brains from across the country.
These days, Ariel can be found at home playing with her 2-year-old or on stage across the world speaking about happiness, meditation, understanding mental health, or telling her own innovation story, consistently giving her audiences the tools they need to help them become their best selves.