With the emergence of affordable biofeedback devices and powerful smartphones with web connectivity, a new movement is gathering momentum. It’s increasingly referred to as “The Self-Tracking Movement”, and adherents are tracking personal data from life activities, including fitness, mood, sleep, eating habits, and travel. Even seemingly trivial data, such as musical listening habits, can be tracked using services like Last.fm. Despite privacy concerns, many people are becoming more open to the idea of data sharing because of its growing acceptance in the age of companies like Google and Facebook. The popularity of smartphone applications that track personal information is a testament to this growing acceptance of personal data sharing.
RunKeeper is an iPhone app that can track fitness activities such as running, cycling, walking, hiking, downhill skiing, rowing, or swimming, and can record where you went (via GPS), for how long, at what pace and how many calories were burned. It then stores this information online to track improvements made during particular workouts. It also tracks data synced from other devices like FitBit (movement tracker), Zeo Sleep Coach, the Withings WiFi Body Scale and a heart rate monitor compatible with iPhone and Android. Once gathered, data is displayed via colorful info-graphics that provide both a record of activities and the ability to make lifestyle tweaks through goal-setting and focused progress monitoring. And not only do these devices track information for your own analysis, they communicate with websites like EarnedIt, which reward healthy activities with discounts and prizes.
For meditators the STM presents interesting possibilities for the advancement of mind training. It is now widely understood that mindfulness practices promote physical and psychological well-being. Just as the body can be trained with particular exercises to achieve a desired effect, the mind can be trained with a variety of meditative techniques for a desired outcome. There is great potential in systematic mind training programs that integrate emerging technologies that track external correlates of internal meditative states, such as brain waves, heart rate and skin conductivity. Provided with such feedback, it becomes possible to customize techniques to pursue personal meditation goals (concentration/focus, well-being, pain management, “enlightenment”, etc.) and more importantly to have a feedback loop that continually informs the practitioner during their practice as well as over time.
Before a mind “hacking” program like this could be developed, research is needed to answer questions about which techniques work best for different people at different stages of development and with different goals. And this is only the tip of the iceberg. I believe that to develop such a mind training program, we need to begin with the tedious job of gathering data. Current technologies make this easier than ever before possible and with the rate of technological innovation, it’s only going to get easier.
As sensors capable of more accurately measuring subtler cues at faster rates become widely available, I envision a union of science, technology and mysticism, in which the tools needed to gather brain/mind data will be readily available to most of the world’s population. The proliferation of relatively inexpensive smartphones and bio-sensors opens up new possibilities in terms of crowd-sourced brain/mind research (see ex. NeuroSky’s MindBand).
What could such a brain/mind data gathering system look like? Well, if we could measure “objective” brain wave data along with “subjective” reports of experiences during various mind trainings, both ancient (prayer, meditation) and modern (binaural beats, psychological development practices (ie. Immunity to Change), lucid dreaming trainings) meditative practices, we may be able to judge “effectiveness” both objectively via brain waves and subjectively through personal reporting of inner experiences and behavioral effects.
This type of data collection doesn’t require large research grants and could be done inexpensively, on a large scale, with people from all over the world, providing micro (individual) to macro (collective) data measurements (The macro view could, for example, show fluctuations in the sensory data gathered from large populations before and after catastrophic events like 9.11.01, possibly even demonstrating the predictive capabilities of such measurements (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l6VPpDublg). It seems that this data could be collected easily enough, but it also raises many difficult questions. What type of data should be gathered? What type of equipment would be necessary? How do you ensure proper scientific methods for gathering the data? How is the data interpreted? Who interprets it? What meaning is derived from the interpretation?
These are questions I do not yet know the answers to. Though I am hopeful that we can devise a systematic approach for gathering this information, interpreting it and implementing revolutionary ways of supporting growth and transformation. I’m optimistic that the coupling of science and technology with meditative wisdom will lead to the next stage of planetary evolution.
One day soon, meditators may begin systematic mind training by first choosing the desired outcome of their training and then taking a standard psychological assessment test. They would next undertake assigned practices to be performed while relevant physical correlates were tracked (brain waves, heart rate, skin conductivity, etc.). These correlates would, in turn, inform a feedback mechanism that would direct the practitioner to perform exercises adapted to their unique needs and goals . Over time, one would accumulate a record of objective changes as measured with bio-sensors and subjective changes via periodic psychological evaluations and journaling. I can even foresee the development of peer to peer ”mind-hacking” software, built, and shared via niche communities to achieve higher than normal mental and psychic capacities. This would truly be the age of the cyber-buddha.
While at first glance self-tracking may seem to be a practice for a bunch of obsessive-compulsive narcissists, it may be the harbinger of the coming age of awakening. I can’t wait to see how progressive neuroscientists, meditation teachers and hardware/software developers will address the questions surrounding technology-based mind training and it’s implementation into future society. Until then, I train my mind the old fashion way–with green tea and mind pushups.
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