Smart & Wired: One Divine Journey
March 1, 2007
Chill out. calm down. Take a load
off. Your spouse, doctor or friend
might tell you that you need to do all of the
above, but it is not
always easy to block out the cares of the world, much less
bring about
all the physiological changes needed in your body so you can
actually
relax. Kurt Smith, CEO of the Wild Divine Project, based in Eldorado
Springs, Colo., thinks he has a solution.; function voidFunc() { } voidFunc();)
The Journey to Wild Divine video game uses scenarios that help the player to relax while
navigating. (Click image to enlarge)
Smith, the creator of the Journey to Wild Divine: The Passage
($159.95), a computer game designed to teach people relaxation and
meditation
techniques, says all it takes for the average person to
bring his or her heart
rate and respiration rate down, and, in turn,
elicit the body’s relaxation
response, is a computer and the software
and hardware he has designed.
Smith, who has a degree in biomedical
engineering, first got
the idea for the Journey to Wild
Divine
while looking into some of the
integrative care centers going into many
top hospitals.
"I wanted to come up with a product that would help people
take
care of themselves but at the same time be fun, accessible and
effective," he
says. "It would also have to deliver therapeutic value.
At the same time I was
thinking all this I ran into my partner, Corwin
Bell, who had been toying around
with creating a computer game that
used biofeedback." And so the Journey to Wild Divine was born.
The game
is based on some pretty convincing evidence.
Biofeedback, the process
of using signals from your own body such as muscle
tension, heart rate,
and temperature to change your physical state, has been
proven
effective in research labs for decades. However, until very recently,
biofeedback was always performed in a clinical setting. Even the
best-heeled
patients still needed a doctor and a large, expensive
machine to undergo the
treatment.
Smith says he created his game
to take biofeedback out of the lab and
place it into the office,
bedroom or computerroom—anywhere someone could sit quietly in front of a
keyboard
and screen. His game has two components: the software and
three finger sensors.
These sensors connect the person to the computer
and the software program while
measuring heart rate variability and
skin conductance levels. The results are
fed into the game and used to
lead players into their own quiet place, says
Smith. The game combines
teachings from a variety of sources such as yoga and
psychology and
embeds them in a video game that has puzzles to solve and, aptly,
a
journey to complete.; function voidFunc() { } voidFunc();)
"There are a set of different activities, and each
one is laid
out in a story format," says Smith. "During each one of
these you’re learning a
different relaxation technique. In one you
might be learning a breathing
technique to get your energy up or help
you relax, and in the next, you’re
measuring your stress levels and
practicing visualization techniques or
meditation." (Click image to enlarge)
Simply put,
to move to the next level, or gateway, as they are
called, you’ve got
to relax. For example, one activity requires you to breathe
at a
specific rate before you can move on and solve a puzzle. Each activity has
the same goal: to teach a wide variety of stress-relieving techniques
that you
can use when you’re offline.
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