Other-Mind Virtual Reality (OM-VR): When Being Nosey is Good for Your Health (and Doesn’t Get You a Restraining Order)
Writing about Mindfulness feels hard for me. I am flooded with urges and thoughts that I “need to do it right” and share my thoughts in a way that might be inspiring and interesting, and that captures the essence of why Mindfulness is so important to me. I will notice and thank my mind for this enthusiasm and pressure. I will then try to stay mindful that I don’t need to cover the whole of Mindfulness in one blog (there’s plenty of writing out there already) and gently re-focus on thinking about why developing nosey, virtual Mindfulness videos felt like a project worth pursuing.
For me, learning Mindfulness is absolutely worth the investment. Being able to connect with a state of non-judgmental awareness of the present allows me to make wiser choices in life. So how do you start and commit to this thing? In most models of teaching, we learn through words, or observation - both fairly useless for developing Mindfulness skills: you won’t learn much about the how of mindfulness by watching someone being mindful!
Mindfulness is complex and simple. It’s painful and freeing. It’s self-focused and allows us to connect with others. It’s always accessible and can be lost in a moment. Although these sound like contradictory ideas, they highlight the moment-by-moment nature of Mindfulness: it’s a continual process.
Mindfulness is an experience and a way of being. So how do you teach an experience that is ever-changing? I’d suggest through virtual reality (VR): VR is about experiences and immersion in moments. Knowing, for ourselves, how mindfulness feels allows us to then build on this experience and take this into our everyday lives. Learning through immersive technology also reduces the sense of being “taught at”. VR is engaging, energising and rarely feels like learning. That’s not to say we’re trying to “trick” people into learning: it’s about allowing learning by experience, letting our minds decide what’s important from the experience and (hopefully) feeling engaged, excited and inspired to take to the ideas forward (not much to ask).
I’ve been teaching Mindfulness in various settings for over 10 years. One of the most frequent questions I hear when guiding Mindfulness exercises is “Am I doing it right?”. Good question! A question I have asked myself many times. For my mind, this questioning is ever-evolving. My thinking (and associated emotional responses) can look something like this:
“Am I doing this right?”
(panic and frustration)
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“I’m noticing that I’m wondering if I’m doing this right: now get back to being Mindful”
(some curiosity and lots of self-criticism)
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“I’m compassionately noticing that I’m wondering if I’m doing this right: now I can gently choose where to shift my attention”
(hesitant curiosity)
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“I’m non-judgmentally noticing and shifting my attention: I’m doing it right!”
(curiosity followed by excitement and smugness)
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“I’m noticing that I’m having the thought that “I’m doing it right” – that’s a judgment – I’m not doing it right!”
(confusion, stupidity and despair)
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“I’m noticing. I’m trying not to judge that noticing. It’s OK if my mind wanders. I’ll try to keep noticing and gently returning my attention to my chosen focus”
(curiosity and awareness)
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“I’m noticing that minds are odd, incredible and fascinating”
(compassion and awe)
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A random cycle of all the above depending on the level of non-judgmental awareness I achieve in that moment…
For me, the above process is one of continual learning. Through our OM-VR videos, we hope to introduce this idea of non-judgmental awareness through sharing experiences in a mindful way. It allows a brief insight into the minds of each video’s host.
Through my work, I have the privilege of talking to many people about their minds. I know that all our minds can tell us painful and distracting things: how stupid, rubbish, ugly, awkward, incompetent etc. we are. This is part of being human and as controllable as the weather (not at all). We do have choices about listening, responding and engaging with these ideas though.
In our first video, we share the moment Les Ferdinand debuted for England: the sights, smells and sounds of the dressing room, along with the thoughts and body sensations he experienced. Through all this (and all that was happening in the moments before), Les still made it to the pitch: he engaged in the behaviours that were important to him (he didn’t walk away and avoid that exposing position of being open to judgment, criticism or praise). Playing football is absolutely a mindful activity: to succeed you need to be in the moment and not caught-up in mental or emotional distractions. Playing is about the sounds, sights and sensations of your body, the other players, the ball right now: not last week, next week or 20 years into the future. To be successful in a sport, and in life, we need to play the game as it is now – not how we might want it to be.
As part of this blog, I feel it’s important to acknowledge how this initial film came into being. Rosie (of The Fred Company) and I had been developing the use of 360° “other-mind” (OM-VR) videos to share the principles of mindfulness for many months. We’re both advocates of the #tech4good movement, especially regarding the opportunities that technology can provide for enhancing lives and reducing distress. Within my NHS role, I have been heavily involved in the psychological response to the Grenfell fire. Through meeting with many of the survivors and bereaved, I was struck by the desire for justice to come from such tragedy. Part of this included the need for established processes to be questioned in order to ensure that basic human rights and opportunities to thrive are available to all. These values resonated for me, including my sense of how technology can be used to disrupt and establish new ways of learning and improving psychological health. The Fred Company and I therefore collaborated with the NHS and the local community to create this series of films. The videos will be free for the community and NHS to use to support recovery and maintenance of good psychological health. The shared values of respect, inclusivity and questioning “normal” methods (for example of how psychological ideas “should” be shared) are a major part of this project.
I hope these videos will encourage and support people to consider mindful living: the ability to notice our minds, make wiser and more compassionate choices in difficult situations, to enhance our experience of sparkling moments and to feel more connected with ourselves and others. I believe the immersive and experiential nature of VR can support this learning process.
As a scientist, I’m committed to understanding any process that aims to impact behaviour and wellbeing. This can be done through collecting, analysing and reviewing data. Data collection for this project is in very early stages and I hope to report on this over the next year. Please drop me a message if you wish to share any comments, ideas, outcome measures or think you have a moment that it would be good to capture and share in future OM-VR videos…
***Watch the video here***
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