Back in 2001 a biomedical engineer, Kurt Smith teamed up with a game designer, Corwin Bell, and together they created a video game with a difference — biofeedback. You must make the moves with your mind.
With the help of the biofeedback mechanism in the game, you learn to relax, focus, tense or calm. You get to experience changing your thoughts, emotions, heartbeat, breath or whatever else is required in order to move through the game. You are given instructions to help you. And once you learn how to create these changes in your mind and body, you can use them outside of the game in your daily life.
The game software connects with the state of your mind and body through a USB device called an Iom that has rings that fit over three fingers. The personal edition (IomPE) has an ear clip instead of the finger rings. The Iom measures your heart rate and galvanic skin response which are indicators of your state of mind.
The Iom can also be used with Neuroprogrammer 3 software to optimize brainwave entrainment. The Wild Divine Grapher Extension software shows your real time body signals right on your computer screen, letting you experiment to see what changes them.
There are a number of Wild Divine software adventures available. The basic one is Journey to Wild Divine: the Passage that teaches breathing and meditation. Other titles include Relaxing Rhythms, Zen Journey with Master Nissin, Mindfulness Meditation, the Conscious Food Court and the Mindfulness Academy, Villa Serena and Journey to Eagle Mountain: the Seeker.
Wild Divine is now also online. If you don’t wish to purchase the Iom you can still sign up to access areas of Wild Divine that don’t require it.
The two original creators of Wild Divine brought more experts to add their insights. These include Dr Andrew Weil, Dr Deepak Chopra, Dr Dean Ornish, Zen Master Nissan Amon and others. A number of hospitals use Wild Divine including Veterans Administration hospitals in various states of the U.S. where it is used to help treat PTSD. Several universities make it available to their students. A New Zealand project uses it to help abused and at-risk children and Martha Stewart featured it on one of her shows.
We are so used to excess stress that it is a cliche, but it is also the cause behind many emotional and physical disorders. Certainly Wild Divine has to be one of the more entertaining ways to vanquish it.
