Delivering Experience

Most media programming is designed to entertain, to hold your focus 'out there' on the screen rather than inward to your own self. The act of focusing inward has always been considered vital to a healthy successful self-aware life, but most of media programing aims to do just the opposite - to stimulate the senses so much that we are held outward-focused. After all, that's show biz.

• Inner growth and insight requires temporarily letting go of being entertained by external stimulations ... and opening up to ongoing inner experiences that in turn generate an inner response - and the opportunity to grow, have insights, and tap our deeper source of power and inspiration.
  

After thirty years exploring this psychological process of focusing our attention inward, a couple of years ago I returned to experimental media work, to see if we can use video/TV/e and i media not only for entertainment (focusing outward) but also for stimulating inner experience ... and actively reducing stress, waking up good feelings, listening to our inner voice, and flashing with those inner 'aha!' realizations that in fact can transform our lives ...

My production team here in Hawaii has now completed 16 short experiential-videos on various core-issue topics - each of them aimed to refocus your attention inward exactly where you yourself choose to aim it ... there's an insight tool, a meditation method, a therapy session, a self-discovery and empowerment experience, an appetite-control experience, and so forth and so on ... and yes, it comes to you front-center on your TV, computer or iPhone.

• You choose your top theme of the moment, we help with refocusing your attention effortlessly where you want it aimed ... and then you go on and have your own inner experience based on what's happening in your life right now.
  

From Laboratory To Market

How well do these 16 experiential videos (EVs) work? Probably a lot of people won't want to take time to watch them at all - they prefer external entertainment that will stimulate them from the outside. And that's cool, I enjoy entertainment myself. 

On the other hand  I also suspect there's a lot of people feeling bad and bothered,  stressed out, unhealthy, worried depressed and whatever ... and sometimes also feeling hungry for more love, more connection with their source, more sense of inner balance, personal power and spiritual brightness. 

• Most of us are regularly motivated to look to our own hearts and souls more often, but sometimes we need a bit of help - especially in a culture where entertainment is so clever in holding our attention on what's for sale, rather than on what's equally important ... 
  

For people wanting help looking inward and growing, these new iUplift EVs are a first step in what feels like a giant right direction for employing all the various media so as to help us manage our minds, break free from stress and problems, and free up our hearts and souls for a truly great life ... all while looking at the computer or TV screen ...

"Good EVs (experiential videos) serve the purpose of effortlessly helping you to open up some free relaxed space and time, so that you can in fact have an inner experience that moves you forward."  

I'm getting ready to pack up and head to Los Angeles and show people what we've produced, and to find out what next steps to take to get the tools to the people. Here on island we've started working with the local Hospice team, which feels wonderful. And a study using our DVDs for stress relief is starting up at the local Sleep Clinic. But the larger world awaits ... 

So next week I'll be reporting from LA; maybe I'll make this a bit of a reality blog. Who knows what the response of the world out there will be. We have high hopes.

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Stress and Meditation: A New View

When stress is examined closely, we find that it's almost always caused by the initial reaction of anxiety to a situation, real or imagined. To reduce stress, we must quell anxiety - that simple. Deal with the source not the symptom.

But of course, quelling anxiety is not that simple - or is it?

I've been looking into this universal stress/anxiety dilemma for several decades now, from a number of therapeutic angles, and here's what I've found:  

• Stress can only be successfully managed and reduced, when we successfully manage and calm our minds. 

Self Medication versus Meditation

Most people regularly self-medicate their minds to reduce worries and tensions, using doses of alcohol, marijuana, prescription drugs, and also non-drug habits and addictions such as computer games, television, sex and so forth. 

• Sometimes this works, temporarily - but it's like applying a hammer to the head for curing insomnia. There are better ways.

For years now, the press has been covering scientific discoveries showing that meditation does cure stress and anxiety, by successfully dealing with the core of the problem. And millions of people have gone in search of a meditation tradition or program in order to benefit from the 'meditation effect'. 

• But most of those millions of seekers have ultimately failed to establish a daily meditation practice that they can stick to and make work for them.
  

Some thirty years ago, I was working under a NIH grant studying the psychological underpinnings of meditation. We came across a discovery that we didn't at the time recognize as important, and passed over without further discussion. About ten years ago, I remembered that discovery, and have been applying it ever since to new 'psychological technologies' for making meditation easy and predictably effective.

Here's what we found:

1:  Meditation primarily aims to quiet the flow of disturbing thoughts through the mind. 

• When our thoughts become temporarily quiet, inner calm and positive feelings emerge quite naturally, along with relaxation and stress-reduction, clarity of mind, increased creativity and so forth.
  

2:  When a person focuses on two or more sensory events happening at the same time, all thoughts temporarily stop.

•  That's why listening to the Beatles singing harmony (or Bach for that matter), or watching a multiple-sensation sunset, or making love, or playing sports, makes us feel better - we're tuned into numerous sensory events at the same time, and therefore quiet in our minds.
  

3:  Almost all meditation techniques from all the various ancient traditions, are actually employing this 'more than one sensory event' to stimulate a shift into present-moment awareness and quiet-mind consciousness.

• But unfortunately, most people's minds are so addicted to thinking, that they have a difficult time focusing on sensory events (usually breathing and whole-body presence etc) and so they pop back into thinking mode over and over again, thwarting the benefits of meditation.

Technology To The Rescue ...

I happen to have a film background from long ago, and recently I've begun employing new video technologies for inducing the meditative experience without the usual struggle of traditional meditation methods. 

• The success has been quite remarkable - a short 3-minute video that purposefully induces a 'two or more sensory events at the same time' experience, combined with nature visuals, special music and focus phrases, can shift almost anyone effortlessly and quickly into a more relaxed, quiet-mind state of awareness.
  

Having discovered this meditative use of video technology, I've recently focused most of my time on producing a number of these special short video programs, 'video meditations' if you like, so that this tool can be used by everyone, to quickly reduce stress and induce a meditative quality of consciousness - without really any discipline at all.

Yes, I do find it a bit strange to be using television to induce a meditative state - but hey, if it works, let's do it. I also believe strongly in meeting people 'where they are' - and that's often in front of the TV or computer screen.

Of course, using a video-meditation program to quiet the mind and encourage good relaxed feelings isn't the same as spending ten years at the ashram learning meditation from a traditional master. But who these days has time for the ashram approach to meditation? 

• For most of us, whatever gets the stress-reduction job done fast, inexpensively and effectively, is of high value.
  

We're also discovering that when we include special 'focus phrases' in the stress-reduction video experience, we can aim the meditative process in specific directions to improve a number of different life situations - this is a wide-open new area of possibility currently being explored.

As of the date of this posting, my web development team is about 3 weeks from launching the iUplift.com site that will deliver these new stress-reduction video meditations to whatever video-player system (from iPod to widescreen) you prefer. Coming soon ... really.

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