How MindVizor Works

The MindVizor is a meditation / mindfulness aid that is especially designed to help you with your meditation practice.  It features a special white translucent lens, and a unique over-the-nose design.  Together, these features combine to help you with conscious (mindful) and super-conscious meditation, and can be used with both active and passive techniques.

MindVizor Works 4 Ways

1. Sensory Deprivation
   • Many schools of meditation teach techniques of super-focus.  In these approaches, you focus on a subject or an emotion, to the exclusion of all other things.  All other things include what’s going on in the present moment.
   • The MindVizor inhibits your sight, so that visual distractions are eliminated from your view.  This can be very helpful to beginners, as it can help break the brain’s habit of repeatedly scanning the environment, when you’re trying to stay focused.
2. Breath Awareness & Moderation
   • One of the most popular meditation techniques is to focus on your breathing, to the exclusion of everything  else.  This super-focus technique is very effective at quieting the mind, and reconnecting your consciousness with things that are going on in your body.
   • The MindVizor’s unique over-the-nose design regulates the speed of your breathing, and provides a breathing feedback loop.  This is especially helpful if your meditation technique requires a certain breathing pattern  (i.e “inhale through the nose, exhale through the mouth”).  With the MindVizor, you’ll be subtly reminded to take deep, slow, conscious breaths, and to follow your breathing pattern.
3. Open Eye Meditation
   • Experienced meditators gain a great deal of control over their minds.  They learn how to control their thoughts, and they learn how to control their senses.  They can quickly become super-focused in mindfulness meditation, and just as easily quiet their minds in passive meditation.  Some can even turn off their senses to the point where they no longer hear or see the sites and sounds around them.
   • Beginners sometimes doubt this, and even dismiss it as impossible (at least for them).  That’s where open-eye meditation comes in.
   • In the 1930’s, scientists researching snow blindness discovered that people quickly enter an altered state when they stare into a large, featureless field of vision (“the ganzfeld effect“).  By presenting your eyes with nothing to look at, your brain gets bored and “turns your vision off”.
   • The MindVizor is designed to help you experience the ganzfeld effect quickly.  By staring into its special, white translucent lens, you will soon know what it feels like when you stop paying attention to your vision.  With practice, you’ll be able to replicate this state much more quickly, with your eyes opened or closed.  With time, the insights you gain from this process will help you quiet the other distractions in your mind that are standing between you and super-consciousness.
4. As an Anchor
   • Even when meditation is done on a regular basis, it can have varying results.  To make results more consistent, many traditions suggest using a dedicated space, along with certain rituals like candles, incense, special music or nature sounds.  This is to provide you with a unique environment that can be quickly associated with meditation.  In other words, an anchor.
   • The MindVizor is an additional anchor that can help you return to prior meditative states quickly and easily.  And because it’s portable, one that you can easily take with you on the road.  (batteries not included – nor required)

The MindVizor is currently available to clients of PathWorks.org.