The Muse headband

I haven’t had a chance to play with this yet, because it hasn’t yet arrived, but I anticipate that it’ll be a great experiment for me.  I’m going to try to use the Muse headband to research how my brain functions while I’m climbing.  The Muse is designed as a meditation tool and measures electroencephalographic (EEG) data from different areas of your brain while you’re meditating and graphs how calm or excited your brain activity is according to these readings.  It’s a headband that has silver sensors for the frontal lobes and the upper temporal lobe area behind the ear (limbic system central, for those who are not familiar with brain anatomy).  A program on your phone or tablet (for me, it will be my iPad Mini or my iPhone 7S) monitors and records EEG data from these areas while you listen to a meditation program on the phone or tablet.  I’m going to pretend I’m listening to these meditation programs, but instead, I’ll be climbing with the Muse headband on and it will be recording EEG data from my brain while I climb!  I want to know what it is, and possibly where it is, in my brain that is calm while I’m climbing.  Having PTSD, I’m curious to see what my normal EEG activity looks like, and I want to compare it to the only thing that tames that beast – climbing.  I could take it further and put the Muse on while I’m angry or extremely distressed from PTSD and see what those EEG readings look like, too.  And yes, I could even try, if I wanted, to use the Muse as it was intended – as a meditation tool.  I could try to learn to meditate, although I have little faith in that practice because I can’t concentrate long enough on nothing to accomplish much in the way of meditation.  Climbing is my meditation, and I’m going to find out what it is and where it is that the EEG activity changes in such a way that the intense negative distress is pushed out of the way in favor of euphoric peace during pure movement across the wall with the Muse, if that’s possible.  I’m going to find out!!!