Feeling Systems: Using Meditation to Prepare Us for the Metaverse

Presented at A New HOPE (2022), July 24, 2022, 5 p.m. (50 minutes).

Advances occurring in spatial computing and new buzzwords like "metaverse" represent both tremendous opportunities and unprecedented challenges upon our "feeling" systems. As stakeholders in an ecosystem evolve to include people, machine, objects, and their environments, we can use mindfulness practices to manage stressors this virtual world may evoke. Using mindfulness, we also can begin to anticipate and address developing questions of this new world order: 1. How do we create meaningful interactions/relationships in a digital world? 2. How do we identify and address trauma as analog and digital interactions become increasingly "seamless?" 3. How do we define "optimized processes" and apply analytics that give positive value to processes that may otherwise be defined as "inefficient," e.g., pausing, looking, connecting? This workshop will invite participants to practice mindfulness techniques, which will include guided practice (in a seated or lying position); gentle movement (with modifications for seated practice), and vocal exercises as part of trauma-informed mindfulness practices.


Presenters:

  • Obi O'Brien
    **Obi O'Brien** received her qualification to teach mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) from Brown University's School of Public Health. She facilitates an open community of mindfulness practitioners and academic researchers at the Mindfulness Lab and is completing her registered yoga teacher training through the Yoga Alliance. Obi co-developed one of the first smart contract oracle services on the Bitcoin blockchain in 2013 and went on to lead product development for Ernst and Young's Digital Asset Group. Obi continues to develop technological tools and uses her mindfulness training to ask better questions about the technology that she is developing in her capacity as founder at Lenox Group.

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