[00:00:01] Ariel Garten: Most of us are used to having thoughts and we just think those thoughts. Those are just the thoughts in our head and they drive us a little crazy or they make us happy. And that's what it is. And when you do this exercise of noticing that your mind is on a thought and it's wandering and then choosing to bring your attention back to your breath, like choosing to say, hey, I don't want to follow that thought, then all of a sudden you've shifted your relationship to your thinking and you can now start to be in control and the master of your own thoughts and your own mind.

[00:00:31] Penny Williams: Welcome to Beautifully Complex, where we unpack what it really means to parent neurodivergent kids with dignity and clarity. I'm Penny Williams and I know firsthand how tough and transformative this journey can be. Let's dive in and discover how to raise regulated, resilient, beautifully complex kids together. Oh, and if you want more support, join our free community at Hub.

[00:01:01] Penny Williams: Hi everybody. Welcome back to Beautifully Complex. I am really thrilled to have Ariel Garten here with me, co founder of Muse, Neuroscientist. She'll tell you lots more about herself in a moment, but we're going to talk about neuroscience and the brain body connection and tech that can help us with sleep optimization and mindfulness and meditation practices. And it's something that I'm actually with my own kid for several years now. So I'm so excited to have a chat about what's behind it and how it works and why it works and how it can benefit those of you who are listening. Ariel, will you start by letting everybody know who you are and what you do?

[00:01:42] Ariel Garten: Sure. So my name is Arielle. I'm a mom of two. I have a three year old and a nine year old and I love them very dearly. And my background is neuroscience and psychotherapy. And I make a tool called Muse, which tracks your brain to help you meditate and improve, hopefully your brain and your life.

[00:02:02] Penny Williams: Awesome. Let's start with talking about the mind body connection and the science behind mindfulness practice, meditation practice, and all of these other things.

[00:02:13] Ariel Garten: So meditation is a real phenomenon that makes real change in your brain. Most people hear the term meditation and they're like, okay, is that like this weird thing? No. Meditation is a simple practice that you do and as you do it, it strengthens parts of your brain and teaches your body to cal and teaches you to better self regulate. So the most common form of meditation that we do is a focused attention on the breath practice and you'll Simply be watching your breath. And as you do this, you are gonna have some thoughts that come up. Cause everybody's like, oh, no, I have to like, have my mind go blank. That's not what meditation is. You're just gonna have some thoughts go up, and instead of following those thoughts, you're gonna choose to let those thoughts go and bring your attention back to your breath.

[00:03:00] Ariel Garten: And when you do this, it actually makes a profound transformation in your mind and your relationship to your thinking, because for the first time, you are actually shifting your thinking. Most of us are used to having thoughts and we just think those thoughts. Those are just the thoughts in our head and they drive us a little crazy or they make us happy. And that's what it is. And when you do this exercise of noticing that you, your mind is on a thought and it's wandering, and then choosing to bring your attention back to your breath, like choosing to say, hey, I don't want to follow that thought. Then all of a sudden, you've shifted your relationship to your thinking and you can now start to be in control and the master of your own thoughts in your own mind.

[00:03:42] Penny Williams: And what are the benefits of that? What are the outcomes that we can get from having this mindfulness practice and being able to self regulate and to somewhat control our thinking?

[00:03:55] Ariel Garten: Yeah, so self regulation is huge. And the benefits that it leads to are the ability to have better conversations, to be less likely to yell at your kids. Because you can watch your body having a reaction or having a thought, and then instead of just following it, you can watch the reaction, you can watch the anger rise, you can watch, you know, the stuff happening and then take a beat and say, okay, you know, I'm feeling this thing, but it doesn't mean I need to act in this way. So it gives you a little space between the reaction and how you actually choose to respond in the situation.

[00:04:31] Penny Williams: Yeah.

[00:04:32] Ariel Garten: And this can improve our relationships, obviously. It can improve your productivity at work, and it can also improve our body. So there are lots of studies that demonstrate that meditating can improve chronic conditions because it decreases the stress and cortisol in your body. So there's lots of studies even done with Muse, demonstrating that Muse can improve long Covid and fibromyalgia and Cushing's syndrome, stress related syndromes. Because when you learn to train your mind and down regulate your stress response, much of your, not only your mind, but your physiology, your body can also improve.

[00:05:09] Penny Williams: And we found it useful for anxiety too, in being able to let go of thoughts. Right. If you're ruminating on that anxious thinking. It can be really helpful that practice. You talk about optimizing sleep as well with this tool. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

[00:05:28] Ariel Garten: Sure. So sleep is obviously incredibly important, and it's something that many of us do not get a lot of. Maybe you're not sleeping, your kids are not sleeping, and therefore you're not sleeping. But sleep is really important to actually improve your emotional self regulation. You know, we all know that when our kid hasn't had their nap or they missed a few hours sleep that night, they're going to be crankier. Well, the same goes for us parents if we don't sleep well. Adults also lose their emotional self regulation when they don't sleep, lose their ability to have better self control and willpower and cognitive functioning. So sleep is super key with Muse.

[00:06:07] Ariel Garten: And we haven't yet really talked about Muse and what it is, but we actually have programs that give you bio and neurofeedback to help you fall asleep faster and fall back asleep when you're woken up in the night.

[00:06:17] Penny Williams: So let's go ahead and talk about Muse. What is Muse and how does it work? I think that's really fascinating for a lot of people and we want to understand that. And then you can talk a little bit about how it leads to these benefits that we've already been talking about.

[00:06:31] Ariel Garten: Sure. So Muse is a clinical grade eeg, which is in this super slim, easy to wear form factor. So just in the way that we might have a Fitbit on our wrist or a fitness watch. Muse tracks your brain activity just with a slim little headband connected to an app on your phone. It has a number of different uses inside of it. Overall, it's a brain fitness tool. The most popular use for it is to teach you to meditate. And what Muse does is it gives you real time feedback on your brain while you meditate, letting you know when you're meditating and when you're doing it right.

[00:07:08] Ariel Garten: So as I said, most of us, you know, we know we should meditate, but meditation's hard to do. So Muse makes meditation easy by actually letting you hear what your mind is doing. When you meditate. When you're focused, you hear little birds chirping that tell your brain, yep, you're doing it right. When your mind is wandering, you hear storm and rain come up that says, hey, your mind is wandering. Bring it back to the birds. Bring it back to the birds. And so it makes it a really simple process to start both for parents and for kids.

[00:07:36] Ariel Garten: And then it tracks your progress so you see all your data and you see how you're improving.

[00:07:41] Penny Williams: Yeah, it's really been a game changer in our house. I can't say enough good things about it. It does make meditation easy, honestly. It does really help you to bring your focus back to let go and say, oh, I'm wandering just to notice. Like, oh, I'm wandering. I need to come back. It's so easy to use and so helpful. Is there different products for kids and adults, or is that one product that anybody can use?

[00:08:08] Ariel Garten: So we have two different devices. We have Muse 2, which is for meditation. And then we have Muse S actually a new product, Athena, which is for meditation for sleep and overall brain health. And it has both EEG as well as sensors that track your frontal oxygenation. So it's a very, very cool brain training device. And you can just buy one device and everybody in the household can use it. We say nobody under 13 in the app because we comply with data policies around the world. And so, you know, parents can choose what they want to do with it, but that's our official policy.

[00:08:46] Penny Williams: Gotcha.

[00:08:46] Ariel Garten: But there's studies done with children that have demonstrated that Muse is quite effective. There's one study from the Kansas State University, and they had kids meditating with Muse in a classroom in grade seven and eight, and they saw a 74% decrease in kids being sent to the detention, to the principal office.

[00:09:06] Penny Williams: Yeah, emotional regulation is a big deal, right? Like, emotional regulation is key to, I think, a fulfilling life, honestly. It's a key to really moving through this world with some grit and resilience and the ability to navigate well. So it's so, so powerful. And this connection with meditation and that self regulation is really interesting. I want to play devil's advocate for a second because I know a lot of parents really strug with adding more tech for their kids or their teens or even themselves. I think sometimes. How is tech really not intrusive in this way? Right. We think of meditation as like, being still and quiet and not, you know, engaging with anything else.

[00:09:55] Penny Williams: And yet here we are using the tech to help us to meditate and to gain the skill. How do we sort of, like, really get okay with it, I guess?

[00:10:07] Ariel Garten: Sure. So as a parent, I certainly know the iPad battle.

[00:10:10] Penny Williams: Yep, yep.

[00:10:12] Ariel Garten: Yeah. Even as a person who, you know, teaches meditation, I know the screen battles. And so different screens, different technologies have different roles in our lives. So having a pair of glasses that helps you see better, a mirror that you can look into. You know, all of these tools that we use to self discover and self improve are actually really, really helpful. And so most of us have difficulty learning to meditate on our own sitting quietly. And the idea of sitting quietly is actually maybe even terrifying. Sitting with your thoughts.

[00:10:43] Penny Williams: Yeah.

[00:10:43] Ariel Garten: And so what we've built is a tool that really gives you and amplifies your own experience so that you're actually learning to listen to your mind's activity and learning to shift your own brain activity. So it's not just like, you know, passive watching of crap on the Internet.

[00:11:04] Penny Williams: Right.

[00:11:05] Ariel Garten: It's actually teaching you a skill, just like a teacher or a guide would do. There's actually a university researcher that contacted us who ran a study on muse. We have a kind of meditation called heart meditation, where you listen to the beating of your heart to improve your interoception. And he contacted us to learn more information because he was writing a paper that says, yes, doing our heart meditation improves your interoception. And interoception is your ability to sensibly understand your own state. So this is really a case in which technology is truly making you more sensitive to yourself and your own needs and your own stresses and your ability to self manage instead of kind of.

[00:11:44] Penny Williams: Escaping that by scrolling or watching mindlessly.

[00:11:48] Ariel Garten: And then on the kids side, I must say it is incredibly helpful that it's a piece of technology that has a gamified way to meditate. They love it, teens love it, they do it a lot. And it's actually the way to get your kid to meditate.

[00:12:11] Penny Williams: Let's talk about the timing, because I think a lot of people feel like they have to meditate for a large chunk of time to make a difference. And I know we've found in our household that that's not the what is recommended. What is the timeframe where you see results from using muse?

[00:12:29] Ariel Garten: So there have been hundreds of studies done with muse and in the interventional studies where MUSE is used to improve an outcome in your life. So there was a study by the Mayo Clinic where doctors at the Mayo Clinic used MUSE during the pandemic when they were highly stressed. And so they had very, very little time. And the instruction to them was do it for two minutes a day. And so doctors did it on average, five minutes a day over the course of, I believe, three months. And they saw a 54% reduction in burnout, improvements in sleep, cognition, obviously reduction in stress, improvement in resilience. And when we looked at the data from the study, it really was an average of five Minutes a day.

[00:13:12] Penny Williams: Yeah. Yeah, that's what we saw too. Five minutes or less, as long as you're doing it frequently.

[00:13:18] Ariel Garten: I'm so curious about how you were using it. I mean, we just met. This is the first that I've heard that you and your family in household use Muse. That's, like, amazing to me.

[00:13:25] Penny Williams: And I've been recommending Muse for years now. I have a kid who has a lot of anxiety and went away to college, and I was just desperate to find something to help. Medication wasn't really ideal for this kid. And I found Muse online, and I was like, if you'll try this, I'm gonna send this to you. Please try it. And just the check in phone calls that we were having, I was noticing a substantial decrease in anxiety, a substantial decrease in, like, those ruminating thoughts and not being able to let go of what you're anxious about or be able to say, like, I get the alarm. I hear you. Body and nervous system, but I think it's a false alarm and I'm okay.

[00:14:12] Penny Williams: It was, oh, no, I'm not okay all the time. Right. And so that practice was so helpful in being able to one, even do it, I think, authentically, like to learn to meditate, to learn to be able to identify when your focus is waning and to come back in a really gentle way. That feedback is very, you know, a gentle way to do it. And my kid was actually sending me screenshots of the results and Muse every morning so that we had this accountability from afar. Right. So that it helped to remember to do it every day. And every day those stats were going up and up and up of having more control over, you know, that stress response over the meditation.

[00:15:00] Penny Williams: It was brilliant. And as I said to you before we started recording, when my kid came home, the practice sort of waned. And we're trying to get back to it, but almost immediately, I noticed a reduction in anxiety just in the conversations we were having in the day to day. It was really remarkable. And so I've been recommending it ever since to everybody who will listen to me.

[00:15:22] Ariel Garten: Wow, this is amazing. Oh, I'm so glad for your daughter.

[00:15:26] Penny Williams: Thank you. Yeah, it's good stuff. And I've known for a long time in the work that I'm doing that mindfulness practice is really helpful. There's lots of studies to show and support that for adhd, for autism, for anxiety. Right. But so many people feel like they can't do it because their mind wanders, and that's not really what it's about. It's about being able to bring it back when your mind does wander. Right.

[00:15:50] Penny Williams: And so just having a tool that will help you to recognize that and to make that shift makes a huge difference for anybody who's kind of struggling with mindfulness or meditation. I'm going to overuse the word remarkable here, but it really did make a monumental difference. I am so appreciative that we're going down these avenues with tech. Right. With neuroscience and bettering people's lives with technology. It's pretty amazing.

[00:16:19] Ariel Garten: I'm so touched. I'm quite choked up. This is so beautiful. Oh, wow.

[00:16:24] Penny Williams: And you have so many, like, what, hundreds of thousands, millions of people maybe, who are using Muse at this point. That's just one great story among many, I'm sure.

[00:16:32] Ariel Garten: Sorry, I'm really, really quite choked up. Yeah, there are about half a million people around the world that use Muse. But, like, it's rare that you actually, you know, meet someone and talk to them and get to connect in this way.

[00:16:44] Penny Williams: Get the personal story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You have a lot of data, but I'm sure you have a lot of personal stories like ours too, to support what you're doing. Yeah. It really can make a huge change. And I don't mean for this podcast episode to sound like an advertisement. It's not like we are chatting about the neuroscience and how great this tool is, but it's just something that, that I have found to be really helpful. And I know some of the families that I work with have ordered it and found good results with it also.

[00:17:12] Penny Williams: So it was an investment that was very, very, very worth it, for sure.

[00:17:17] Ariel Garten: Wow.

[00:17:18] Penny Williams: Yeah. Wow.

[00:17:19] Ariel Garten: Well, send my love to your daughter.

[00:17:21] Penny Williams: Absolutely. Absolutely. So it was really cool that we were going to chat and get kind of the behind the scenes.

[00:17:28] Ariel Garten: Yeah. Did she have any questions I could answer for her?

[00:17:31] Penny Williams: I don't think so.

[00:17:32] Ariel Garten: Okay.

[00:17:32] Penny Williams: I don't think so. You know, young adult, not so open these days. A little bit. But anyway, I wanted to ask you too about how to weave this into real life. Right. We're talking about maybe using it with kids. We're talking about parents, adults who are stressed, they're exhausted. You know, we know that it's going to benefit those things, but often we're in this spot where we're just stuck in crisis mode and trying to move forward.

[00:18:00] Penny Williams: How can they weave it into the day to day where it can start to be helpful?

[00:18:06] Ariel Garten: Yeah. And I certainly certainly hear you on there's so many things in the day. How do you Add one more. I was just talking to a friend who's becoming my running coach because I'm like, I need to exercise. Like, how can I do this? And she's like, oh, well, just the beginning of the day or at the end of the day, I'm like, I have two kids. You don't. It's hard for you to understand what my life is like. But like, yeah, yeah, when's that going to happen? She's like, oh, well, just at 8 in the morning.

[00:18:29] Ariel Garten: You mean while I'm making breakfast?

[00:18:31] Penny Williams: Yeah, yeah. And that's a long time frame. You're looking for a bigger chunk of time.

[00:18:36] Ariel Garten: Yeah. So the good thing about Muse and meditation is you can do it for very short periods of time. And I find it most effective to do in the evening after my kids are in bed. And then I can have that time to myself. I can put on my Muse. I can have 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, whatever I have available, and then do my meditation there. I also meditate in the morning in bed when I wake up, because that's the time when either the kids are not yet awake or if they are awake and they holler like, mommy, come into my room. I can be like, I'm still asleep.

[00:19:11] Ariel Garten: Give me five minutes.

[00:19:13] Penny Williams: Just five.

[00:19:14] Ariel Garten: Yeah, yeah. And so I find it a great way to start or end my day. Other people, though, if your kids are in school, you can, you know, and if you're working, you know, on a lunch break, on a five minute break, you just need five minutes. And the key with it is really consistency. So try to find a place where it's going to fit into your day, where it can consistently happen. So, you know, maybe it's every night after you've cleaned up the kitchen and taken out the garbage and did 12 million things that being a parent entails, and you feel super exhausted and you just want to go to sleep, you're just going to take five minutes and do this because it's only five minutes.

[00:19:50] Penny Williams: And start with two. Like, start with something small.

[00:19:54] Ariel Garten: Sure, start with two minutes. So we have programs inside the app, like Introduction to Mindfulness, Discover Mind Biofeedback, where it just becomes easy because you're listening to two or three minutes of content and then you're doing a mindfulness exercise and then you're done. And so, you know, instead of the scrolling of the Instagram or the waking up on the phone, just put your Muse by your bed, do that instead. And then you can go to sleep or you can wake up so you have to want the benefit of it in order to put it in.

[00:20:26] Penny Williams: Yeah, yeah, that's key.

[00:20:28] Ariel Garten: And when you do put it into your schedule, it becomes so worthwhile. Like, everything just becomes that much easier.

[00:20:36] Penny Williams: Yeah.

[00:20:36] Ariel Garten: So it's like one of those things, you know, like exercise. You just feel better for the rest of the day and thereafter, just do it and know that the five minutes is going to make everything else easier.

[00:20:47] Penny Williams: Yeah. It's going to save you time later time stressing, time ruminating something. Right. It's going to save you time in the long run. And my kiddo, that's what she did. She had it by her bed and before she even got up, she did the meditation first and found that really effective to start the day, kind of giving herself this even sort of sense. Right. Like not waking up and going, oh, I have to do all these things.

[00:21:12] Penny Williams: And I'm so worried about all these things. Just kind of give herself a little bit of calm to start out. It was amazing.

[00:21:18] Ariel Garten: And we also find people that use it in the evening. It improves sleep. So that's also another great reason to just do it before you go to bed. And if you have the museum. So if you muse two, you can do meditation before you go to bed if you have the muse s. We also have things like something called the digital sleeping pill, which gives you bio neurofeedback to help you fall asleep.

[00:21:37] Penny Williams: I need that.

[00:21:38] Ariel Garten: We have meditation specifically for sleep. So you can wear the band and just fall asleep after your meditation. And then it also tracks your sleep actually basically as effectively as the EEG of a sleep lab.

[00:21:50] Penny Williams: Wow.

[00:21:51] Ariel Garten: So it gives you really high quality sleep data. And if you're using the digital sleeping pill, if you fall asleep in the night and you wake up, it starts to give you a beautiful Audi experience that helps you fall back asleep. So lots of people have really found it effective to help them through, you know, fragmented sleep or through that feeling of just lying awake, not being able to sleep because your mind is racing?

[00:22:12] Penny Williams: That's me. I've always struggled to fall asleep. So, yeah, start using it at night too then. Amazing. What else do we need to know? Are there any other, like, little habits that parents can instill that will support what we're talking about here? Support self regulation, that sort of thing?

[00:22:33] Ariel Garten: Sure. So one is, you know, parents and kids meditating together can be really helpful. You can make it like a challenge. Who can meditate longer if you've got the muse, we have things like birds and points, so you know, who can get more birds who can get more points. That's a great way to get the whole family doing it and competing with each other.

[00:22:53] Penny Williams: Yeah, Love that.

[00:22:54] Ariel Garten: Yeah. I smile because if you want to get a kid to tie their shoes, they'll never do it. If you say, who can tie your shoes the fastest? Scrambling to get their shoes on.

[00:23:03] Penny Williams: Yep, yep. For most kids, some of them, it'll make them more anxious, but for most kids, it's like, oh, I want to win, I can do this, I want to compete. Yeah.

[00:23:11] Ariel Garten: And then general tips for parents to self regulate. One is take frequent breaks to check in and breathe deeply. So when you take a deep breath, like a slow exhale on your breath, belly breath, you are triggering your nervous system to calm down. So when you breathe into your stomach, it triggers something called your vagus nerve, which is the nerve in our body responsible for the rest and digest, for calming and chilling out. And so the easiest way to reset, if you're starting to feel yourself being ramped, you know, your muscles tense, that feeling in your stomach or your chest, or like that feeling of anger, hatred, you know, whatever it is, stop, take deep breaths, breathe into your belly. Slow, slow exhales. Even if it feels weird, just, you know, do it five times. Calm yourself down, and then look at the situation from that perspective.

[00:24:11] Ariel Garten: Because everything that we are feeling is great. It's there. We have a right to be feeling that, but it's not necessarily helpful in the moment. So, you know, it's a feeling. Feelings come, feelings go. You could feel different later. And so if you take that moment to start to relax your body and shift your state, you can move yourself out of that terrible in the moment feeling and then take a step back and then start it calm. Because we know that if we're ramped and anxious, it's going to make our kids more ramped and anxious.

[00:24:43] Ariel Garten: And it can feel like you're, you know, a patron saint of calm. Just, you know, trying to, like, chill yourself out constantly when they're doing things that are really genuinely trying and difficult and have a lot of emotions for you involved in it.

[00:24:56] Penny Williams: Yeah.

[00:24:57] Ariel Garten: And so all of those difficulties are real. And, you know, whenever you can, just remember to stop, take deep breaths, calm down, and then represent yourself.

[00:25:11] Penny Williams: I call it CO regulation or CO escalation. You can come in and fuel the fire. You can come in and bring some calm for your kid to borrow. Makes all the difference in the world. Just taking a breath first before we respond. Thank you so much for sharing so much of the science behind Muse and why it works. And what the benefits are. Can you tell everybody where to find more information? Maybe the studies that you've mentioned so they can learn more about the tool?

[00:25:39] Ariel Garten: Sure. You can go to choosemuse.com C-H-O-O-S-E-M-U-S-E.com and there you can see what it is that we've been talking about. And we have a research tab with quite a number of studies there on it. And you can always find us also on all the socials at hoosemuse.

[00:25:57] Penny Williams: Perfect. And I will link all that up in the show notes which you can find at parentingadhd and autism.com 318 for episode 318 it has been a pleasure Arielle. I am just honored to have gotten a chance to speak to you and to learn more about this tool. It's been so amazing for us and inspired to use it more and to share it more. And I appreciate the work that you're doing to help us really improve our day to day lives.

[00:26:26] Ariel Garten: Oh thank you so much. What a joy and pleasure to get to meet you today. Thank you.

[00:26:30] Penny Williams: I'll see everybody on the next episode. Take good care. I see you.

[00:26:37] Keri Bonnet: You're doing hard and meaningful work and you don't have to do it alone. If you found this episode helpful, share it with someone who needs it and leave a quick review so others can find this support too. When you're ready for next steps, the Regulated Kids Project is here with the tools, coaching and community to help you raise a more regulated, resilient child. Get more [email protected].