Meditation: Abbreviation with ultrasound

Do the positive effects of meditation have to be reserved for people who have enough stamina in their psychological disposition from the outset? According to Thomas Hamann, long-time meditation teacher and founder of a Buddhism association in Essen, it depends very much on the personality how well the entry into meditation succeeds: “If someone has good experiences right at the beginning of the meditation, he or she stays Of course, it is easier to do it than someone who has a lot of trouble. People with a strong urge to perfect, who punish themselves in thoughts for supposedly inadequate exercises and thus reinforce themselves negatively, are more likely to jump off. It is also difficult for people who have difficulty concentrating and who expect the reward for their behavior immediately. “

Jay Sanguinetti, the head of the SEMA Lab in Arizona, does not want to accept this. He and his team are working on using ultrasound to create states in the brains of test subjects that are also sought in meditation. The abbreviation SEMA stands for Sonication Enhanced Mindfulness Acquisition and is affiliated with the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona.

The method is initially intended to help people with illnesses such as depression, chronic pain and anxiety disorders to establish a regular meditation routine: By making the positive effects noticeable right from the start, the participants are to be motivated to practice meditation over the long term. In his TEDx Talk from 2019, Sanguinetti describes the desired effect as a “technoboost” – a technologically mediated push that powerfully brings the meditator on the right path.