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Something we don’t talk about too often when it comes to digital spaces is how to make sure they’re healthy. We can keep talking about how to make virtual worlds fun, entertaining or commercially viable. Discussions about what kind of systems need to be in place to keep things civil and moderated are an ongoing conversation.
But we don’t really consider the mental health side. Sure, there are warnings in many softwares. Take breaks, get some fresh air, stretch and hydrate. Where is the equivalent of a doctor’s office in the digital world?
Obviously, the types of problems present in a metaverse are different from the real world. Physical health isn’t really the issue; Take off the headset and solve the problem. However, mental health should be much more of a focus.
You enter VR. Your form is a digital avatar. It’s ultimately irrelevant. your mind, but? Your mind is the most important part of you in there. If something happens to your avatar, it stops right there. It’s just an avatar. But an unbalanced mind overcomes this physical/digital barrier.
Keeping it healthy should be high on the list of things to accomplish with the Metaverse.
“If all we build are virtual malls where you can take your digital twin to buy digital sneakers,” said Nanea Reeves, CEO of Tripp, at GamesBeat Summit 2022. “We might as well throw in the towel and say we suck.”
Trip is working on it
Reeves is the founder of Tripp, a digital wellness platform focused on mobile and VR platforms. The software offers dozens of meditative experiences with a regularly updated catalog. It allows users to customize and design their own experiences. It has some light gameplay elements.
It uses current research when it creates these things and cites it publicly rather than just fueling it.
Reeves suspects that attending wellness sessions in VR allows people to open up more freely than in person. That the level of abstraction of facing down an avatar as opposed to a person provides a sufficient buffer to keep people from shutting down.
“[Research shows that] Veterans will actually be more open to a virtual agent,” Reeves said. “Because they don’t feel the judgment of another human being.”
The Metaverse is still in its infancy. People are still trying to define what it actually is. It’s probably for the best that we have people working in mental health and wellness. Everyone else seems to be headed for some kind of digital capitalist dystopia.
That’s not healthy for anyone. Reeves announced that Tripp has partnered with design studio Luminance to bring wellness-centric, non-fungible tokens to the mindful metaverse. Her first attempt is Chrysanthemum: The Heart-Centered Drop, which uses biofeedback to improve well-being with each session.
The drop is coined on the HyperCube platform. Designed by Luminance’s Daniel Friedman, the drop uses scientifically and research-backed biofeedback to support interactive, meditative experiences. The Luminance team worked with Tripp to integrate Tripp’s library of sounds and music into procedurally generated sound loops that are unique to each session.
Part of the Chrysanthemum Collection, Luminance and TRIPP’s NFT offering combine breathing patterns scientifically proven to promote deep states of relaxation and peace with a revolutionary approach to binaural audio design that adapts to the beat and frequencies of a user’s heart. Each session with the NFT is unique and leads to deeper states of peace based on an infinite amount of psychedelic inspired designs, colors and patterns that can be changed with one click.
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