It took a year from the time I heard about the Muse Headband until I finally decided to buy it and see if it could help me improve my meditation and mindfulness practice, sleep problems, and learn to control and calm my mind.
I tried the Muse S for 30 days before sharing my results with you, so if you are wondering if the Muse headband is worth it, here’s my complete Muse Headband trial and review.
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What is the Muse Headband?
The Muse headband is made by a Canadian startup called InteraXon and is a wearable device with 7 EEG sensors (on the forehead and behind the ears) to measure and respond to your mind, heart, and breath.
This brain-sensing headband helps you understand how well you can focus, sleep, and recharge, and uses all sorts of sounds to teach you how to calm your mind, heartbeat, breath, and sleep.
The S model (the S stands for sleep), which is much lighter and more versatile, now can monitor your sleep and offers sleep journeys that help you fall asleep much faster.
What is the Muse Meditation App?
The Muse app, which easily connects to the headband (when it’s turned on) allows you to choose from 5 different meditations (with guided exercises) with friendly animated videos before you try them for the first time.
They also show you how to optimally place the headband for an accurate measurement.
The meditation won’t start until the app confirms that the headband is used properly, which is wonderful for the less tech-savvy.
When your session ends (you can choose how much time you want it to last – from 5 minutes to an hour) – the Muse app allows you to see all the data on whether a given meditation session was effective in slowing the endless stream of thoughts, lower your heartbeat, focus on your breath, and sit still.
The first meditation is the mind meditation, which uses EEG sensors and offers soft rain sounds.
When the rain sound goes quiet and you start hearing chirping birds, you know your mind is now calm and you are focusing well.
When you are distracted, the rain sounds become “stormy”. You can hear the rain soundscape here!
In the end, you’ll get a score that includes session points, the number of birds, and recovery points indicating how many times you managed to return to a calm state after being distracted.
The second meditation is the heart meditation, where you hear soft drum sounds, indicating whether you manage to relax and reduce your heart rate.
You get the same scores at the end.
The third meditation is the body meditation, which helps you learn how to still during your meditation.
The 4th meditation is the breath meditation, which uses all three sensors and guides you through breathing exercises, along with ambient sound on the inhale and a pleasant whoosing sound in the exhale.
What is The Muse Sleep?
The sleep section inside the app offers different sleep journeys, to help you relax and fall asleep (especially if you suffer from night anxiety).
After that, the app goes quiet and the headband monitors your movement, brain activity, orientation, and heartbeat throughout the night.
You can choose a guided sleep track (10-20 minutes), where a soothing voice and nature sounds, help you fall asleep quickly.
You’ll need wireless earphones so you can sleep comfortably.
If you don’t want the voices, you can choose from a variety of soundscape tracks, such as Ocean Rhythm, or Mountain Wind, for as much time as you choose.
Once you fall asleep (I removed the earphones once I drifted to sleep), the app starts tracking your heart, brain, and sleep stages (awake/REM/light sleep/deep sleep), and everything
When you wake up, you can look at the app to see the helpful analysis graph and your score. The data was very helpful and I was impressed.
To feel fully rested in the morning, you need high-quality stage 3 deep sleep. The app measures your movements during the night, and I discovered I toss and turn a lot, which disturbs my deep sleep and is probably caused by discomfort.
I decided to buy a new mattress and changed my pillow to a contoured memory foam one – and this resulted in much fewer movements and better sleep!
The Muse Headband – My Review & Results
If you’d like, use it. (I was not paid to write this review and have paid the full price for the Muse)
I am highly impressed with the Muse and loved it from the first guided tutorial and meditation I tried. Something about this comfortable and easy-to-use headband, along with the simple (yet data-rich) app makes it feel like a quality device.
In less than a week, I’ve learned how to increase the sound of birds (signaling a calm mind) I hear during a mind meditation and reduce the drum beat (signaling my heartbeat) during the heart meditation.
I also saw for the first time how focusing my mind and sitting still during my meditation quickly reduces my heartbeat and the other way around.
It was magic to see the holistic connection between my thoughts, my brainwaves, and my heartbeat.
After 2 weeks I could use the breathing techniques offered by the Muse to calm my mind and heart on the go – without using the audio sounds and the app guidance – during work or other stressful daily situations.
I feel like I have improved my ability to focus in all areas of my life: my cognitive abilities at work (I am also less tired and need fewer breaks), my ability to have a focused conversation with my kids, my overall fatigue is down, and I am less bothered with constant intrusive and worrying thoughts.
As for the sleep tracking, the rich data I received has helped me realize that my bed setting was not optimal for me because I was tossing and turning a lot.
This has made me decide to purchase a new (hybrid) mattress and change my pillow to a contoured side sleeper pillow.
The results were amazing: I almost stopped moving in my sleep altogether and got a long and deep sleep state, which is essential for quality sleep (and health).
Is the Muse Headband Worth It?
In conclusion, I had no idea I was going to get hooked on the Muse and how it would become a part of my daily routine – whether it’s for 10 minutes of mind meditation (striving to get 80% or more bird sounds…), or using it to fall asleep in less than 5 minutes every night.
A better, calmer, less distracted brain, and good deep sleep at night?
That’s something well worth the spend, and it is likely to remain one of my most used and loved gadgets in the coming years.
It has made me “compete” against myself, get better results, and have more meditation time daily.
The company also promises future updates that I’m looking forward to, one of them is the 5th kind of meditation – a walking meditation, with your eyes open.
Now that’s a challenge I want to take on. How about you?
Muse Headband Pros
- Comfortable, lightweight, doesn’t interfere with sleep
- Good range of meditation audios and sounds, good meditation teachers
- A broad range of collected data, easy to track your progress and learn about your thinking and sleeping patterns, making change easier
- Drives you to reach meditation goals, I love the reward system
Cons
- I would really love to see data ford and heartbeat at the same time – in the same meditation
- App subscription is required if you want more audio options (I found it unnecessary)
- Battery requires daily charging if you use it for sleep tracking every night
Any questions? thoughts? would love to read them – use the comment section below or message me directly – on my Facebook page.
To your health and happiness,
Meital
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