Announcing Another CogSci Apps™ Invention for Sleep: Personalized Affective Body Scan Pack in mySleepButton 1.4

We are delighted to announce another CogSci Apps™ Invention for your sleep, well-being and productivity, mySleepButton® 1.4 for iOS, which contains the world’s first personalized body scan meditation pack!

Body scan meditation is a mindfulness practice that involves surveying different areas of one’s body with an attitude of curiosity of acceptance.

There has been considerable research in the last several years demonstrating the helpfulness of mindfulness practices for sleep. For instance, Dr. Nancy Digdon of MacEwan University, with whom I published a study about the cognitive shuffle at SLEEP-2016, found that mindfulness predicts sleep quality. (See also Black et al, 2015).

While, mindfulness practices performed during the day can provide benefits for nocturnal sleep, a body scan meditation is also a potentially helpful pre-sleep activity. It can help one unwind from a cognitively and emotionally charged day. After such a day, before launching into a cognitive shuffle pack, you can perform a body scan with the new mySleepButton body scan pack. At any time during the meditation you can double-click the headset button to proceed to a cognitive shuffle pack. Or you might find it a sufficient preparation for falling asleep.

We are in the innovative business of developing CogSci Apps™, meaning that we develop products based on our extensions of cognitive science and technology. For example, our Affective Body Scan pack uses cognitive science research on body maps. It also provides a type of emotion regulation strategy, building on our contributions to the H-CogAff theory (Wright, Sloman & Beaudoin, 1996). Our approach to mindfulness departs from the pre-scientific, but quite common, view that body scanning is merely a form of passive observation without regulation or control.

A typical body scan is a generic (one-size fits all) product. In contrast, the mySleepButton Affective Body Scan pack is highly personalizable, allowing you to

1. set the direction of the body scan (top-down, bottom-up),
2. include or exclude certain regions of your body from the scan,
3. include or exclude a focused body scan, which zeroes in on a particular region of your body that needs special attention,
4. configure the speed of the scan,
5. tap into your brain’s mapping of your peripersonal space, and
6. double-click the middle headset button to move onto a cognitive shuffle pack.

Furthermore, there is a subtle shuffling feature built right into the pack ready to be used today, and that will also be further expanded upon in the future.

“Body scanning” is a mindfulness meditation recommended by many psychologists. Our pack is an affective body scan because it might help you accept and regulate your moods and emotions.

This new pack has a natural (human) female voice.

This version of mySleepButton also includes updated tutorials and various minor fixes.

In short, our body scan pack is an innovative, personalized, customizable research-based product worthy of the CogSci Apps brand.

But this is still only the beginning! We have further CogSci Apps innovations in the works for you, with respect to body scanning and other aspects of sleep, well being and productivity.

References

• Beaudoin, L. P., Digdon, N., O’Neill, K. & Racour, G. (2016). Serial diverse imagining task: A new remedy for bedtime complaints of worrying and other sleep-disruptive mental activity. Poster presented at SLEEP 2016 (A joint meeting of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society). Denver, CO. http://summit.sfu.ca/item/16196

• Black, D. S., O’Reilly, G. A., Olmstead, R., Breen, E. C., & Irwin, M. R. (2015). Mindfulness meditation and improvement in sleep quality and daytime impairment among older adults with sleep disturbances. JAMA Internal Medicine, 175(4), 494–501.http://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2014.8081

• Blakeslee, S., & Blakeslee, M. (2008). The body has a mind of its own. Random House. https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-body-has-a-mind-of-its-own/id420689664?mt=11

• Howell, A. J., Digdon, N. L., & Buro, K. (2010). Mindfulness predicts sleep-related self-regulation and well-being. Personality and Individual Differences, 48(4), 419–424. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2009.11.009

• Howell, A. J., Digdon, N. L., Buro, K., & Sheptycki, A. R. (2008). Relations among mindfulness, well-being, and sleep. Personality and Individual Differences, 45(8), 773–777. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2008.08.005

• Wright, I., Sloman, A., & Beaudoin, L. P. (1996). Towards a design-based analysis of emotional episodes. Philosophy, Psychiatry & Psychology, 3(2), 101–126. http://doi.org/10.1353/ppp.1996.0022