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About this Episode:

In this episode of The Transformative Leader Podcast, I’m happy to bring you a conversation with neuroscientist, psychotherapist and tech innovator, Ariel Garten, about using meditation and mindfulness to unlock our potential to thrive in life and at work. An extremely fascinating guest, Ariel is the visionary founder of the highly successful tech startup, Muse, and co-host of the fantastic and highly recommended Untangle Podcast, whose mission is to inspire people to understand that they can accomplish anything they want by learning what goes on in their own mind. What Muse provides is an eponymous “brain sensing headband” that makes meditation and mindfulness easy and accessible for everyone. The Muse headband tracks your brain during meditation to give you real-time feedback, guiding you into “the zone” and solving the problem most of us have when starting a meditation practice, i.e. wondering if what we’re doing is even working. Muse lets you know when you are doing it right, and comes with guided meditations for stress relief, sleep, productivity, and so on.

I think Muse is a fascinating device, and one that really has utility in both personal and professional life, especially in our hectic modern world. As a device that essentially reads minds to let us know how we’re doing relative to attention, mindfulness, relaxation, and so on, I believe Muse would be very useful both for those trying to increase productivity as well as relieve stress (and I think we could all use a little meditation right now). Beyond that, it could be also be invaluable in helping to develop the self-awareness, emotional intelligence, empathy, and other “soft skills“ that I consider critical for leadership. Ariel was an extremely fascinating guest with such valuable perspective to share, especially with the state of the world today, so I encourage listeners to check this episode out!

Some topics discussed in this episode include:

• How Ariel got involved with mediation generally, and how she came up with the idea of Muse in particular.

• What exactly meditation is, and how it differs when using Muse.

• How meditation changes the brain to increase attentiveness, productivity, self-awareness, and so on.

• How meditation can benefit people in both business and home settings.

• Why we should strive to make meditation a daily health practice, like exercise and eating well.

Ariel Garten is a Toronto-based neuroscientist, innovator, and entrepreneur whose driving purpose is to empower and help others overcome mental obstacles in order to live healthy, happy lives and reach their maximum potential. Garten is one of the Founders of InteraXon, the makers of Muse: the brain sensing headband. Before founding InteraXon, Ariel was not only trained as a neuroscientist and psychotherapist, but also started her own international clothing line while she worked in labs researching Parkinson’s disease and hippocampal neurogenesis. Ariel and her team have been featured in over 1000 media pieces, including CNN, Forbes, Fortune, WSJ, etc. and recipients of multiple innovation awards. When Ariel is not reading brains (literally) or investing in, inspiring and advising other start-ups and women in biz, you can find her on stages across the world, from TED to MIT to SXSW.

Guest Links:

To learn more about Ariel and her work, you can visit her website and Muse’s website, where you can also purchase a Muse headband. Be sure to check out her Untangle Podcast as well. You can also connect with Ariel on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and by emailing her at ariel@interaxon.ca.

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