FitMind - A science-based meditation training app

@lnchoi Great question! I think there is currently no objective metric to go on there (studying the inner workings of the mind beyond chemical firings and blood flow is quite difficult, so we might be decades away from an optimal solution here). That said, the FitMind program encourages you to be your own mental trainer. As your metacognitive introspective awareness improves, you begin to understand your mind better and will get a sense for what seems to be working best for you. For example, if you spend the entire meditation lost in thought, you might go back to focused attention techniques, like a body scan or breath focus. In the later stages of the program, you might find that certain of the "glimpse" practices are able to shift your state of mind dramatically. Dr. Jeffery Martin, founder of The Finder's Course and a former guest on my podcast, has been working hard to explore this very question as scientifically as possible. Based on years of results from delivering his course, Jeffery believes that generally one week is long enough to know if you align with a method. "Alignment" is defined as an increase in wellbeing, better emotional regulation, less mind-wandering, less critical inner thoughts, and less reactivity, all subjective measures (that are admitted also effected my many other factors as well - best self-testing practices would involve holding as many other factors in your life constant as possible obviously). So my recommendation is to go through the FitMind program and then go back to the methods that seemed to help the most and try focusing on each for a week, recognizing that some methods are more supplemental than primary perhaps, like metta/emotional priming for example. Does this make sense? I wish I had a better answer but I think you've pointed to an incredibly important question of future scientific inquiry. Imagine if we could take one look at someone's current neural wiring and suggest the optimal meditation practice? I hope that's an option in the future.

@liammccl Thanks so much for the thoughtful response. Makes sense, will give it a try!

@charu_singhal That's great to hear! Thank you for your support

@stanislav_dim Thank you for this candid feedback - your objection is noted. Please see above for an explanation of how this product is different. I'll add that while well-established apps primarily teach mindfulness meditation, FitMind is for those who would like to explore other methods as well (meditation is an umbrella term like exercise, with over 300 different techniques!). The risk is that meditation gets "McMindfulized" in the west and many folks never realize that there are so many different tools in the toolkit for training a better state of mind. That's why I felt it was necessary to create this app. Hope this was helpful.

@cataplines Thank you for your patience. I'll keep you posted!

@rafaelyenikieiev Working on it, thanks for your patience!

@kerrie_lamb Thank you Kerrie!