How do you know if you are doing the right thing by sitting on a mountain top and feeling at one with the universe? The Reflect's Orb product was launched during this year's virtual CES shenanigans, for beginners who aren't sure how they are meant to feel in their bodies. I spoke to the company from Tel Aviv, rather than Las Vegas, because they were trapped in their home base of Israel.
"We're not targeting Zen Buddhist monks, or those who can sit cross-legged on top of the mountain and meditate for hours; they have their shit together." Users who have never meditated before have tried it. We have had yoga teachers and coaches. Almost everyone who tried it found value in our product.
The real-time biofeedback that is shown on the device itself is what Reflect's Orb is worth. bio-feedback is the use of a device to measure your body temperature in real time. You can learn to regulate your internal processes with it. If you use an Apple Watch, it will remind you to breathe at the right time. The Apple Watch has a feature called "breathe" that shows the importance of breath to improve wellbeing. The watch measures something and occasionally reminds you to breathe, although Apple has never explicitly stated what causes a "breathe" alert on your watch. The goal is to bring you back to a place of peace. Orb makes the process more explicit.
Monitoring stress and anxiety can be done with biofeedback. We show you what is happening in your body in real time. The goal is to make you aware of things that you don't know about, things that happen in your body all the time. We measure things like heart rate and heart rate variability, which is a good predictor of stress. We measure EDA. The idea behind biofeedback is that we show you a constant feed of what is going on, and that is what it is about. You can start to influence it. By being aware of it and then seeing what works in the feedback loop. We give you the tools to be aware of what your body is going through, and then to influence it in a way that will calm you.
The ball is covered in cloth and held in two hands. It has a light ring that reports how calm you are in real time. By adjusting your seating position, breathing patterns and body position, you can see how your body reacts to calming techniques. The light ring shows how relaxed you are.
The CEO at Reflect is showing off.
The device is independent of your phone and doesn't need to be connected to anything. You can use the orb offline if you are connected to a network, but you can also use it in the cloud. Take it to a mountain top and breathe. You can get detailed information about your relaxation session when the device is back on.
Reflect is entering a crowded market. The Muse headband measures brain activity and gives feedback. You can measure how deep you find peace with Zendo meditation. The Core meditation trainer has a similar form factor to a ball with electrodes that measures HRV and other biofeedback for meditation purposes. The company believes that it has a unique selling point that will allow it to carve out a healthy user base and take on its competitors head-on.
Core doesn't do live biofeedback but uses their meditation library. Both of these solutions need to be connected to an app. The real-time biofeedback approach allows you to build your awareness of the body and bring your focus. It's important that there is a mobile app, but it's also important that you just use Reflect, because it gives you all the data you need. There are a lot of technology built into our phones, but it's kind of ironic because phones are very stress-inducing for a lot of us. I wanted to put the phone away and focus on the experience.
The Orb is available for pre-order at a discounted price of $199. The team told me that it will start shipping in February.
