Transformational Healing through Virtual Embodiment

What is Virtual Embodiment?

Virtual reality is a unique tool for personal transformation. One of the keys to virtual reality’s potential for immediate, specific and long-lasting results is virtual embodiment. Virtual embodiment is the sense of occupying a body in virtual reality using our physical senses. A virtual body (avatar) moves simultaneously and similarly to the way you do, so it can feel very real. When you look down at your avatar’s hands in virtual reality (VR), your brain will start to believe that they are your hands.

This simple aspect of virtual reality has uses way beyond the current applications of entertainment and education. Our company, PresenceVR, is combining the power of virtual reality and neural plasticity to tap the power of your subconscious mind. This unlocks a key resource since the vast majority of our behavior is dictated by the subconscious mind. Read below about how we are using virtual reality to empower you to create the life of your dreams.

As a result of how easily your brain accepts virtual embodiment, we are able to actually have the experience of who we want to be. Many scientific studies have revealed that actions in virtual reality affect our brains as if we are actually living them out in the “real world.” If your virtual avatar moves an arm, plays tennis, or walks across a tightrope, your brain responds as if it were actually performing those tasks. As far as the brain is concerned, fantasy and reality are chemically and electrically identical.

How to Go Beyond your Perceived Limitations

Through a clever series of experiments, Henrick Ehresson and his colleagues demonstrated that subjects could rapidly take on any human body as their own. They could easily project their consciousness into a virtual body and ignore their own physical body.

Skillful use of embodiment in VR allows us to transcend our perceived physical, psychological and spiritual limitations. It can be used to reduce anxiety and phobias, improve performance of physical tasks, and reduce pain. For example when children occupy the body of a superhero in VR they become more confident and prosocial in the physical world. https://vhil.stanford.edu/pubs/2013/virtual-superheroes/

In a surprising experiment caucasian people demonstrate more skill playing African djembe drums if their avatar’s hands in VR are black. http://diposit.ub.edu/dspace/bitstream/2445/53803/1/633518.pdf

VR can help is uncover limitations which we are unaware of that are the source of creating a more fulfilling life.

Our Body is Not What We Think

Most people are actually unaware that we imagine a full action figure we think is our body. This mental image, which has a name, gender and age, is actually a virtual representation of reality.  What we call ‘my body’ is composed of the current sensation appearing within our mind’s eye. Internal and external sensations and images are not solid but are constantly flowing like a river. To create a sense of continuity, we have ascribed notions such as size, shape, weight, gender, race, and beauty to this imaginary construction. Without this mental picture of the action figure body we call ‘me,’ we would have no idea what our body actually is. 

Both this image of our body and our dream body at night are like movies on the screen we call our mind’s eye. Actually, the avatar in video games is a similar image happening in our mind. This similarity is the key to the new frontiers using VR as an immensely powerful tool for physical, psychological and spiritual transformation.

At PresenceVR, we harnesses the vast potential of each individual to transform their own minds and bodies from the inside out.  The creative potential can be as unlimited as it is in a night time dream. The experience of PresenceVR is most similar to dreaming lucidly, being consciously aware during a dream and able to influence the dream by simply choosing to change it.

Virtual Reality is Like Lucid Dreaming

A very interesting thing happened shortly after the introduction of the Oculus virtual reality headset in 2013. Some fascinating discussion threads began to emerge on Reddit and other forums. They hinted at the potential of virtual reality to transform reality as we know it. Many VR gamers noted that after playing in an immersive world immediately before going to sleep at night, their dreams were different. They reported greater dream recall, more vivid dream images, and some were actually aware they were dreaming while they were asleep. Many never had the experience before, nor had they heard of the concept called “lucid dreaming.” The same experience seemed to be happening spontaneously to many individuals using this new technology.

Been having lucid dreams every night since using the rift from oculus

Lucid dreaming was a direct effect of having the experience of being a character interacting in a virtual world while at the same time knowing one’s true identity as the one wearing the head-mounted display. As the wearer of such a headset, an inhabitable emotionally and physically believable world is present entirely within you, the gamer. In virtual reality, we act out the dream scenario in virtual space as well as physical reality. Likewise if it were not for the phenomenon called sleep paralysis we would all be acting out our dreams every night. Our brains don’t know the difference between dreams and reality.

Awakening is a Matter of Perspective

Wearing a virtual reality headset is like the lucid dreamer’s experience of knowing that they are the dreamer while the dream unfolds within them, or within their mind. One who dreams lucidly understands that who they really are is not the tiny dream character, acting out a part in the dream. Instead, they are the creator of the dream or the awareness behind the dream. This appreciation of one’s true identity as the dreamer of the dream, not the individual character within the dream, is the perspective shift that holds the key to empowered and creative living, manifestation and healing.

Shedding Your Beliefs About Reality

A lucid dream is a product of the conditioned consciousness of the dreamer. For example, the reliance on experience that walls are solid must be suspended so that one can walk through walls in the dream. It has been discovered by many lucid dreamers that they can get caught part of the way through the wall if the belief in this limitation is not relinquished. The effect of this ‘reality burden’ on our experience is an illuminating aspect of lucid dream discovery ( See Dreams of Awakening; Charlie Morley, Hay House 2013 pp.246-247 for excellent example of this phenomenon).

The Power of the Mind to Heal the Body

One exciting application of this principle is in the area of ‘dream healing.’ In the lucid dream literature, there have been miraculous healings that take place during the night and have profound and permanent effects upon the physical body.

The characters and events which arise from the mind of the dreamer give clues to the deeper aspects of our conditioning which lie below conscious awareness. While “awake” in a dream we can question the characters which represent aspects of our own consciousness. We can ask them who they are and what insights about our deeper selves they reveal. The answers to these questions are often surprising to the mind of the dreamer.

In order to cure children’s nightmares, experts will ask the child to turn towards the dream monster instead of running from it. Since many more children than adults dream lucidly, this is easier for them to do. They report the monster either gets smaller and friendlier or disappears altogether.

Dream Healing and Medical Miracles

Since the time of the ancient Greeks, the power of dream-healing has been well known. In fact, the Greeks did not have hospitals as we imagine them, rather they attended Temples of Asclepius (the God of medicine) where the doctors of the day were informed by the dreams their patients incubated at night.

Miracle cures of illness have been documented in ancient as well as modern literature. The voluminous literature on “the placebo response” and “spontaneous remissions” are just some of the cases which leave modern doctors scratching their heads in disbelief and awe. The Spontaneous Remissions project, published by the Institute of Noetic Sciences, details 3,500 cases of spontaneous healings, most from “incurable cases.” In some cases, tumors melted away when the patient believed in the possibilities of the treatment or responded to the confidence of the physician. In another case, twins who their date of death predicted from birth died exactly on that day of unknown causes. The examples abound.

In a future blog post, “Beyond the Placebo Response,” I will discuss what I believe is happening and how Presence can help you tap into your innate healing potential.

Access Your Mind’s Unlimited Creative Potential

Through the use of virtual embodiment, PresenceVR has created several products which take advantage of our innate ability to heal ourselves from our limiting beliefs. Once we understand the root cause of these limitations, we can embody our desired emotional or physical state. The tools we are creating empower the participant to become their own healer. This shifts reliance off of an overburdened, expensive and often ineffective medical system onto the one who is requesting healing.

To use our product, it is not necessary to understand lucid dreaming or be a lucid dream practitioner. The methods are simple and immediate. We are committed to building a platform that is private and customizable. It employs unique aspects of virtual embodiment to access our own healing potential in ways never before imagined. Through our many rounds of early user testing, users have been astonished by what we are seeing is possible with this new technology.

Get Early Access to Presence

If you’re interested in finally letting go of what’s been holding you back, be among the first to experience PresenceVR at an upcoming in-person workshop.

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