How It Works
VR Accelerates Positive Change
Leveraging the Unparalleled Therapeutic Powers of VR
Virtual Reality is fundamentally changing people’s ability to take agency over their own mental health. It holds the psychological and neurological potential to dramatically transform lives. And, it can reduce the stigma associated with “seeking help.” Scroll to learn how or click below to explore what we’re working on.
VR Strengthens the Brain’s Ability to Focus, Learn and Retain Experiences.
When it comes to overcoming mental health challenges, knowledge is power. As a medium, Virtual Reality is uniquely equipped to support and heal your brain and body as one connected system.
Process of Transformation
Immerse
- You step into a new world.
- Your attention is captured.
- Your brain’s four learning centers are activated.
Experience
- You have an opportunity to work on that which makes you feel stressed, anxious or fearful.
- Valuable, new experiences and memories are encoded more efficiently.
Transform
- Your motivation is boosted.
- Your routine is more easily adapted.
- You experience change.
We combine science and play to help everyone experience better mental health.
Each of our digital therapeutics and wellness programs is built on our SAFE protocol. Combined with gamified experience, this evidence-based platform empowers people with lifelong coping skills and resources that extinguish stress, anxiety, and fear.
S
Stress
The reduction of stress starts with learning from a less activated state. We help you become present, get calm and breathe easily as your parasympathetic nervous system is activated and your cortisol lowered.
A
Anxiety
Managing anxiety begins with building coping skills through mindfulness and emotional regulation techniques. Our approach helps you reframe and conquer non-present threats, racing thoughts, and rumination.
F
Fear
Training your mind to overcome fear begins with seeing things differently. VR is a uniquely effective medium for exposure and cognitive behavioral therapies.
E
Extinction
Your brain rewires itself through neuroplasticity, effectively mitigating
stress, taming anxiety, and extinguishing fear.
Frequently Asked
What is Virtual Reality?
Virtual Reality is a computer-generated multi-sensory simulation that allows people to interact and be transported to new places within a three-dimensional environment. While VR is now accelerating into public consciousness, the technology can actually be dated back to 1957 when a man named Morton Heilig invented a multimedia device called the Sensorama. Since then, neuroscientists have taken a tremendous interest in exploring the medium’s utility for treating mental health challenges, because of how the immersive technology acts on the brain while it creating a safe space.
Who can benefit from mental health care in VR?
Everyone can benefit, as the medium is incredibly accessible. While VR experiences can be expensive to develop, they are very cost-effective to distribute. We often ask ourselves: “What good is innovation in healthcare if most people can’t access it?” Our mission is to reimagine how people access and experience care by leveraging the unique neurological powers of VR and distributing it in engaging ways — until as many people as possible have an easy, engaging, and effective way into better mental health.
Why use VR to tackle stress and anxiety?
Virtual reality creates a multi-sensory simulation that our brain experiences as “real. The “bottom-up” neural pathways it activates create experiences (versus “top-down” thought processes, which are how the pre-frontal cortex responds) that can powerfully affect the brain’s threat processing centers, to either calm or arouse emotional and physiological responses, depending on the objective. Intentionally activating our brain’s threat centers by experiencing stressful or challenging stimuli is a mechanism of action involved in exposure therapy. The objective is to work through those threats and build resilience by reducing the emotional salience and intensity of the threat, then gain control over it as the brain rewires itself through neuroplasticity. The multi-sensory simulation of reality that VR can create is a powerful, scalable, and infinitely flexible way to scale exposure and extinction therapy to address a range of anxiety-related disorders.
Can VR be a replacement for other therapies or treatments?
Virtual therapeutics and wellness programs can be extremely effective in helping extinguish stress, anxiety, and fear. This is why we have built all our programs on the SAFE protocol. Wherever you are in your journey, there is a growing body of evidence to support the idea that Virtual Reality is the most effective and transformative therapeutic medium for mental health — from its ability to strengthen brainwaves to its potential for healing trauma and opioid addiction.
Let’s Start a Conversation.
At the cutting edge of a new type of mental health journey, there are always many questions. We’re here to help you find the answers.