Meditating with the Muse 2 and the Muse S

If you’re anything like me, you may have been meditating with one of those audio only meditation apps and stopped to ask yourself

“Am I doing this right?”

As great as those audio only apps are, they’re missing something really important that other fitness and wellness tech has: they don’t give any feedback

Enter the Muse, the Brain-Sensing Headband. The Muse is a headband that reads various vitals, including brain activity, heart rate, and movement, to tell you how your meditation is going in real time.

The Muse comes in 2 form factors, there’s the Muse 2 and the Muse S (which is what I used and will be basing this review on).

The Muse 2 is strictly for meditating, while the Muse S has some extra features for Sleep. If you remember the Zeo, it has a similar form factor.

MEditating with Real-Time Feedback

So how does it work? You put the Muse on your head, placing the sensors across your forehead and behind your ears, put on headphones, and start a meditation in the app.

There are meditations for the mind, heart, breath, and body, and they all work similarly. Instead of getting a narrated meditation, Muse plays back a computer-generated soundscape. These soundscapes change according to your vitals, so by listening to the audio cues, you can get a sense of what’s going on with your meditation.

So for example, in the mind meditation, the intent is to calm your mind and focus on your breath. The soundscape will become loud and restless if you become distracted, and will become calm if you become calm. If you become completely focused, a bird will chirp in the background.

These audio cues are great because they’re guiding you in real time without becoming a distraction themselves. If you’re in a meditation and your vitals trend in the wrong way, you get a subtle reminder to pay attention to what you’re doing. They also teach what those states of focus and calm should feel like.

Learn to Meditate Better

The benefit of feedback is that allows you to correct-course and get where you want to go faster. With audio-only apps like Headspace, it took me a couple of hours meditations to feel that “Aha!” moment of focus for the first time. Recalling that feeling never felt easy.

With Muse's guidance, I am able to get there in each meditation and I’ve developed a confidence in my ability. Because I know what the physiology feels like in these meditations, I feel I’m able to get myself to those states more consistently in my day to day life when I’m not meditating, which is one of the benefits of having a meditation practice.

Mind, Heart, Body, Breath

Aside from the Mind meditation, there’s a Heart, Body, and Breath meditation.

In the Heart meditation, the plays a beat along with your heart rate while giving cues that your heart rate is increasing or slowing down.

In the Body meditation, you’re instructed to sit still, and the Muse uses motion sensors to to tell you when you’re becoming restless

In the Breath meditation, the Muse uses the heart rate sensor and motion sensor together to track your breath, then guides you through a 4-4 breathing exercise (4 seconds in, 4 seconds out). As you breathe, the audio cues will tell you if you’re staying in sync.

One cool thing is that these 4 meditations supplement each other. I noticed that learning to listen in on my heart was useful when doing a mind meditation, and learning to focus on my mind was helpful in staying still. They’re mutually reinforcing skills.

The Muse also has guided meditations from different teachers, and you can pay for a subscription for a massive library of these, but those don't include the real time feedback. When you’re done, you can see your focus levels in the app. You can also turn off all audio guidance and just have the muse track your brain on a timer, if you want to meditate freestyle or with your own music or a different app.

All of those features can be found in both the Muse 2 and Muse S.

Sleeping with the Muse S

The Muse S comes with extra features for sleep. The Muse S is a nice soft cloth headband thats mostly comfortable to wear when you go to sleep.

There are 2 major Sleep features. First, the Muse S is a full blown sleep tracker. It uses the motion, heart, and EEG sensors to track how you’re sleeping. Second, the Muse S uses your vitals to create soundscapes designed to help you fall asleep. There are a few guided soundscapes, which muse calls “Journeys” that are designed to help you still your mind enough to sleep

I personally have a lot of trouble staying asleep. I often wake up at 3am unable to fall asleep again, and the Journeys are helpful sometimes. There have been nights where I’ve woken up and I put the Muse S headband on and I’m able to fall asleep again. It’s not 100% effective for me, but the nights where it’s worked have been a huge win.

One drawback with the Journeys is that you need to play audio from your phone or Bluetooth headphones. There’s no way to play the audio through Airplay speakers. I don’t want to be falling asleep with headphones on or with my phone by my head, so I use the Journeys less than I would if I had the ability to AirPlay to my speakers. As a result, I use the Journeys only as a emergency solution when my sleep is bad.

The sleep tracking on the Muse S is really detailed. Because it has EEG sensors, it’s capturing information other trackers can’t capture as accurately, like deep sleep. It will tell you how much you spent in each sleep phase, how much you moved at night, and your heart rate. It will also export your data to Apple health and Google Fit, so you’re not siloed into their data garden.

Aside from learning how you slept, you’re not going to get a whole lot in the way of analytics or recommendations. The sleep side feels a little sparse in that regard. If you’re looking for a dedicated sleep tracker, you’re probably better off with the Oura. I wouldn’t pay the $300 just for sleep tracking with the Muse S, but if you’re looking at the Muse 2 and want some cool sleep features on top of that, it’s worth considering the Muse S.

Recommendation: Muse 2 vs Muse S

Should you get the Muse 2 or the Muse S? These aren’t cheap devices.

As of this writing, the Muse 2 is $200 to $250. The Muse S is $250 to $300

If you’re looking for a way to improve your meditations above the audio-only apps, or if you’ve struggled to stay consistent with the audio-only apps, the Muse is a big upgrade. This is actually innovative tech that can have real impact on you. I can’t speak to what its like coming into this if you’re a meditation pro, because I’m not, but at least as an amateur, I feel the Muse has helped me a lot by giving the feedback and making meditations feel more effective.

Picking between the Muse S and the Muse 2, if the sleep features are appealing to you because you have problems staying asleep or falling asleep, you could get some benefit from the Muse S. Or if you want meditation tracking and sleep tracking, and you don;'t have a sleep tracker already, the Muse S might be worth it. But if you only care about the meditation side, you’re the Muse 2 is probably enough: the meditation features are where this product shines.