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This session is part of the Tom Tom Foundation's Tomorrow Talks, a year-long series expanding upon themes of April's festival and exploring ways to create impact in Charlottesville. Each session emphasizes participation, connection, and creating new collaborations.
Virtual Reality Meditation: The Way of the Future?
Led by innovators in contemplative sciences scholarship, computer science, and contemplative facilitation, Virtual Reality Meditation explores how ancient meditative practices are being innovated to simulate experiences within the virtual landscape, particularly the aNUma “numadelic” aesthetic experience. Within this experience, using virtual reality apparatus, participants experience one another as light beings: diffuse clouds with lights at the hands and heart center. The discussion will center around newly designed meditations within the realms of Virtual Reality. Demos of Virtual Reality will accompany the discussion. Join us to discuss these new worlds of meditation.
Tomorrow Talks include a connection exercise or meditation; presentation; and breakout activities. With the goal of imparting practical and relevant knowledge to one's lived experience, they also combine academic or theoretical insights, alongside pragmatic tools, and experiential and somatic learnings.
Facilitators
Michael R. Sheehy, PhD is a meditation researcher and scholar of Tibetan Buddhism. He is a Research Associate Professor and Director of Research at the Contemplative Sciences Center at the University of Virginia where he is principal at the CIRCL, Contemplative Innovation + Research Collaborative Lab and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Contemplative Studies.
Michael studies how meditation works – how the generative, dynamic, and ever-evolving processes of contemplation advance our understanding of being human and enhancing life. Learn more about Michael.
David Glowacki, PhD, MA is a cross-disciplinary researcher, artist, and author whose interests span computer science, nanoscience, aesthetics, cultural theory, and neuroscience. He has worked extensively in scientific simulation, and more recently in the use of Virtual Reality to interactively visualize real-time simulations. He is the Founder and Director of the ‘Intangible Realities Laboratory’ a research group based in Northern Spain. He is also a co-founder of ‘aNUma’, which has developed the technology to support numadelic experiences which dissolve our conventional representation of self into light. Learn more about David.
Lama Karma (Justin Wall) is a teacher in the Karma Kagyu and Shangpa Kagyu lineages of Tibetan Buddhism. He is the spiritual director of the Milarepa Retreat Center in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. He also serves as lead designer and facilitator for aNUma, a company specializing in offering virtual reality experiences for persons and their families facing a terminal diagnosis. Learn more about Lama Karma.
This event is co-sponsored by the Contemplative Sciences Center (CSC), CSC's CIRCL: Contemplative Innovation + Research Co-Lab, aNUma, and the Intangible Realities Laboratory.
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