Building my Practice with Muse

From the moment you purchased Muse, you’ve started a new journey in commitment to your physical well-being, emotional peace and mental health! Any good journey benefits from preparation.

In this article, you’ll find ways to build on your focused-attention practice with Muse.
 

Create your intention for practicing with Muse
Start small and grow
Create an ideal space to practice
Create a healthy structure for your practice
Download the Muse app and start exploring
Fit sessions into your calendar
Save your favourite Muse biofeedback experience or program
Prepare for slow days
Consider engaging a session partner

 

Create your intention for practicing with Muse

When you’re intentional about something, your focus is in the moment and creates a clear guide for what you want to do and why you want to do it. What type of commitment would you like to make to your practice? What do you want the journey to be about as you create more time and space in your life for sessions?

When creating your intention, call an experience forward, such as, "I want to create a sense of peace in my day to day," rather than asking not to experience an emotion or sensation, such as, "I don’t want stress."

Also consider your physical, mental, emotional experiences as well as your relationship to your quality of life, when creating an intention. There’s no limit, and allow your intention to change as you and your life and your goals change.

 

Start small and grow

Consider starting your first practice with a small amount of time. It’s always helpful to find a time that fits naturally into your daily, weekly, or monthly rhythms.

Some prompts to think about starting your practice to best serve you!

• Can I aim to do a session for 10 minutes per day for 7 days?

• Can I repurpose 10 minutes at the beginning or end of my workday?

• Can I commit to picking up my Muse when I feel ‘x’ emotion?
   

As you settle into your practice:

• Where can I extend my time in session?

• Are there areas of the Muse app I haven’t explored yet?
  
   

Create an ideal space to practice

Your environment, along with what you have readily available, can make a huge difference in your practice.

Having an easily accessible space or a yoga mat or cushion that’s always in the same spot in your home can have a surprisingly positive effect on the consistency of your practice. If you find your home environment to be very busy, is there a nearby park or space at work?

Most importantly, remember there’s no wrong place to do a session!

 

Create a healthy structure for your practice

It can be challenging to find the time or the motivation to do a session. Creating a short ritual for starting your Muse session can be beneficial in having a structure to rely on, especially when you just don’t feel like stepping onto the mat and putting on your Muse headband.

Here are some questions to prompt thinking of a mindful setup:

• Do you have anyone in your living space who needs to know when you’re doing a session?

• Could you bring warm or room temperature water to your practice area each time?

• Could the beginning or end of your practice slow down to incorporate gratitude?
  
   

Download the Muse app and start exploring

You can download our free Muse app on your iOS or Android device and start exploring right away. 

We have the Muse S (Gen 2) Starter Guide and Muse 2 Starter Guide in app for you to get a head start in understanding the hardware, our app and how to read your biofeedback results.
 

Activate your Premium Subscription

If you have a Muse Premium Subscription, you can start exploring our Guided Meditations section of the app and selecting topics that speak to you!

Already have a subscription and need to activate it? See our Activating My Premium Subscription article for step-by-step instructions.  

 

Fit sessions into your calendar

There is no right or wrong time to do a session. Everyone has a unique experience and intention for cultivating a regular practice.

Here you’ll find some suggestions on where and how to time block your Muse sessions:

• Make it easy! When do you naturally have the most amount of available energy? The benefits of a morning practice can be felt throughout the day. When we create space to sit with ourselves first, we often can feel kinder, more patient and less reactive with others throughout our day.

• Habit stacking: Find a habit you already have a time block for, and add a 10-20 minute session onto this activity. This helps create consistency and piggybacks on an already-established habit.

• Make small, bite size commitments: A lunch-break practice, or 10 min to start and end your day can be really valuable in setting your practice up for success and experiencing a more mindful lifestyle. One longer duration session per week is a great way to start a ‘check-in’ on how you are cultivating calm, stillness and focus.

• Try and stay consistent: Consistency looks a little different to everyone. While consistency is the most important element in benefiting from a Muse practice, what does your day, week, or month look like?
   

Set a Muse practice reminder!

In the Muse app, you can set practice reminders that:

• Remind you after a certain number of days since your last meditation.

• Remind you on a specific day and time, like Wednesday at 7 am.
  
   

Save your favourite Muse biofeedback experience or program

Biofeedback experiences and programs can now be saved or pinned in the Muse app, making it quick and easy to find your favourites. 

To save or pin a Muse biofeedback experience or program:

1. Find and open your biofeedback experience or program of choice.

2. Under the description, tap the Pin button to pin it to your Today screen.

3. Done! It will now be pinned to the top of the Today screen, ready the next time you open the Muse app!

When you pin Muse biofeedback experiences (Meditations or Sleep), the Today screen shows the last completed session type (for example - Mind: Beach) so you can quickly return to your favourites.

To remove or unpin a biofeedback experience or program from the Today screen:

1. Find your biofeedback experience or program of choice.

2. Tap the arrow or the Continue button to go to the experience or program screen.

3. Under the description, tap the Unpin button to remove it from your Today screen.

 

Prepare for slow days

Starting a new practice or building new habits can be challenging! It's perfectly natural to feel tired sometimes or unmotivated to do a session. We encourage anyone starting a new practice to think in advance about a fall-back plan.

Some prompts to think about those slow days in advance and how you might deal with them:

• Can I identify a strategy for low-energy days?

• Is there a guided meditation that feels good to listen to, no matter what my practice or day looks like?
   

If you need a quick suggestion for a guided meditation, Chodo Campbell’s Zen Body Scan in the Zen Collection or the Quick Breaks Collection are great go-to tools for days that need extra support.

 

Consider engaging a Session Partner

A Session Partner can be someone who either checks in with you weekly or even daily to see how your experience is going. This partner can be Musing alongside you or simply holding space for your journey into creating more calm and peace in your life.

Benefits of starting or re-committing to a practice with a buddy:

• ENCOURAGEMENT - It can be a huge achievement to show up and do a session every day for a week or a month. Having a trusted friend to celebrate your streaks and offer encouragement when you need it can help you stay committed to your practice.   

• ACCOUNTABILITY - The likelihood of you experiencing consistency and therefore enjoying the benefits of a regular practice increases with the someone who shows up for you. Having a friend to lean on while you are learning how to show up for yourself invites a balanced, compassionate type of accountability into your practice.

• OBJECTIVITY - Having a go-to friend to share the ups and downs of starting or recommitting to a regular practice allows us to find objectivity and diffuse difficult emotional experiences, as well as help us create choices around our practice from a more supported place.

• SOUNDING BOARD - Sometimes, when we take on a new focused-attention practice, our inner voice becomes the loudest voice in the room. Having someone to check in on how we may be judging or getting down on ourselves, helps to balance any inner-critic with a compassionate, supportive tone.