Last Updated on February 28, 2024 by pg@petergamma.org
Peter Gamma from www.petergamma.org started meditating with a Garmin watch several years ago. Garmin watches where reviewed by DC Rainmaker and Rob ter Horst:
The Garmin watch was developed over much longer time than the Muse headband:
According to the view of Peter Gamma from www.petergamma.org, it does not matter so much which device to choose for meditators. But the Garmin watch is handy to wear, tracks your heart rate 24 * 7, and can measure our resting heart rate as a moving average over the last seven days. Normal physiological values are between 60 and 100 for a normal persons, and can go down to 40 beats per minutes for athletes at the olympic level.
An alternative is for instance the Muse Headband with the Mind Monitor. We can also meditate to get high alpha on the Mind monitor, which correlates with a relaxed state of mind. But this is only a measurement over a short period of time, whereas the Garmin watch tracks your hearte rate 24 * 7. The resting heart rate is an important physological parameters which shows where we are on a scale comparted to other people. This is not so easy to compare with the Muse headband and the Mind Monitor.
Peter Gamma from www.petergamma.org tested Garmin watches over several years on a regular basis. He can check his resting heart rate in Garmin Connect, but he cannot to science with it.
He tested the Muse headband with the Mind Monitor only once or twice. But the Garmin Watch with Garmin Connect for showing the resting heart rate, or the ANT+ heart rate grapher Android app as a tool to get to a relaxed state of mind are much simpler and handier tools than the Muse headband.
Since both the Garmin watch as well as the Muse headband are only of very limited use to do scientific studies with it, it does not matter if we choose the Garmin watch or the Muse headband for our meditation practice. This is the own personal experience of Peter Gamma from www.petergamma.org over the last view years.