Is it worth for investement bankers to invest money in devices for meditators?

Last Updated on December 19, 2023 by pg@petergamma.org

We have evidence that someone does stock market speculations with the products we review. Who is behind this?Are these investment fonds controlled by business scientists and marketing software? But will they be sucessful?

The Meditation Institute Switzerland (MRIS) was triggered by the request of the Dalai Lama the 14.th to study the effect of meditation with scientific methods. This was basically the request of the Dalai Lama the 14.th to Richard Davidsons group. But it triggered our projects as well.

A first paper of this project was published in 2004 by the group of Richard Davidson:

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0407401101

It was a paper with about 16 Tibetan Buddhist monks who where investigated in the lab. According to David Goleman these where «olymic level mediators». But how much money can be made of these olympic champions? Ajahn Amaro, Buddhist monk as well, says he has no money since 1978:

Ajahn Amaro: Theravāda Buddhist monk, teacher & abbot of the Amaravati Buddhist Monastery in South East England

and this because these are the rules of the Buddha, which say that monks are not allowed to have money. To make money out of Buddhist monks? Is this not very difficult?

A second result is Richard Davidsons book «Altered Traits»:

The book says that 20 min of daily practice lead to objectively measurable changes in the
mind, brain, and body. But to whom can this be sold? Will Rob ter Horst pick this product up and sell it with his Apple watches on YouTube?

The Meditation Research Institute at Swami Rama Sadhaka Grama in India:

https://www.ahymsin.org/the-meditation-research-institute/

published some papers and then stopped doing reserach.

The Meditation Research Institute Switzerland (MRIS)

which has no grant for research reviews since several years low-cost high-quality physiological sensor devices but does currently not do any research with those devices.

The MRIS wrote two white papers:

090. Review of Accuracy Studies of Consumer Grade Heart Rate Monitors: Methods, Testing Protocols, Reference Devices

091. Low-cost high-quality ECG & EEG devices which offer validation papers

We are currently evaluating to use a Polar H7 chest strap introduced by Marco Altini, HRV4Training developer which is validated for heart rate variablity:

Heart rate variablity, one of the rare parameters which can be measured with consumer grade heart rate monitors such as the Polar H7 chest strap & is validated in a scientific paper (with co-author Marco Altini, PhD.)

For our projects. To use the Polar H7 for heart rate variablity is most probably the easiest device to use for meditation researchers which is validated.

But we stongly doubt about that investement bankers will manage to make money out of the Meditation Research Institute Switzerland (MRIS) and we would like to warn all investors from investing money in devices we reviewed.