Virtual reality glasses with which if you die in the game - you die in reality (@fullsquadgamingclips)
Four years ago, Ronit Ophir took her children to see a movie at the Cinema City complex.
What for most of us was perceived then, in the days before the corona virus, as a routine and not particularly exciting pastime, was for her a life-changing event, no less.
"I remember there was a booth there that allowed you to experiment with a game in virtual reality," she says, "the children were very excited and I also put on my glasses and then suddenly I found myself on a wooden beam between two buildings in New York and I had to walk between them."
"Suddenly fear overwhelmed me, I really felt paralyzed. I said to myself, 'Ronit, you are now standing on the floor at Cinema City. Ruci, what do you care? What are you afraid of?'
And I just wasn't able to. That's when I realized how much power this medium has to produce emotions disconnected from reality and disconnected from what a person knows and understands. Through this technology it is possible to overcome what the eye sees and even what logic tells us."
Virtual reality (VR) is certainly an intriguing technology and some believe it will be the next big thing in the digital world.
Huge companies like Meta and Apple bet big on it, but on the other hand there are also those who doubt it and claim that it is cumbersome, clumsy and cannot really replace the computer and smartphone.
In addition, the Meta company is already showing the first signs of the trend fading, with the drop in prices of the VR glasses and cool reactions to the virtual world it created.
"To work on the mind and go to an imaginary world where anything can happen"
But the fact that virtual reality does not take over every good part of the virtual space, still does not mean that it cannot also be used for specific purposes that are much more than entertainment and leisure, such as for example in the field of mental health.
You may be surprised to find out that virtual reality therapy (Virtual reality therapy or VRT) is nothing new.
Studies on this approach have been conducted since the 1980s, but were mainly concerned with practices such as guided imagery and hypnosis.
As part of such treatment, an imaginary and interactive world is created where it is possible to carry out controlled exposure to negative stimuli to help develop emotional resilience, or rather to produce positive stimuli to enhance positive and strengthening emotions.
Power to produce emotions detached from reality.
Ronit Ophir who founded a virtual reality startup (Photo: BloomVR)
Today, the development of technology offers new opportunities for researching this approach, among other things using VR glasses and other similar developments.
There are already laboratories in Israel that study virtual reality therapy, with two of the most prominent of them being at the University of Haifa and the Center for Rehabilitation Treatment at Sheba Hospital.
Among other things, in these laboratories we examined, using technology from the company AppliedVR, how such a treatment could affect oncology patients.
The findings showed that the treatment was effective in reducing pain, anxiety and other negative emotions associated with dealing with cancer.
Lucille Packard Children's Hospital, which belongs to the Stanford University Health System, also has a program called CHARIOT, which has led various studies on how VR technology affects hospitalized children.
These studies show, among other things, that treatment methods in virtual reality helped children reduce the anxiety associated with the treatments and even use less painkillers and sedatives.
Similarly, a study published in the journal PLOS ONE also determined that virtual reality therapy reduced the use of painkillers in adults in the hospital wards.
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Ofir, who herself works as a therapist, mentor and coach for personal development using the NLP method, explains what exactly it is about this method that affected her in such a powerful way.
"When you put the glasses on, you're all there, cut off from the world. It's an imaginary experience experienced in a very realistic way, with all the body and senses. It's a kind of 'working on the brain', going out into an imaginary world where anything can happen. There are things we can talk about a lot in therapy , but suddenly when we experience them physically, it makes it possible to release barriers and limitations and really go through a significant process."
A cool trend or the "technology of the future"?
Depends on who you ask
The more she delved into it, the more Ofir realized how deep the impact of this technology can be on the treatment of people.
"Suddenly I read about heart patients undergoing rehabilitation, who were shown VR landscapes while they were walking on a track and their motivation to walk and keep fit increased. It's these simple things that suddenly add a little more emotion and experience to life, in a way that can improve it. And this is just the beginning of the potential of this technology ".
This realization made her bet the whole pot and found a startup called BloomVR, which developed a series of journeys ("raids") in virtual reality, which allow emotional therapists to upgrade their treatment.
"These are journeys that take people through magical worlds. They can ride a unicorn, touch a rainbow, float above the New York sky, or sail through space, while receiving therapeutic anchors, positive reinforcements and opportunities for healing and development. I personally also use this tool in treatments , as a complement to the talk in the clinic. The entire session lasts fifty minutes, with the journey in VR lasting ten minutes, but it is used to experience certain emotions and work on them later in the conversation."
"out of body experience".
A man with virtual reality glasses (Photo: Reuven Castro)
Madeleine Loubra, who was treated by Ofir with this method, says that "the feeling is of an out-of-body experience without leaving the body. It's as if the "plug" was pulled for a moment and I left this reality. I made peace with what was happening here and everything came back to me. Life came back to me. It started to flow Energies of joy and love for everything."
However, alongside the natural curiosity surrounding the technology and its potential, it is important to remember that this is still a field that is in its infancy and has not been studied in depth enough.
The developments that are already used to treat VR are considered limited and limited, and the research around them is still not extensive and significant.
In addition, the price tag of the VR accessories as of today is still too high for them to be accessible to everyone.
However, just as Zoom treatments have become popular during the Corona virus and have helped many people improve their mental state even if in the past they were unable to do so due to limitations of geographical location or an overly busy schedule, it is possible that in the coming years we will also see the strange VR glasses enter more And more to therapeutic clinics. Ophir, who spoke with us just before flying to the VR conference in the United States, said that she believes with all her heart that in the coming years, more hospitals and medical institutions will purchase tools and technologies from this field. "This way, hospitals will be able to offer patients relaxation before and after medical treatments, Before anesthesia, and as a way to overcome phobias, anxiety and stress.
Then, I hope, more emotional therapists and psychologists from all fields will adopt this innovation as an integral part of the therapeutic toolkit."
health
psychology
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Virtual Reality
psychology