Parkland survivor on why he believes in brain-scanning meditation wearables

At CES, tech execs and thirsty industry analysts abound. This year, there was also a college student and mass shooting survivor named Kai Koerber preaching about the benefits of meditation.

Koerber is a U.C. Berkeley student and activist who is a survivor of the February 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida. Parkland survivors took action in the wake of the shooting by advocating for gun control legislation, and now, Koerber is calling for mental health resources in schools. 

He founded an organization called the Societal Reform Corp. that raises money and champions mental health, mediation, and mindfulness education.

Koerber attended CES in Las Vegas to help make a high-tech announcement: Societal Reform Corp. has partnered with much-hyped “brain machine interface” (BMI) company BrainCo. to advocate for a Berkeley program that would encourage students to meditate, with a little help from some brainwave monitoring headbands.

BrainCo. makes a wearable device, the Focus1 headset, that monitors brainwaves and analyzes them in an accompanying app. The app gives users games and exercises for meditation and focus. Then, users are ideally able to better understand the power of the practice. 

“They can literally change their brain activity,” Max Newlon, BrainCo.’s USA president said during the presentation. “Seeing this really gives them the empowerment that they’re in control.”

The science behind the efficacy of technology like BrainCo.’s is promising, but not entirely well established. However, the company has raised millions, has undertaken its own studies to examine how its activities can help people with attention challenges focus, and is working to optimize mental states for fitness.

BrainCo. and Koerber say that it is early days for their partnership. A BrainCo. representative clarified that, while nothing is final yet, Koerber would like to bring a meditation center to Berkeley’s campus equipped with BrainCo. devices. Students would be able to take the devices back to their dorms and homes to continue their practices on their own.

Koerber thinks seeing visual representations of your brain activity while meditating could encourage critics who see meditation as wishy-washy to commit to a mental health practice.

He also considers promoting mental health his own form of anti-gun violence advocacy.

“Any person who walks into a room and kills 20 people is not well,” Koerber told Mashable. “From a wellness perspective, there’s something wrong there.”

Meditation and mindfulness has become a much-talked about tool in trauma care. However, it is not the holy grail. In some cases, a mindfulness practice might be ineffective or re-traumatizing for people with PTSD. It could also be overly simplistic to posit mindfulness as a way to stop a potential future shooter.

But Koerber views what he calls “social emotional learning” as one part of the solution.

“If we provide students with the ability to manage stress, and positively construct a new reality for themselves, I think we’d start to see a lot more difference in the world we’re living in today.”