Healthline spoke with singer-songwriter Jewel about co-founding Innerverse, a new virtual reality platform in the Metaverse that serves people in need of mental health support.
Growing up in waterless Alaska, Jewel has come a long way.
Today, she is known as an iconic singer-songwriter, actress and best-selling author, pioneering the fields of mental health and virtual reality by co-founding a new Cognitive Behavioral Immersion platform called Innerworld.
We are so excited to share with Superstar, her personal wellness journey and Innerworld helping millions of people around the world with or without access to mental health care and Meta Quest headsets. I got the chance to chat with you about what you have in mind.
jewelry: It helps with mental health for many reasons, but anonymity is the most important. You have an avatar, and it is a living person, so you only have an avatar. Anonymity makes people feel much safer psychologically.
My favorite meditation is actually the one I directed. it’s called. . Tree of Life Meditation. It’s a guided meditation that I invite people to do, an incredible unwinding process where you can truly feel supported. [how] You don’t have to be a mom, dad, parent, child or employee here. Just take a moment to get rid of all those roles and relax your nervous system.
I think one of the best non-negotiables for me is to meditate every day. I used to reinvigorate my meditation every other day or when needed or if I was having a panic attack. Being consistent has made a huge difference in my life.
Every thought, feeling, or action learns to flow in and out of one of the nervous system’s responses. So every thought, feeling, or action leads to a response in your sympathetic or parasympathetic nervous system. Notice the cues and keep a journal of what you were thinking, feeling, and doing. Do not try to change it, write it down.
Then, every time you relax, expand, open up, or settle down, keep a journal of “What was I thinking, feeling, and doing?” After a month, what we have is the actual blueprint for a particular nervous system. Also, he cannot be in two states at the same time. And you can get out of a dysregulated nervous system state by participating in something on the list of what calms you down and what brings you back to the parasympathetic nervous system. It’s a simple skill. we teach it to our children. Anyone can do it. That one thing changed my life.
Yeah, I think it’s really important.The cause of my system’s dysregulation is very unique [and] . . the causes of dysregulation are truly unique.So let people know they can participate and get even more answers on how to personalize it [is key]We can teach you the general tools of keeping a journal of what expands and what contracts, but those lists will be very personal to you, so you need to be involved. You are going to do more for your mental health than someone guesses it for you. produces
We all use willpower, so I think what you’re saying is important when the time is right, right? [about] Control. try to control the results. Frankly, we are willpower experts. Frankly, we’re just used to exercising it in ways that try to make security out of our control.
So when we’re constantly trying to control the environment, what people say, everything around us, it’s over-vigilance. It’s a coping mechanism to keep and I understand it. I spent my life doing that. But unfortunately there are no big returns.
When you realize you can’t choose how your life changes instead of using your willpower to try to control the uncontrollable [but] I can choose how it changes me. . . I started using my will power in a completely different way.
One thing that helped me give myself a little more softness is that when I was a kid, no one was nice to me. How can I magically become kinder to myself? That’s not true. That’s not how we work neurologically. As you know, our brain is a pattern matcher and… our mirror neurons help a lot.If you can avoid other caring people, speak yourself well, give yourself grace, see other people watching [that]Because our mirror neurons really help us out.
I don’t really listen to music. That’s interesting to me. I never grew up either. Maybe it’s because I grew up in an environment without electricity. There was no radio or television. But if I’m very emotional, I write. I think that’s why I became a writer. That’s what I turned to. I think I was writing my own soundtrack to calm me down. So songs like ‘Angels Standing By’ are songs I wrote for myself when I was in anxiety.
For me, writing is the seasoning of life. I’ve learned that if I’m sad, my feelings change when I get close to that feeling. That’s why separation and suppression don’t work. If there is an aspect of our personality, or just anxiety, and we try to separate ourselves from it, nothing will change in isolation. Also, something must be related to something else. And what I learned was that writing when you’re anxious can bring you closer to it, spark your curiosity, and start to change.
Happiness was the same. Happiness would be happier if you wrote poetry or really existed. So writing for me was the most profound exercise in mindfulness, being in the present, and being aware of what I was processing.
The best revenge is to live a full life. I’m not bitter to the point where I can’t process and enjoy love and life. It gives you a heavy task, but it’s your job, and a place to exert tremendous power in extremely helpless situations.
There is a beautiful Navajo proverb that an obstacle is a road. And when. I learned when he was nine years old that the buffalo was the only animal that made it to the center of the storm.Such [that became] . . one of my antidote thoughts is my phrase: Become a buffalo. The fastest way is through. The sooner you start seeing it and getting interested in it, the sooner you can help it change and point you in the right direction.
something to help me . . the truth is that you always win. Truth is truth. Pretending that the truth isn’t true doesn’t make it untrue. It delays you from facing the truth. Now sometimes I find healthy ways to slow things down and eat smaller meals, [that’s] very healthy. Avoiding it completely doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, you’ll have to deal with it later.Also, you probably have a lot of coping mechanisms to deal with [that] You will have to relax just to get to it. So the truth is what happened. The truth is that your body is trying to hold onto that energy until you help it move.
It’s free. . . It is very easy to use. It’s as easy to use as Zoom. . Anyone who can log into Zoom can log into Innerworld. VR goggles are not required. It’s very easy. . . and it’s also really safe. We have incredible oversight for trolling and bullying of all kinds. AI protocols to help monitor them and… live guides, so we are a safe and positive environment.
