Name: Watch Arianna Huffington Jump Off a Building
Uploaded: 2017-05-02
Duration: 14 min 11 s
Description: Virtually, of course.

[ SOUND ] So I should, before I start the presentation here, I wanted to tell you about my last 24 hours. Partly, because I'm in so much pain right now. I was down at part of an accelerated training program with leadership, with a bunch of former Navy Seals. And there were three takeaways that I had from this thing. One, man, are they impressive. Two, I had no business being there. Actually I'm gonna give you four. Three, there's an expression they use that I think is fantastic, especially when you think about dealing with large complex issues. And they talk about this all the time. When they have a mission, sometimes they think it's too big for them to handle, they'll say how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. And then the last one was, and this one's relevant to what we're talking about today with virtual reality, is they really harp on the interconnection between mind and the body. If you think about these warriors, there's a lot of people that are faster than they are, a lot of people that are stronger than they are. But what makes them successful is the ability to use their mind to overcome their body and push them so as to achieve more than ever thought they could and that should do this experience with me where with all of us they put this back device water it was about 40 degrees and it was the most painful thing and tough things I have ever done in my life And you're in there and you're about ready to hyper ventilate and they keep telling you to calm yourself down, take control of that fight or flight moment. Calm yourself down, breathe, and it's the intersection of the mind and the body. If you think about what VR is it's exactly that and we're actually doing a little demonstration here in a few seconds. Okay, so now let's talk about virtual reality, we have this experience, and you're gonna see it today. Or we take you up 500 feet on a side of a building and we ask you to do one simple thing, take a step off. Not probably put about 2, 000 people through this experience someone has just sudden line 200 deep watching what's going on they can't believe they are gonna be impacted by. And when they get up there, They're as impacted as the first person. We've put CEOs through it, put lower level people through it, it doesn't really matter. Everyone kind of gets impacted the same. You get sweaty palms, some people will get an elevated heart rate, some people can't even do it, they'll rip the thing off. So I had my mama do this, she's an 87 year old woman from North Carolina. She had her cane, she was up in her offices in LA And she was sitting there and she's doing this thing and going up. And finally, the gate falls off. She's shaking at everything more than she normally shakes. Can't do it at all, rinse something off. And she says, Matthew, what is therapeutic about that? [ LAUGH ] There's nothing therapeutic about that. But we use that to show how we can hijack the brain So think about the power of this. If we can hijack the mind. If we can override that rational logical self, and tap into the non- conscious and the emotional. Then we can start to do some pretty powerful things. That non- conscious emotional is where actually decision- making happens. Look at all the world of behavioral science. Behavorial economics. And so we can use that for mental health, to address depression, anxiety, PTSD, phobias, we can use this to actually help reduce the use of sedation and opioids in a hospital setting when going through procedures. We actually had a woman that went into one of our procedures, were going through childbirth, and wanted to do it naturally. And she wanted to avoid that epidural. So we put her into a VR experience, and she was in there for two hours. And literally, she was so immersed, that the doctor had to ask her to take it off if she wanted to be present for the birth of her daughter. The, we can use this also to basically break down that asynchronous nature of the action you take today And the reward or risk that you see tomorrow. And you can see the consequences of your actions today or what's gonna happen in the future. And that means we can actually use this to drive positive behavior change. We can use this to help with compliance. We can use this to actually help address some of the most challenging. Chronic disease states like diabetes, obesity. We're actually doing an intervention right now, a partnership with the Hersch Foundation and Cedar Sinai, the African American population where we're trying to help address hypertension. And we're actually taking them inside the body so they can see what's gonna be happening to their organs, to their liver, their kidney, their heart by their salt intake. And, then we can actually teach them coping skills. So, that they can learn this mindfulness and meditation. And, so they can overcome that stress and anxiety that reverts them back to their old behaviors. Now, with mental health we can actually use this to help address two of the most challenging issues that we face. One is the shame. Based from the stigma of recognizing that you have a mental health issue, so you don't wanna get help in the first place. And then the second is if you do wanna get help, that lack of accessibility either to train therapists, or to new techniques. And virtual reality can be used, as an example with the veterans who are going through PTSD, Skip Rizzo down at USC has done some amazing work with them. And one of the key insights that he got is he is using a virtual therapist is that they are more willing to be open to talking to a virtual therapist than they are in real therapist. Because they don't feel judged, there is no shame. And then as it relates to, keep thinking about that accessibility we can use VR to actually Deliver to clinics in rural areas or even into someone's home. Clinically prepared virtualist, if you will, virtual therapist. And then we can provide different techniques like using biometric feedback data to actually drive the experience into VR. And we can use that, going back to when we talked about the Navy SEALs, to connect the mind and the body. And we're actually getting ready to launch an amazing new program. With a major payer as a part of a state pilot program where we're gonna bringing in effectively a bio feedback delivery mechanism into clinics across the state. And then the final piece is, and this is one thing that a lot of people overlook when they think about bringing any new technology into healthcare especially going into healthcare providers. Is one of the most important things you have to think about that always gets overlooked is actually the importance of work flow design. These practitioners are overworked already and the last thing they need to do is something else that's complicated. And so no matter how great the clinical efficacy is, if it's complicated, it's difficult to use, and it's not built for the way they do their work, It's never going to get used, it's going to sit in a corner and it's going to collect dust. So, but none of this matters if we can't first hijack the brain. So we're going to do a demo on stage here and we are kind enough to have Ariana Huffington come on and be a gennie pig for us. We're going to throw her off a building [ MUSIC ] All right, here we go. So you're gonna sit right here. And we are going to put on the headset here. Now there's a couple rules for this. And before I put this on I want you to know the rules. Rule number one, do not jump. All right? You may have that desire, that inclination, but you're gonna get hurt. Rule number two. Do not jump. All right. Now the third one is gonna be. When the person tells you to take the step. You're gonna wait for him. He's gonna tell you to take a step. You're gonna look straight down, no tiptoeing, no cheating like that. You're gonna take one confident step off the ledge and that's it. Okay. Very simple, take a half step back. Right there, perfect. All right, we're gonna put this on. You wanna helps us out? So we're just gonna put this on like ski goggles basically. Let's move the hair away. And pull that on, make sure it's adjusted properly. Does it feel comfortable on the face? Mm- hm, yes. All right, it's not too tight, not too loose? No. All right. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Look around a little bit. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Sorry, I may have to, all right, close your eyes for one second. See, whenever we're doing a live demo, it always comes up like this, right? [ BLANK_AUDIO ] All right, sorry, once second. Take it off for one second. I'm gonna take this off. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] If we didn't have a problem with the live demo, it's not real. [ LAUGH ] So we got to- Can I jump now? [ LAUGH ] It's much safer jumping now than it is later on. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] All right, sorry guys. Of course it happens to freeze up. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] That's why. There we go, all right. So put this on, move that hair out of the way, put that on like goggles. All right, does that feel comfortable? Perfect. All right, now then, look straight ahead like that. I'm gonna readjust this. Enjoy the ride up. Thank you. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Whoa, hey, you're not supposed on that platform. look around, look to the left, look to the right, see where your << alright << look down to your feet << want to see the best view in the city? I'll send you up. Don't tell anybody about this though. I could get in a lot of trouble. I'll talk to you through this radio. And Thought that if you look up from [ INAUDIBLE ] top. So look up I'll send you up. Look all the way up, look where you're gonna go. Go ahead. You to look up the center. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Look down, look up. Now, look around. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] All right. Take a look to your left and your right. Don't worry if you feel some swaying. That cable probably won't break. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] See the VR building over there? It feels massive when we're moving up like this. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Look up above. See the billboard I'm painting right at the top. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ] All right, here we are. Five hundred feet up on the side of a building. I hope you're not afraid of heights. Why don't you take a look down at the ground now. That always freaks people out. Take a look down. Lean over, take a look further down. You know you're in a safe space, right? I'm right here to get you. Take one more look down [ CROSSTALK ] look over the rail and see where you came from. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] I love looking down at the people up there. Why don't you try to look at the sidewalk below. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Look to the left, look to the right. [ NOISE ] Now look down towards your feet. [ NOISE ] Look all the way down to the platform you're standing on. [ UNKNOWN ] [ NOISE ] [ CROSSTALK ] Since it's virtual let's have some fun and step up the platform. But don't jump and don't tiptoe either that's cheating. Just take one large, confident step 500 feet into the virtual air. Look straight down, take that step, go for it. Come on. Look down while you're going down. [ NOISE ] Whoa. It's pretty intense? Hopefully that's the last time you think you can step off the edge of a building. So we'll take this off. [ NOISE ] So. [ APPLAUSE ] So I've literally put about 2, 000 people through this. And it breaks down this way. About 10 % of the population is not in fact available to take a step off. But 3 % to 5 % of the population doesn't see stereoscopic. So they don't see depth Left and right. Then it breaks down a third, a third, a third. A third of the population literally cannot take it off. We were at the Surgeon General of the White House back in the Obama administration. Big strapping guy gets up there and it's like at the top, rips it off and can't do it. The next third is the crouching tiger, hidden dragon third. They get up there and they do this. For about 10 minutes, 15 minutes and they could do that all day long and they'll never take a step off unless we introduce an outside stimulus. Then the final third will have an elevated heart rate, they will feel their palms will get sweaty and all of that. And so I feel like you are either in that 10 % category, or you are in that one- third that can actually do it but you have an elevated heart rate. So where did you fall in I think that the reason I was able to take a stab is because I've been meditating for many years. [ LAUGH ] So I think while I was up there, which is really scary and very, very real. It felt incredibly real and there's not just. What you see it's the sound and everything. But part of my whole training with meditation is to just basically not let outside circumstances affect how I feel. See you'd be a great Navy Seal. [ LAUGH ]