Coffey & Code Podcast Interview with Sandeep Prakash, PhD.

Ashley Coffey46min

Ashley Coffey

00:00

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Coffee and code. I am so excited to have a very special guest with me today. Dr. Sandeep Prakash, who is the Chief Scientist officer at sound self. I've been a huge fan of sound cell for years. Sound self is a revolutionary and vocal biofeedback technology for advancing mental health. And as you know, I'm a huge mental health advocate, and huge technology advocate. So I'm so excited to welcome Dr. Sandeep Prakash to the show. Welcome.

Unknown Speaker

00:32

Hi, Ashley, good to be here.

Ashley Coffey

00:34

Thank you for taking time to share your expertise and share a little bit more about sound self to the audience. That before we dive in, can you share a little bit more about you? How did you find yourself in this chief scientist Officer role? Sure,

Speaker 1

00:51

I'm a psychologist by training. I became interested in psychology through music, you can see some instruments behind me here, I'm a musician. And I was in India studying music. Yoga, I had actually gone to India for mental health, I was feeling the need to deepen into a crisis of meaning of sorts that I was facing. And so I was traveling India, studying music, studying yoga, and studying from local practitioners of trance, as a spiritual practice that the bowels of Bengal and I, after that whole experience, I decided to switch careers after being an economist before that, and do my master's, a PhD in Psychology at California Institute of integral studies, which specializes in the study of psychedelics, and among other things. And as I was wrapping up my doctoral work, I met Robin Arnott, who started Andromeda entertainment a publishing company. And as part of Andromeda entertainment, he was incubating an invention of his called Sound self. And I was in Austin, where he lives and we somehow met, I can't remember now went to his house, and I tried it out. And I was blown away, I had never experienced technology like that, that could very rapidly change my state. My, the way I felt in my body, the my expansion of consciousness that happened during and afterwards. So I told him, I want to research this. And so I did a research study using that virtual reality, initial version of it. And we had some really good results in the study. And we got together after that study to launch a new company focusing on digital therapeutics. And for listeners who may not be familiar with the term, digital Therapeutics is a broad term that encompasses technologies and software and medical devices and wellness products that incorporate technology, or use technology to improve people's lives in some way in their, their health, their physical health and mental health. So, and we're taking, and so yeah, that's how we got together and started the company. And here we are today. Wow,

Ashley Coffey

03:27

that is an incredible journey that you've gone through. Let's just take a take a step back here of your background, as an economist, studying musician, creative thinker, there's so many intersectionalities here, that you're mentioning that I see the natural journey of like where you got there. And I appreciate you sharing that, because I think some people also have those moments of trying to find that meaning of them and some people go to meditation for that people go to find different hobbies. So I'm glad that you use the intent to find yourself in a place of where you are currently.

Speaker 1

04:05

Yeah, and, and it's part of our story of sound self and why I think it's really important. You know, when I was I had, I was really privileged to be able to take time to do that to go and study yoga. And I know many people aren't it's a it's a, it takes an investment of energy and dedication to learn yoga techniques that help regulate the body and help you explore consciousness. But what we can do with technology, especially, newer platforms, such as virtual reality XR, immersive technologies, is really speed up that process of learning of embodied techniques. So we can with sound self, we've, we've seen in our research that we can people can learn mindfulness much faster than a didactic sort of mindfulness training. One, because we're not doing it directly. We're doing it indirectly. It's not like you Do this is one, step one, step two, step three, we're giving a fun, really engaging experience where you're using your voice, so I'll just maybe explain what it is. So imagine you put on a headset. And first of all in virtual reality, and now we're using another type of immersive technology that uses light therapy uses LEDs on closed eyes. So your eyes are closed, this experience interesting. So yeah, so you put on this headset. I don't know, I thought I had it right here. But you lie down. Yeah. And a comfortable position. Perhaps on a vibro acoustic map. We have packages that also hook up to vibro acoustics. So you're lying on this fiber acoustic map. And a voice comes in and guide you into it, bring your awareness into your body into relaxing into noticing your breath, and then guide you into starting to tone.

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