The Halo Effect

Take away the ancient religious and spiritual goals of yogaand what you have is a tool to enable biohacking. That is, a way of improving physical and mental health using exercise and lifestyle. As yoga changes and fewer people identify with the spiritual dimension — no judgement — technology that enables biohacking is gradually making inroads.

I first heard about Halo Neuroscience from Lia Ditton, the remarkable athlete and adventurer training to be the first woman to row solo across the North Pacific Ocean.  When I interviewed her for this magazine some time ago, she told me how intrigued she was by Halo Sport, the company’s first product. Here’s how Halo Neuroscience
describes its baby: ‘Designed to integrate seamlessly into a workout, Halo Sport stimulates the brain’s motor cortex during training to accelerate improvements in strength, skill and explosiveness.’

This process of stimulation is called Neuropriming and it builds a stronger, more effective connection between the brain and muscles. It also puts the brain into a condition of hyper-learning or ‘hyperplasticity’, enabling us to train more effectively.

Founded in 2013, Halo Sport has been sold to the general public since 2016. In that time, according to chief marketing officer, Mark Malastir, “We’ve sold more than 30,000 of the original product and Halo Sport 2 and done well over 450,000 Neuropriming sessions. We sell a lot of products to lifelong athletes who work out four to six times a week. They might be weight lifters, power lifters, crossfit athletes or runners as well as yogis. The US military is one of our biggest customers as well as navy special ops and pilots. Musicians are about 20% of our audience, people who want to play an instrument faster and more precisely.”

Unlike most wearable devices, Halo Sport doesn’t just measure brain activity. It delivers energy via a beautifully-designed set of headphones. Electrodes positioned in the device transmit a small electrical current to your motor cortex, the area of the brain which sends commands to your muscles, via rubber primers. This is called transcranial
current stimulation (tDCS).

Your motor cortex is conveniently located below where the band of the headphones crosses your skull.

To get started, you wet the rubber primers so they conduct properly, position the Halo Sport tight to your head and select the Neuropriming programme you’d like using
the associated smartphone app. This is connected to the device via Bluetooth, which means you can also listen to music. You can choose between Legs, Core & Arms for the larger muscle groups or Hands & Fingers for fine motor skills. It’s also possible to increase amplitude which, I guess, makes tDCS more powerful. Each Neuropriming session lasts 20 minutes and sets up your brain for an hour of enhanced neuroplasticity.

Users like doctors or musicians are recommended to use Hands & Fingers and can choose which hand to work with. Us yogis should use Legs, Core & Arms

I asked Halo’s partnerships manager Danny Holzman why yoga?

Think of Halo Sport as a movement learning tool,” he said. “Yoga is partly about learning how to move in certain ways, right? Like any other form of training.  The applications for yogis tend to be with strengthening the core, arms and legs for power and balance. Research shows that tDCS helps with balance. That’s because
balance has a lot to do with being able to stabilise your muscles in the right way.  Balance is learnt.”

Halo Sport has been selling at a little under $800. The newer, enhanced model, Halo Sport 2, retails at $299. That’s quite expensive for a training aid. How did Holzman see the market for Halo Sport in yoga? “It could be something a studio or teacher could invest in to offer their students. For example, we have a partnership with Equinox, voted best gym in America by Fitness magazine. Some instructors offer clients Halo Sport.”

One of the great debates in yoga, especially now it’s increasingly recognised by many as an ‘industry’, is where the spiritual tradition fits in. For some of us, using tech is at odds with unifying consciousness and body to connect to the universal. How would Holzman address this?

“The important thing is to not see Halo as intrusive. Also, you’re not getting anything for free. You still have to put in the work. So, if you practice deeply, you’ll see more benefits using this technology. If you don’t, you won’t. There’s also the fact that many people are intimidated by learning new activities, whether it’s yoga or playing guitar. If we can help someone learn yoga, it’s good for them and the rest of us because we all know the world would be a better place if more people did yoga. Don’t forget, we’ve thought a lot about the ethical side of what we’re doing. There’s nothing sensationalist about our technology. We’re all about using tech in a sensible, healthy way.”

Personally, I know my enjoyment of my practice and the effect it has on me are definitely enhanced by muscle strength, balance and coordination. I’m open to anything that helps me develop these. But, to find out if Halo Sport really did work for yogis, I needed to talk to one who’d been using it for a while. Halo introduced me to San Francisco Bay Area yogi Shauna Harrison.