New User Review and Comments: Wow for me, 5 out of 5

I took delivery of a Kasina yesterday, with high hopes and low expectations. (I'm new here in the forum -- Hi everyone!)
Since I have no past history with light and sound machines at all, I didn't expect much. Yet, since I suffer from a monkey mind that won't settle down, I had very high hopes. From my one day tour, I made a great choice, so much so I plan on reviewing this for our readers on Buddha Weekly (an online magazine I edit) since our readers look for new ways to engage the mind in their practice.

After several weeks of research that narrowed my choices down to the Kasina, the Laxman and the David. I liked Laxman's googles and tidier wires, and the David's therapeutic credentials, but ended up with Kasina just on instinct, I guess. It felt right.

On delivery, it's nice, but not an "iPhone" unboxing experience--I didn't expect it to be. I was hoping the real unboxing would take place when I put on the glasses and closed my eyes for a session. I was, fortunately, right.


My initial enthusiasm was a little dampened because the device needs charging. So the first night went by unused. The next day, I made up for that with four sessions, all completely different, a nice sampler.


My initial session impression was -- oh, this is nice, relaxing, I can enjoy this.
Then -- well, that was interesting. Didn't expect that.
Then -- this is really making a difference.
Finally -- oh, wow. Just really wow.


This followed the pattern of sessions and my level of comfort I guess. I started with
? Forest and River: relaxing, gentle, nothing surprising -- succeeding in calming my monkey mind somewhat.
? Bowlscape: The Tibetan singing bowls drew me, as I'm Buddhist and deep into meditation (one of the reasons I bought the Kasina? my mind needed room to meditate:) It was nice, took me to a comfortable place.
? Meditation with Shaman Drum: I liked this one. A lot. It took me places. I felt it right away. The light show wasn't quite as intense as I hoped, but it worked and I plan to repeat the journey. By this time my mind was half to trance level, and the drums took me on a short enjoyable journey.
? Vapour Chill: I alms stopped at Shaman drum, but I craved more (craving bad, I'm Buddhist:) This one was a home run WOW for me. The sounds and especially the light show dazzled. More importantly, it took me deep into trance, so much so I was visualizing amazing mandalas of colour. My mind opened up. Compared to the other three sessions, this one was a magnitude of intensity beyond these.


I cannot wait to try more sessions, but Shaman Drum and Vapour Chill will definitely be part of my practice.


The Device 5/5
Nice, functional, attractive, small, well designed, practical and simple software, wouldn't change a thing.


Earbuds (nah) ? chucked them, sorry. Using headphones.


Eyeset? okay. 4/5
A little tight on my face, but okay. Good intensity and colour (not that I have anything to compare it to)


Wires? 1/5
Oh, man, can we do something about the wires? Can I suggest an attractive built in hoop on the eyeglass wires to allow neat clamping of the headphones to the glasses. I'm using a twist tie.


Sessions 5/5


Overall 5/5
As my daily practice includes two hours of visualizing, this will be a major tool in advancing my visualizing -- I believe. Aside from the wires and the tight eyewear, I wouldn't change a thing. I will no doubt enjoy years of use from my Kasina.

Hi Lee,
Thank you for choosing a MindPlace product and it is great to hear that the Kasina is exceeding your expectations.

Very nice and detailed assessment and we thank you for that. Vapour Chill by Craig Tice is one of my favorites too.

Hopefully, the glasses will stretch a bit for you and become comfortable.

On cables, throughout my studio life I have been literally swimming in cables and hate them more than you can imagine. I have tried every measure of cable organization and I will say that although there are wires, the new flat cables on the earbuds make a huge difference. Now it sounds as if you are using over the ear headphones which granted is a better audio experience. I wonder if yours have the twisted cable? If so and you want to dedicate some headphones of this type to the Kasina, a nice trick is to run the wire from the glasses through the spirals on the cable which keeps them together and nicely tucked away. On other machines I have spiral cable wrap added and this works pretty well too unless you just want to use the glasses, then it is a small hassle.

Overall the cables never make a good first impression but will be appreciated over time (or at least tolerated) for the plug and play nature. Wireless sounds great in theory and is getting better but when you just want to sit down and relax jumping through hoops sometimes is not conducive.

I agree that the Kasina is most excellent as an aid to visualization and in my personal practice I use it for this quite often. I will be most interested to hear which sessions you find are most useful to you for this and we can continue to expand that type of content. It is one of the most beneficial uses for a light and sound machine.

That's cool to hear about Buddhist Weekly. I'll check it out. There are a few Buddhist Geeks around here :)

Welcome and let us know if we can be of help,
Scott

Great idea bout the spiral wires. I'll try that. Thanks Scott

great review.
I agree with almost all of your points and assessments....

and especially about cables and wires...

Sure would be great when somebody figures out how
to use Bluetooth, or a similar concept & technology, for the headphones and glasses on AVS machines....

And Scott... if you want to be a billionaire,
(and I really mean this)
figure out how to get rid of all the cords and cables
we all wrangle with every day.

After all.... Dre just made billionaire status with his
rather mediocre Beats headphones...

==>JimmyHilarious....