So what actually happened? “During active, connected breathing, carbon dioxide falls, temporarily raising blood pH, reducing cerebral blood flow, and activating the sympathetic nervous system,” says Dr. Diva Nagula, co-founder and chief medical officer at The Vessyl. “This produces the tingling, buzzing, muscle tightening, and involuntary contractions that some people experience as energy moving through the body.” The regions of the brain that control emotion and memory, like the amygdala and hippocampus, also function differently during this altered state. Once normal breathing resumes, parasympathetic influence increases, and the body relaxes big time. The Dome, with its spatial sound and vibrations, seemed to help create the conditions for turning my attention inward.
When we arrived back at the restaurant for lunch, we saw the imposing Arenal without cloud cover for the very first time. It was cause for celebration, but I couldn’t help but think it was just as beautiful when it was being shy.
It’s hard to say whether I preferred the natural experiences to those of the Dome, or if the Dome helped to sharpen my awareness of the environment. But one of the highlights of the trip was our visit to a nearby stable, where we witnessed a line of Criollo horses filing into their stalls after an afternoon of grazing. A horse whisperer named Enrique Molina led us and his four-legged team down the road to a round, sandy training area, and paired us each with a specific steed based on our temperament—this involved a test of leaning his body weight into our sides to see how we reacted—and explained how nothing about the way a horse interacts with a human is personal; it’s based entirely on what’s presented before them, whether that’s hesitation, fear, or confidence. I offered my trust to a white horse named Rosa, and she and I rode into the jungle, Molina pointing to poisonous frogs and toucans along the way. Had it not been raining heavily overnight, we would’ve taken our horses straight into the Arenal River for a dip, but accepting nature’s fate was part of the lesson.
