ANIMA

AI Reflective Practice

RESEARCH PROTOTYPE

Why Reflective Practice?

How ANIMA cultivates your capacity for self understanding

Reflection is a skill that deepens through practice. ANIMA does not prescribe how to feel or what to do. Rather, it is a structured practice designed to cultivate your own capacity for self understanding.

Traditional AI

Delivers quick conclusions for you.

Offers ready-made answers.

Encourages dependence on the system.

Reflective Practice

Asks questions that deepen self awareness.

Forms lasting understanding.

Builds your long term inner capacity.

Reflection requires distinctly human capacities:

Awareness Noticing what is present without judgment.
Willingness Opening to experience.
Curiosity Asking questions rather than seeking certainty.
Critical thinking Examining patterns and connections.
Empathy Approaching your experience with kindness.
Depth Moving beyond surface reactions.

Cycle Context

Select your current cycle phase. This provides ANIMA with hormonal context for your reflection.

Menstrual phase (days 1-5): Estradiol is typically at its lowest. Lower E2 can correlate with fatigue, lower mood, or a need for rest. This is physiologically normal.

E2 Sensing Layer (Simulated)

This simulator generates estradiol patterns corresponding to your selected cycle phase. In a complete implementation, this data would be sourced from a wearable biosensor.

Current E2
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pg/mL
Category
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Trend
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Self Report

These inputs allow ANIMA to calibrate its reflections to your present state. All fields are optional.

How are you currently feeling? Choose what resonates:

Energydrained ↔ alive
Stresscalm ↔ overwhelmed
Enter your journal entry (optional)
What is present for you right now? Simply notice and write.

Let's Reflect

ANIMA generates reflections informed by your cycle phase and self report. All reflections adhere to the Reflective Agency Framework. No diagnoses, no prescriptions.

Reflective Agency Framework (RAF)

ANIMA is grounded in the Reflective Agency Framework (Kim et al., 2025), designed to support self understanding without compromising personal autonomy. The framework ensures that AI mediated reflection remains yours, not something imposed on you.

1. Internal Origination

Reflections emerge only when you request them. ANIMA does not initiate insights, notifications, or unsolicited guidance. You remain the sole author of your reflection process.

2. Calibrated Responsiveness

The AI modulates its tone and content according to your current state: E2 level, energy, sensitivity, and what you have shared. Low energy is met with gentleness; heightened sensitivity with care. Each response meets you where you are.

3. Reflective Ambiguity

ANIMA offers possibilities rather than conclusions. Language such as "might," "could," and "sometimes" preserves interpretive openness. Each reflection closes with questions, not answers, inviting your own meaning making rather than imposing interpretation.

4. Transparency of Mediation

You always see the data that informed each reflection: your E2 reading, trend, cycle phase, and self report. Nothing is obscured. You understand why the AI responded as it did.

5. Self Continuity

Reflections acknowledge your hormonal context without reducing you to it. You are a whole person, possessed of history, complexity, and agency, not reducible to a data point. ANIMA supports your ongoing self narrative.

My Session (0)

Reflections from this session are collected here.

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All reflections have been used

Thank you for engaging with ANIMA. We are working to expand access. Please complete the post session survey to conclude the study.