Brainwave entrainment is a method to stimulate the brain into entering a specific state by using a pulsing sound, light, or electromagnetic field. The pulses elicit the brain’s ‘frequency following’ response, encouraging the brainwaves to align to the frequency of a given beat.
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When we are awake and alert, we have a predominance of beta rhythms within our neural patterns. Imagine a busy work day with a tiny adrenaline rush.
When we invest in brain wave entrainment (BWE) programs, it’s usually for purposes of relaxation. We invest in alpha and theta rhythm programs to help with stress relief and relaxation. We invest in delta rhythm programs to help with pain relief and sleep. There are all kinds of entrainment programs for other purposes too like learning good habits.
Consider this: We are conditioned into certain habits and impulses when we are awake and alert. Familiar examples might be traumatic experiences from our childhoods like emotional abuse or a terrible accident. The consequence is an invisible barrier of fear placed within the mind that can extend into all sorts of adult idiosyncrasies; these psychosocial indiscretions are difficult to counter.
On the other end of the spectrum, we push through situations that give us confidence. We always test ourselves to gain confidence in our abilities. One of the greatest tests is to find true love and happiness. First, we must have the courage to share true love and happiness with others. Imagine doing a public performance, saving a life, or giving a distraught person a reason for living.
Whether gaining fear or confidence, we do it under extreme conditions: Our hearts are pounding in our ears. We break into cold sweats. Adrenaline gushes hot through our veins as if in a life or death struggle. Our brainwaves shoot into gamma rhythms, sometimes beyond, in moments of intense stress. All things relative, people who have faced the same test 1000 times are as peaceful as can be, but their lives are at a stand still.
We can meditate on a situation. Play it in our heads again and again until we get it right, but our waking state must deal with that tense situation in real time with all the unknown factors and intricacies.
Fortunately, our subconscious and super conscious are there to guide our intuition and gut instincts. Unfortunately, we are not always raised with good, productive intuition. Sometimes, we’re not nurtured with life positive intentions, so our “knee jerk” reactions don’t always serve us or those around us.
How Our “Knee Jerk” Reactions Fail Us
In general, we tend to avoid tense situations, not because we know what might happen, but because we don’t know how to deal with adversity. What are we supposed to do when we are “nurtured” into avoiding bad situations? Our emotional securities end up telling us, “don’t rock the boat, that’s too dangerous.”
Avoiding the unknown becomes habit forming. Avoiding the “unknowns” is an idiosyncrasy caused by barriers of fear within the mind. Most people reach a point in their lives where they no longer wish to test their true metal because of fear.
At this point some people might assume that I want you to place yourself in unnecessary peril. No, that’s not what I want. We place ourselves in peril by not questioning potential evils and dangers in modern society, thereby avoiding unknowns. I ask that people educate themselves to put themselves in necessary peril.
In decadent society, mainstream media justifies and feeds our human frailties including fear. Politicians and the media consistently raise fears of maniacs, terrorist plots, economic depravities, and threat of disease. Then they point their fingers at corruption in other countries while avoiding our own. Meanwhile, another spotlight is on Charlie Sheen. Is mainstream media helping him to justify his corruption and that of others?
Decadent Society is only interested in our lower level reasoning. Mainstream marketers aim at our limbic system (id) which is instinctive, older than language, yet faster than thinking; it controls trust, attention and desire. Mainstream marketers depend on our lower level reasoning to “make the sale.” For this reason, the mainstream sells its contents like processed sweets for our instant gratification.
Mainstream music is produced with the same intention. For example, country music and gothic rock tends to resonate with depression which is based in fear. “Mature” rap and thrash metal justifies anger and vengeance within its audience. Most pop music and their artists like Katy Perry are packaged as processed sweets for our instant gratification.
How Music Feeds Our Minds
I’ve mentioned relaxation programs using BWE. For example, Dr. Jeffrey Thompson produces relaxing piano music with underlying entrainment, but it lacks intention. In general, most BWE programs:
Do not induce emotional intentions in listeners the way mainstream media does;
Only adjust our brain wave patterns without feeding any part of our emotional minds.
In direct contrast, music:
Induces emotional intentions in listeners by feeding id, ego, and super ego;
Adjusts our brain wave patterns while feeding our emotional minds.
According to the latest neuropsychology research, music containing brain wave entrainment (BWE) technology and impactful emotional content is more efficacious than BWE alone. Academic neuropsychology does not treat people as spiritual beings who require emotional impact.
Ironically, mainstream media including the music industry hires neuropsychology experts to help them make an emotional impact on their audience – and it works. The music industry connects with people at the emotional level. If you’ve ever watched American Idol, the judges like to tell contestants to “connect” with their audience, so they become marketable products.
Amid the musical genres, uplifting music feeds us in a good way. The problem is most people are attracted to music that resonates only with their id and ego. Preston Nichols in “The Music of Time” says that rock n’ roll has been engineered for decades to appeal to the id, our lower level mind patterns. According to my studies, I tend to agree.
For this reason, we also have upbeat music that feeds us in a good way. Can music that resonates with lower level mind patterns induce good intentions? Yes, as long as it also resonates with ethics, higher level mind or super ego we have balance.
Music that induces life-positive, productive intentions is not in big demand, but it exists for the few of us who crave it; for example, gospel rock, soul and some new age music resonates with our super egos, our higher level reasoning, morals and ethics because they induce good intentions.
We are attracted to that which justifies or feeds our personalities. Our favorite music usually does that, but most people only want to feed their human frailties. At times, I also have a guilty pleasures for emo-rock, probably because of Amy Lee. Sometimes, we have to face those frailties to move past them.
Nature vs. Nurture
A myriad of research on the human mind took my interest as I discovered a golden thread running through all of the music and BWE tools that resonate with us most: We love nature. We love the way it stimulates our senses.
Imagine yourself under an apple tree: All the branches are slightly different, but they’re mostly the same patterns. We can look beyond one layer and see the same pattern in the next layer, then the next; this is fractal geometry. We are attracted to nature because it reflects natural order within our minds – which are reflections of nature.
The same applies to weather phenomena. Although storms consist mostly of white noise, there are also textures and rhythms which form familiar patterns. Storms also contain choruses like wind and cadences like thunder, the same type of patterns we expect to hear in music.
Reflections of Our Minds
The music we love resonates with the fractal patterns within our minds. For this reason, younger people tend to listen to heavier, upbeat patterns like beta rhythms while older people who want to relax tend to listen to softer patterns like alpha rhythms.
More important than the music are the concepts and intentions within that music. For example, death metal reflects a subculture of dark mind patterns obsessed with dark, life-negative concepts. The neural patterns associated with these concepts simply resonate with dark mind patterns.
On the other hand, waking rhythms are also applied by artists like Sarah Brightman, Enya, and Yanni. The music they make reflects their mind patterns with enlightened, life-positive intentions.
Rhythms are resonant carriers for all of these concepts and intentions which also reflect our mind patterns.
We remember “catchy” lyrics of a song as a mantra that we sing in our heads ad infinitum because the rhythm and the concept reflects our emotions. We have an intrinsic emotional order for songs in the same way we have an intrinsic geometric order for trees or clouds.
In some way, they match our mind patterns like pieces in a puzzle. For this reason, we remember songs with the greatest emotional triggers, no matter how old we get.
Intentions within a song are like the music carried on radio waves: When we tune into those waves, we tune into the music. When we tune into the music, we tune into the intentions. Good or bad, these intentions nurture us to reflect who we are.
Let’s do ourselves a favor by feeding our minds once in a while with good intentions; it’s a balanced diet for the soul.
Brainwave entrainment is a method to stimulate the brain into entering a specific state by using a pulsing sound, light, or electromagnetic field. The pulses elicit the brain’s ‘frequency following’ response, encouraging the brainwaves to align to the frequency of a given beat.
This ‘frequency following’ response of brainwave entrainment can be seen in action with those prone to epilepsy. If a strobe flashes at their seizure frequency, the brain will ‘entrain’ to the flashing light, resulting in a seizure.
On the positive side, this same mechanism is commonly used to induce many brainwave states; such as a trance, enhanced focus, relaxation, meditation or sleep induction. The brainwave entrainment effectively pushes the entire brain into a certain state.
Brainwave entrainment works for almost everyone. It is a great way to lead your mind into states that you might usually have difficulty reaching, allowing you to experience what those states feel like.
THE HYPE
There is a lot of marketing hype around brainwave entrainment. It is sold with promises of increasing IQ, promoting weight loss, ‘mind-tripping’, enhancing creativity, concentration, inducing spiritual states and more.
While these claims are not entirely true, they are not altogether false either. In practice, the claims are based on an overly-simplistic view of how the brain and the brainwaves function.
THE RUB
People are very seldom deficient in a certain brainwave type in all areas of their brain. Usually the distribution is much spottier, with an excess in one area and a deficiency in another.
We are all different, especially when it comes to the distribution of our brainwaves. Boosting a certain brainwave state may be beneficial for one person, and emotionally uncomfortable for another. Without knowing each person’s starting position, entrainment can be rather ‘hit and miss’.
If brainwave entrainment leaves you with unwanted side-effects (see below) or discomfort, you’re probably encouraging a range of brainwaves that are already excessive in some area of your brain. The way around this is to get a brain map to see what your brain’s strengths and weaknesses are, and see what (if any) brainwaves could use some encouragement.
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