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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Question: Why would you want to develop your own brain fitness program?
Answer: So you don’t get called a fat head!
We live in an image driven society. However, you will notice that people accept and overlook physical imperfections if that person is clever, witty and fascinating to be around.
It is good to be physically fit, but it is even more important to be mentally fit. If you have a sharp, perceptive mind you will be alert to new opportunities. If you are creative and innovative, you can spark ideas that generate a personal fortune for you. Being intellectually alert and sharp as a tack is the new must-have skill in a world where ‘nerds’ can become billionaires in their early 20s!
The brain is often likened to a muscle in that we can ‘use it or lose it’. The brain ‘muscle’ doesn’t become bigger with exercise but the density of the brain cells increases and the strength of their connections grows too.
What exercise weights and machines should you include in your brain gym?
Puzzles: completing puzzles uses the front part of your brain which controls planning, decision-making and memory; so playing with puzzles strengthens the connections in this area.
Crosswords: Increasing your vocabulary boosts the density of the cells in the part of the brain associated with verbal intelligence. Vocabulary and verbal abilities are used to determine IQ, so exercising this area will increase it. Cryptic crosswords offer particularly challenging brain fitness workouts. They call upon lateral, logical thinking. This boosts connections between brain cells and maximises your problem-solving skills. Try a variety of crosswords to keep testing your brain.
Games: There are many brilliant brain fitness games available online and off. Search out those that have been authored or sanctioned by reputable neuroscientists. These can provide a range of progressive and fun exercises to challenge all aspects of your intelligence.
Neuro-stimulation: From biofeedback to mind machines to brain entrainment CDs, there is a wealth of new technology dedicated to helping you achieve optimum brain fitness. Brainwave entrainment offers an easy way of exercising your brain by using the natural process of entrainment to train the brain to generate and hold on to peak performance brain states.
So what should your brain fitness program consist of?
IQ tests tend to be overly focused on specific mental skills such as language, mathematics, pattern recognition and logic. However, there are at least 9 different types of intelligence. If you only include one type of brain exercise within your mental fitness program, you will become over-developed in that one area. London taxi drivers, for example, learn every street in the city and so they have a very overdeveloped hippocampus (the part of the brain that memorises places).
Here is a list of your multiple intelligences with suggestions for ways of exercising that intelligence.
1. Verbal: Crosswords, word games, comprehension exercises, journalling, story telling, debating, learning foreign languages.
2. Numerical/Logical: maths sums and puzzles (eg. sudoko), brain teasers, whodunnits, budget planning, problem solving, deductive thinking.
3. Visual-Spatial: practice visualization, mind-mapping, drawing, photography, manipulation and visualization of 3-D objects, mime, use computer graphics software.
4. Musical: learn and play a musical instrument, create spontaneous songs, jingles and poems, study with baroque music for super-learning effects, use binaural beats for brain entrainment.
5. Bodily-Kinesthetic: practice hand-eye coordination sports like ping-pong, go jogging or for walks, learn dance, martial arts, yoga, give and receive massage, develop and explore your senses.
6. Interpersonal-Social: Teach something, work in teams, partner on learning activities, build your conversation skills, cultivate new friendships.
7. Intrapersonal-Intuitive: meditation, journalling, listening to intuition, try and anticipate what people are like before you meet them, try and get a read on other people’s feelings, identify your core values and beliefs.
8. Naturalist: study nature, care for pets, look to nature for direct or indirect solutions to human problems.
9. Spiritual: cultivate spiritual values and principles, peacefully discuss beliefs, contemplate the big questions, think bigger than this brief period in time.
Developing a brain fitness program that suits you is not easy. But the rewards are potentially huge. Being a smarter, quicker thinker gives you an advantage over your peers. You will make more money. You will enjoy greater success. You will feel more fulfilled. And perhaps more importantly you will enjoy better mental health as you age. Make brain fitness a priority in your life.
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.