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.
yoga music online | binaural beats app
Playing meditation music as part of your meditation exercises, helps you to achieve a state of extreme relaxation, through alteration of your brainwaves. There are a variety of music types to choose from, and each teacher and student of meditation, will have their own personal preference. In order to achieve the desired state of consciousness, however, the meditation music that you listen to should have a specified number of beats per minute.

A student of meditation can find the influence that they need through the appropriate music, similar to how some writers listen to music while writing, to find inspiration. You need not restrict your music selection to one that has been deemed suitable by other meditation teachers and students, but instead, choose one that you like to help you achieve the results that you are looking for.

There is one component of meditation music that should be present no matter what genre you are listening to, and that component is known as ‘binaural beats’. These musical beats repeat throughout the song as the same, slightly off-key note, that doesn’t seem in tune with the rest of the piece. By teaching your mind to pick out these beats, you will be able to find your way into the state of meditation with ease.

By training your mind to concentrate on these beats in the meditation music, you are performing a form of ‘brainwave entrapment’. The binaural beats in the music assists in slowing your brain activity from the Beta, or waking state, into a state of total relaxation, known as the Alpha state. Once you have become skilled at meditating, with the assistance of some effective meditation music, you may even be able to get into a higher state of relaxation called Theta, in which you may actually sleep without knowing you are sleeping.
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.

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.
pyramid meditation | soothing music free download
Picture your favorite superstar. When you think of Michael Jordan, Peyton Manning or Michael Phelps, you think “smooth.” You don’t picture a frenzied, tight, screaming individual. Superstars demonstrate a consistently calm demeanor. Their team counts on them to always execute effectively regardless of the situation. Some people call it “being in the zone.” Being in the zone is important to athletes, executives, artists and young people. Being in the zone means that brainwave activity in your frontal lobe (execution) is balanced with brainwave activity in your occipital lobe (input). It means that activity is also balanced between left and right lobes.

Life’s traumas – physical and emotional – can alter brainwave functioning. Brainwave activity goes out of sync. When the brain is not operating in balance and harmony, many things can happen. Your peripheral vision closes in. Your visual acuity dims. Your hand-eye coordination can be slowed. Your speed, strength and endurance aren’t at their peak. Your reaction times slow.

You see, the brain is master control. It controls everything we think, feel and do. And it also controls your autonomic nervous system – a significant dimension of our physicality. When the autonomic nervous system operates at its prime, respiration, perspiration, heartbeat, breathing and salivation are working at their best tempo.

To date, we’ve worked with golfers, sprinters, swimmers, cyclists, archers, hockey players, race car drivers, football players, basketball players, mixed martial arts fighters, and many others who want to be at the top of their game. They’ve walked away with results: 10 points shaved off their golf score; competing at the highest level; jumping higher; running faster; increased stamina and focus; and winning!

Most importantly, we’ve also been able to help people who have been injured or those who were competing in the zone, but are now haunted by blocks or anxieties. We can help parents and players understand how the brain has been affected by a head injury – and better yet, help significantly in the recovery.

Young people who are serious about their game also need to be serious about their academics. Students find that after they have experienced Brainwave Optimization, their test scores improve. Their ability to focus and get the work done improves. Students gain confidence and self-motivation, resulting on less wear and tear on the parents.

Overall, people who have experience Brainwave Optimization just feel better and operate on a higher level. All due to a more balanced brain.
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.

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.
psychic meditation | meditation pillow
Personalized or customized t-shirts are easily available at a number of online and onsite stores. These t-shirts are made just according to your needs and wishes, but they could at times cost you a lot, so what if I give you a brainwave idea of designing your very own t-shirt at a reasonable price? Well, here is my solution for the cheap customized t-shirt, which will be fun to wear as well as fun to design. All that you will have is your text, your artwork and your colors – – a perfect customized shirt!

First of all, you need to buy a plain t-shirt for yourself. This can be purchased at a highly reasonable price from anywhere that you regularly buy your shirts from. However, these shirts should be either in plain white color or in a solid color which you want to keep as a base for your designed shirt. Before you make your purchase, do read the instructions at the tag of the shirt. Your shirt should be color-friendly, which means that it should be able to provide a good base for the fabric paints that you will use.

Your next stop from the shirt store should be at the fabric paint store. Choose the colors that you would want to have on your shirt. Remember to pick only fabric colors and not paper colors because only fabric colors can guarantee not to fade after washing and ironing.

After you are done with these purchases, come home and look for some cool designs on the internet. If you already have a design in your mind, take a notepad and pencil, and draw the rough sketch just to check how it would look. If it seems just fine, then draw the same sketch or write the same message and caption on your shirt with the pencil. Take out your paints and start using your color technique skills and creativity to make your shirt look beautiful and cool. After you are done with the painting on your shirt, let it dry and iron at the back of the painted portion to make the paints look neat and clear.

This is how simple it is to design your own shirt. Now you can have cool biker t shirts, flower t shirts, friendship themed t shirts and all types of customized t shirts according to your wishes and requirements.
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.

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.
peace meditation | soothing music free download
Personal development may turn a lot of people off because of its image. You always see these self-proclaimed gurus, peddling their tape sets and e-books, telling you that you can be happier, become a millionaire, lose weight, learn to use superhuman powers and read “War And Peace” in 15 minutes… if you’ll just buy their CD set or e-book!

It’s no wonder this can turn people off. Personal development might seem tacky or new-agey to you, but if you look a little more closely at what they have to offer you, you might find something very useful there.

“Personal development” basically means working on yourself. That’s it. It’s a pretty general category. It’s something that athletes, artists, celebrities and business owners all to in order to achieve their personal best at what they do. If you consider simply that personal development means doing what you do the best you can, it starts to make a lot more sense.

Maybe you don’t want the Maharishi’s 10-Day Weight Loss Hypnosis Program, or the Brainwave Machine that unlocks the millionaire giant within; but what about some tips and strategies to help you use your time better, deal more effectively with difficulties in your professional life, or improve your skills and abilities? Here are some common subtopics in the wide field of personal development.

Coping strategies. Stress is no joke. Little things that happen everyday can cause you a lot of frustration and health trouble. Everybody has their way of dealing with stress, but personal improvement can help offer you some new ideas for how to deal with little daily difficulties.

Getting the most out of everyday. Everybody could use more time in their busy lives. But honestly, if you had more free time, don’t you think you’d end up wasting it somehow? We don’t need MORE time; we need to use the time we have more effectively. Everybody I know could use a little help getting organized!

Overcoming personal problems. We all have little things that keep us from doing what we want to do, and they differ from person to person. Have you ever heard the saying “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference?” Personal development can help you figure out how to deal and live with your own personal problems.

Dealing with difficult people. You are bound to have to deal with people at your job or in your family that give you a major headache. You can work on yourself so that you can handle other people and not let little things get to you.

Working around life’s obstacles. Things aren’t ever going to go the way you’ve planned, and you will always face difficult times. Personal development can teach you ways that you can handle life’s crises without destructive consequences. Nobody can totally go it alone.

Increasing your brain power. In your everyday life, you only use a small fraction of your brain. Wouldn’t you like to improve your memory, control your mind and get more out of your grey matter? Personal development can show you all kinds of new ways to use your brain. There’s a lot going on there that you don’t know about!

Probably the most important thing personal development has to offer is a way to stay positive. It’s not always easy to do. It’s much easier to develop negative patterns of thinking that only drag us down in the muck.

If you’re a skeptic, like me, surf the net a little and see what you find. Don’t be close minded; personal development may have something to offer you.
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.

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.
chinese meditation | meditation music in telugu
Perimenopause is that time in your life when your ability to make a baby comes to an end.

You are done.

The connotation is, that you are losing your youth, your fertility, your femininity, and even your periods (yes, you’ll even the miss the mess of it all), and this can be a very blue time, psychologically. Unresolved emotional issues from the past add to your distress, catapulting your self-esteem and confidence into the deep end of the pool.

If you already live a stressful lifestyle, and who doesn’t, this added psychological stress just accentuates any physical symptoms that you may experience. Toxic stress from work, home, aging parents, growing children, dwindling bank accounts…all of this doesn’t help.

It’s not all in your head-well it is, but not for the reasons you may think.

Extreme stress is a physical condition that produces physical symptoms and all of these are triggered by your brain.

Stress will make any physical symptom more severe, because the brain will signal changes in its chemistry that will alter hormone levels and accentuate symptoms associated with perimenopause.

If you experienced extreme PMS during your reproductive years, then perimenopause may give you a difficult time, especially if you are over-stressed and fatigued. Chances are that stress played a part in your PMS symptoms in the past.

When your brain perceives that you are under attack, either physically or psychologically, it signals your body to release stress hormones like adrenalin and cortisol to give you instant energy, in the event that you need to run for your life. High levels of cortisol deplete the hormone level of progesterone (because it needs this hormone to manufacture itself) throwing the hormone estrogen out of whack. To compensate for the low progesterone level, a high level of estrogen is secreted into the body and a vicious cycle begins. High estrogen and cortisol levels produce higher states of stress.

Higher states of stress produce higher levels of estrogen and cortisol.

The brain gets used to these high levels and if they drop, the brain discharges more stress hormones and the physical effects of this can be seen in the magnifying of symptoms in perimenopause.

Signs of Perimenopause Affected By Stress

Flooding menses-you soak more than one pad in one hour. Hormonal messages in the brain are turned on and off and somewhere in between.
One long period-or it feels like that. Again, this is aggravated by stress.
Lack of menses-you start skipping periods or they are scattered in an irregular pattern. High levels of stress trigger the brain to shut down any system in the body that doesn’t have anything to do with survival. The reproductive system is one of the first which will be depleted. If there is no hormone to dictate the release of an egg, the uterus won’t attempt to make a lining and then afterwards, menses.
Unpredictable menses-you can get caught soaking your clothes, just out of the blue without warning. The higher the stress, the more messed up the brain signals will be concerning the reproductive system.
Fatigue-your iron levels will be deficient from all of that bleeding.
Anemia-same reason.
Sore breasts-sore, even just breathing, two weeks before menstruation and up to three days into menstruation.
Water retention and bloating-the endocrine system is impaired by cortisol, so water builds up in the body, keeping in toxins.
Forgetfulness-a day doesn’t go by where you don’t forget something that you would have never forgotten in the past. Making new memories is not a component of survival, so stress, and the release of excessive amounts of cortisol, impairs your ability to remember.
Hot flashes-caused by decreases or swings in estrogen.
Night sweats-is a clue that your period is coming.
Anxiety-release of stress hormones makes you feel anxious. Every sense is heightened so every sensation is exaggerated, leaving you feeling on edge.
Nausea-stress hormones pooling in the stomach can induce nausea and vomiting.
Chest pain-the brain, when triggered by stress, sends massive amount of blood to the heart and lungs.
Vaginal dryness-progesterone levels are dipping.
Loss of libido one minute, excessive libido the next-fluctuations in hormones.
Hair loss-cortisol impairs the pituitary gland and hair girth and growth.

Perimenopausal syndrome is not for the faint of heart and adding stress to it is not necessary.

When you are stressed out, you are usually in a high-beta brainwave frequency, which signals the “fight or flight response” and all of its associated chemicals. Changing the brainwave frequency to another slower level, stops the overproduction of the stress hormones, releasing healing and feel-good hormones like serotonin and oxytocin.

Brainwave entrainment is a clinically proven technology that can change your dominant brainwave frequency quickly, by introducing an audio and/or visual stimulant to the brain, in a specialized pattern, to induce a particular state of consciousness.

Research shows that entrainment is very successful in eliminating stress and therefore, would be instrumental in easing the symptoms of perimenopause.

Changing your brainwaves can help get you through…to the other side.

And it’s good on the other side.
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.

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.
onnit alpha brain | music for yoga and meditation
Perhaps you think the statement that meditation doesn’t work is harsh or untrue. However, if you have ever tried to enter a state of meditation then you know just how impossible it seems to be!

Much research, in the scientific field, points to the fact that meditation can; make you healthier (both emotionally and physically), make you look younger, bolster the immune system, help you recover faster after operations, reduce stress, help you to live longer, remove past emotional issues and alter negative beliefs.

So how can I say that meditation does not work?

I can say this not because meditation never works but, unfortunately, because meditation does not work for the vast majority of us! Why is this?

Well the answer to the question “why does mediation not work?” is simple!

Meditation doesn’t work for most of us because they haven’t spent many, many years learning how to do it and practising it! If you have ever tried to meditate then you know just how difficult it can be. Just relaxing your body can prove to be a challenge. You get itchy, want to move about and feel restless. If you were successful in the initial stages of meditation and managed to relax yourself completely, you then must still the mind or remain focused on on ethought for the duration. It is almost impossible.

So, is there a way to gain all the benefits of meditation without the drawbacks? The simple answer to this question is a resounding yes!

Through a process called brain entrainment, that uses binaural beats, you can easily enter into a state of meditation easily and within minutes.

In 1839 a discovery in sound technology was to later revolutionize the scientific world when a German professor discovered binaural beats. Something almost miraculous occurs when two separate tones that are different only in frequency are used. One tone enters the left ear while the other enters the right ear and this is where the magic begins. The two tones, when mixed together in the brain, create the illusion of binaural beats. These beats force the brain to produce brainwaves at very specific frequencies.

Even though the existence of binaural beats was known in the 1800s it was not until 1973 that Dr. Gerald Oster discovered how they could affect the brain of the listener. Oster learned that when these binaural beats are used in specific ways different brain states can be induced.

The significance of how these binaural beats work becomes really interesting when we look at some experiments that were conducted using very experienced meditators and EEG machines which measure brainwave activity. It was found that during deep states of meditation these people displayed Alpha, Theta and even Delta brainwaves. All brainwave states have an affect on the body. There are specific physical states associated with specific brainwaves.

By using binaural beats through headphones, Oster discovered that he could create beta, alpha, theta or delta brainwaves depending on the frequency of the binaural beats used! By listening to binaural beats that were recorded at Alpha frequencies the brain began to display Alpha brainwaves. The same was true for Theta and Delta. When the desired brainwaves are produced, using the binaural beats, the physical states associated with these brainwaves are also produced.

Therefore, through the use of binaural beats, it is now possible to duplicate the mental and physical effects of deep meditation. To take advantage of the power of meditation all you need to do is sit or lie down, close your eyes, pop on your headphones and turn on your binaural beats recording!

So, if you are one of the majority of people who cannot make meditation work, then simply use some binaural beats and save yourself at least a decade of practise!
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.

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.
binaural meditation | music to help sleep
Perhaps you have a vision of the world that you want to come into creation. Disappointment and frustration tent to creep in when your expectations of your inner world are not what is transpiring on the outside.

Either you lack the vision, the self-control, mind power, persistence or will to bring it to life.

Whatever your vision is, it needs to be realized for you true fulfillment. Metaphysics is a subject of great theory, ideas and provides a strong foundation for bringing ideas to existence.

1. Metaphysics teaches us the power of harnessing energy to translate into matter. Or capacity to generate energy is unbelievably powerful and it is vital to our ability to create and manifest.

The different energy centers of the body like the throat chakra, expresses our communication ability, the heart chakra represents our ability to sympathize and express feelings, the solar plexus chakra is the most important as it is our personal power, our ability to take successful action and materialize. Meditation, visualization and reflexology are 3 helpful techniques to harness and increase energy in the chakras and this is a very effective way to greatly empower yourself and your world.

2. Training your memory is a phenomenal way to harness your mind power and access the true potential of your mind. It is estimated that we only use 10% of our brain, so imagine what realized potential can do.

3. Use mediums to help exacerbate your creative abilities. Painting, sculpting, drawing, poetry, music will help to develop and sculpt your creative muscles, just as lifting weights build your body.

4. Use Brain entrainment programs like: Brain Ev or iMusic to increase your brainwave activity and help you reach a higher level of awareness, focus and creativity. These programs have been shown time and again to give tremendous benefits and are very effective tools for increased ability.

5. Brainstorming, visualization techniques, goal-setting are all ways to create a strong and powerful vision in your mind. This will be the juice that drives you to the successful accomplishment of your most lofty wants and desires. It is important to practice these things regularly to create more intensity and clarity.

It is said that the creative mind is thousands of times more powerful than any other part of the mind. If you can learn to use this great tool, you can shape the world.
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.

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.
awareness meditation | music to sleep and relax
Perhaps you are interested in using hypnosis to help you achieve the goals you have set for yourself, or perhaps you are just curious and interested to learn more. If you are thinking of trying some of the many hypnosis products that are out there but find yourself being skeptical, or even nervous, about what happens in hypnosis then read on.

Firstly What is Hypnosis?

Hypnosis is a state of mind we have all experienced before. It is a naturally occurring state between wakefulness and sleep. Scientists will tell you that your brainwave pattern will be in the Theta-band (as opposed to Beta, which is wide awake, and Delta which is asleep), but as far as you are concerned it is best described as being in a daydream, or ‘trance’ if you like. There are lots of examples of everyday trances – here are a few:

o When you day-dream you are in a light trance – you’ll remember that detached feeling you had at school when you gazed out of the window in a really boring Geography lesson.

o When your eyes are fixed on the flames in a log fire after a long day. You wont even feel like blinking.

o When you are ‘glazing over’ during a conversation with someone really boring and then having to appologise: “Sorry, I was miles away. What was that you were saying?” You are ‘there-but-not-there’.

In each of the above examples you will be momentarily focussed on one thing – it might be the shape of a cloud in the sky, the flickering flames, or the mole on the guy’s chin – for a few moments your mind filters everything else out, except this one thing, whatever it may be. This filtering phenomena is the key to understanding trance and we will learn more about it later.

Imagine you are at the movies. The film is fantastic, its exciting, exhilarating, emotional, terrifying… Why? It’s only a projection on a screen. The more focussed on the film you are, the more the fact that it is a projection on a cinema screen is kept at an unconscious level. Pretty soon you become so caught up in the story that you are ‘entranced’ by the film. All the emotional content of the film is going straight to your unconscious mind without being vetted by your conscious mind. You believe it, you laugh and you cry. Lots of things will be kept at the unconscious level. The smell of stale pop corn will still be there, but that filter mechanism will decide not to trouble your conscious mind with such a trivial bit of sensory information.

And it doesn’t stop there. For the duration of the film all those niggling worries about money, relationships or work will be kept at bay – and what a relief it is! Some people call it ‘escapism’ – I call it trance. If its a good enough film you will even filter out pain or discomfort – that’s analgesia. I expect in the really exciting bits of a film you have had your hand freeze half way between the bag and your mouth, this is ‘catalepsy’. These are both scientifically recognised states found in profound hypnosis – and here we are experiencing them in the cinema on a Saturday night!
Trance really is an everyday occurrence – and one we can use to great benefit.

So, you are in the cinema watching the film and you are totally absorbed. Your brain is still monitoring your surroundings, but it is not sending this information to your conscious mind. Your unconscious mind, however, is still acknowledging everything. If the smell of pop corn was to change to the smell of burning, your unconscious would sense the possible emergency and break you out of your trance. Your unconscious mind is your guardian angel – it keeps a constant vigil, day and night, protecting you from danger and keeping you safe. Many people can sleep through violent thunder storms because the unconscious mind knows that, although noisy, it is not a threat. Therefore it choses not to send the information to your conscious mind and wake you up!

It is this filtering process in the brain which is the key to understanding Hypnosis. Using the guidance of a skillful hypnotherapist, or the voice on a CD, you can deepen this daydream state.
So the next question is:

How is this trance state useful?

When you are in trance you can communicate with your unconscious mind. And why would I want to do that, I hear you ask. Well, firstly lets really define what the unconscious (or as some people would call it: ‘subconscious’) mind actually is:

You have probably heard statements like: we only use 5 percent of our brains. Well, if that were the case why is it the size that it is? Obviously the rest of the brain is still being used for something. It might be safer to say that our conscious mind only uses 5 % of our brain. Perhaps our unconscious mind uses the other 95%.

Now, think of all the things you never think about: Breathing, pulse rate, sweating, growing, healing, digesting, blinking, even waking up in the morning. The subconscious mind looks after all of this for you, and loads more. There are millions of things right now that you might not be conscious of until I mention them: like the feeling of the back of the chair on your shoulders, the sound of the fan in your computer, the memory of your first bicycle… As I mentioned them to you your brain’s filter diverted the information to your consciousness. Your brain monitors the sum total of everything that you are experiencing and only sends the important, relevant information to you, your conscious mind. The conscious mind can handle about seven bits of information at a time; the unconscious mind handles millions of bits of information every second. Here are some examples:

o Imagine you are in a crowded room where everyone is chatting away creating a hubbub of noise. If someone in the room starts taking about you and mentions your name, your filter will pick that out of the noise and alert you to it.

o You are scanning through a broadsheet newspaper and suddenly you just know that you saw the name ‘Britney’ somewhere on the page. “I saw it there somewhere… I just know I did…” You then have to spend ten minutes trying to find it. Your unconscious takes in the whole page using your peripheral vision and will filter out the relevant bits and send the information to your conscious mind. Your brain is, at this very moment taking in a staggering amount of information. If you were aware of all of it, with no filter in place, it would be like trying to listen to a thousand different radio stations at once! Thank goodness we only use 5% of our brains!

Your subconscious also stores your emotions. And I’m sure you already know how difficult it can be to over-ride emotions. The subconscious always wins. Walk across a plank spanning 2 tall buildings and your emotions will very quickly present themselves to you, even though your conscious mind knows you are perfectly capable of walking in a straight line. Similarly, if you have been nervous for an audition or performance before, you probably subconsciously believe that you will be again next time. This we can change using hypnosis. Wouldn’t it be fantastic to go into any performance situation feeling confident and in control? And so long as you prepare properly there is no reason why you shouldn’t. We just need to over-write some self-limiting beliefs with some empowering new ones. And this is when we do it – when we are in trance.

If the brain’s filter mechanism focuses on just one thing (could be your breathing, or a sensation, or a thought, all the other sensory information that is being monitored by your brain is not being forwarded to your consciousness – including the suggestions given to you in hypnosis. Your brain, amazing bit of kit that it is, still ‘hears’ the words – it just does not see the point of alerting your conscious mind to them. It hears the suggestions, thinks “Hmmm, I like the sound of that”, and accommodates it into your new beliefs and habits.

Now you would be forgiven for thinking that that you could go around hypnotizing people to give you all their money, or get them to tell their boss that he is an Orang-Utang, but fortunately the unconscious mind has another function: it is your very own guardian angel. It will under no circumstances accept any suggestions that are potentially harmful or against your code of ethics. It’s such a shame that Hollywood has misunderstood hypnosis and portrayed it so woefully in-accurately. You cant be brainwashed, you cant get stuck in trance forever and you will not quack like a duck unless that is something that you really want to do.

What happens in a hypnosis session:

o 1) The induction. This talks you down into a deeply relaxed state. When the body relaxes, so too does the mind. You experience a tranquil peacefulness – your mind balanced between being awake and asleep, but still 100% aware. You’ll perhaps know that your nose itches, but you cant be bothered to move your hand to scratch it. Just 2 or 3 minutes in this trance state can be as refreshing as a two hour nap!

o 2) Next the suggestions go in. “I feel confident”, “I exude a powerful stage presence” and so on and so forth. When using commercial hypnosis CDs and tapes, there are often multiple suggestions coming from both sides of the stereo image. The conscious mind will only be able to track one or two sentences at a time, leaving the third to slip through to the unconscious ‘under the radar’ so to speak. With some CDs ‘subliminal’ suggestions are recorded very faintly in the background – you cannot hear them ‘consciously’ but many believe that the unconscious mind will pick them up and act upon them. I personally believe that there has to be some evidence that these subliminal suggestions are actually there. You do not need to catch every syllable of a sentence to understand its meaning and if a CD has faint voices buried in the mix, I believe that the unconscious is acute enough to home in on these suggestions and act upon them.

o 3) Finally the Wake-up. Since you are not asleep ‘wake-up’ is completely the wrong term. I prefer ‘outro’ (the opposite of ‘intro’) myself. Here there are often extra suggestions to the effect that you’ll find it even easier to go into trance the next time, or that you’ll be able to go deeper. Then there will be some kind of command to return to the normal waking state. This is often a 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. If you find you really drift off very deeply during the hypnosis session you might only hear the last couple of numbers. This is a good indication of a deep trance. If you were very tired when you started the session you might actually drift off to sleep. The suggestions wont be as effective, so try choosing a less comfortable chair and time your session when you have more energy. In fact, if you suffer from insomnia just leave the outro off the play list!

As well as suggestions, you can also use guided visualizations during trance. This is phenomenally effective. Sports men and women have been using this technique for years, but we can all do it. The Cosmetic Surgeon and Psychologist Maxwell Maltz was the first to understand that the brain cannot tell the difference between a real action and a vividly imagined action. Think about that for a moment. Your intellectual, rational conscious mind knows the difference, but your unconscious mind doesn’t. When you are not conscious, you’re asleep… and when you are asleep you vividly imagine things, don’t you? Yes you do, it’s called dreaming! And don’t dreams feel one hundred percent real at the time? I call it real-virtual-reality! It’s true: the brain cannot tell the difference between a real action and a vividly imagined action.

So, if we vividly imagine feeling alert, enthusiastic and confident as we play a few dozen times, then when we perform for real – the brain thinks, “OK, here we go again, I’ve experienced this before”, and you’ll find yourself feeling alert, enthusiastic and confident – just like you imagined. The only rules are that you have to make the visualisation as real as you possibly can, and as often as you possibly can.

Sadly we have all been the victim of negative visualisation! In a recording session 20 seconds before the end of the take, the musician might screw up because he had ‘seen him/herself’ screwing up. They get more and more tense as the take rolls on all the time thinking “I bet you I miss that twiddly bit in the coda”. Sure enough, they do. Negative visualisation is just as effective as positive visualisation. Using hypnosis we can turn that around.

But where did we learn to be so down on ourselves? Humans only have two innate fears: sudden loud noises and the fear of falling. All other fears are learnt, which implies that someone taught us or that we have taught ourselves. Perhaps your teacher at school was a bad communicator and you did not achieve very much – you might then be of the opinion that you were not very talented. Often when we were children our teachers only told us what to learn and not how to learn. With the right learning strategy we might have achieved much much more, instead we have mentally rubber-stamped ‘mathematics’, for instance, as being difficult. Stage-fright has to be learnt. As youngsters if we are not prepared for performing in front of an audience, we are like a rabbit in the headlights – petrified. A one-off negative emotion like this can be enough to trigger the same reaction every time you perform. The situation triggers the memory, and it does not seem to matter how deeply the memory might be buried in your unconscious, you might not remember the experience consciously at all, the reaction is the same – racing pulse, knotted stomach, sweaty hands – all classic fight or flight responses, all inappropriate, and all preventing us from playing at our best. Imagine having the stage presence of Mick Jagger or the confidence of Buddy Rich, the command of Yasha Heifitz or the focus of John Coltrane. Well why not? You just need to take a few steps toward re-programming your unconscious. It wont replace the need for practise, but often it is not our physical abilities that let us down, it is our mental state. We can all play like gods in our bedroom, but on stage in front of a couple of thousand people it is not so easy!

Hypnosis changes the irrational beliefs we have about ourselves and all of a sudden we break through the blockages that have been there for years. The key is in the imagination and the ability to enter that perfect mental state for learning – ie trance, be it light trance or deep.
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.

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.
deep sleep brain waves | meditation in schools
People, as a rule, don’t like change, and yet it is necessary for our evolvement. Life changes can cause great anxiety and that’s where brainwave entrainment can help.

When you are faced with a life change, your brain interprets the event as a stressor, regardless of whether it is positive or negative. Once your brain has been alerted to the life change, it sends out a stress response which in turn, releases powerful chemicals to help your body react to the perceived threat.

What Happens In Your Body When Confronted With A Life Change

· Your heart rate, blood sugar level, and blood pressure increases.

· Your blood vessels spasm.

· Your heart rhythm experiences a disturbance.

· The acid in your stomach increases giving you indigestion and heartburn.

· The blood flow to your stomach is decreased which means that if you do eat, you may not digest your food.

· Your muscles tense up, which can lead to a darn good headache, neck- or backache.

· Your cholesterol level increases.

· You breathing becomes short and shallow.

· Your immune system takes falters.

· You start retaining fluid.

What Happens In Your Mind When Confronted With A Life Change

· You become anxious and possibly depressed.

· You may feel anger that your life is changing.

· You may become irritable and impatient.

· You may find it hard to focus or concentrate.

· You may have trouble remembering things.

· If your emotions are fearful and angry, it can affect the health of your heart.

Sometimes, no actually, most of the time, life change is unavoidable. Instead of resisting this experience, you can learn to manage your anxious reactions and avoid damage to your physical and mental health.

Brainwave entrainment, a therapy that uses sound patterns to induce a state of consciousness that stops the over-production of chemicals released during the brain’s stress response, facilitates a relaxation response that can make life change easier and more manageable.

Brainwave Entrainment Helps Manage Life Change

Entrainment activates the parasympathetic nervous system initiating a relaxation response and restoring the body and brain.

· Reduces blood pressure.

· Decreases heart rate, which reduces the demand for oxygen, lessening the heart’s workload.

· Decreases rate of respiration, which then increases lung capacity.

· Aids in better digestion by directing blood flow to stomach.

· Increases ability for blood to carry oxygen.

· Produces feelings of calmness and tranquility.

· Increases the immune systems strength.

If your brain doesn’t react with anxiety every time you are confronted with a life change, you can be better prepared for the experience, and may even enjoy it. Brainwave entrainment can help facilitate this state of relaxed awareness by changing how you process any new changes 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.

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.
beautiful meditation music | relaxing sounds for sleeping
People with social anxiety disorder (SAD) display a range of secondary symptoms. Some people cannot participate in any type of group discussion for fear that they will become shaky and their voice tremulous, even mute. Others have such anticipatory anxiety about being in groups that they can’t even hold a job. It is common for these individuals to avoid crowds and large gatherings, although an even more threatening scenario is presented where there will be real human interaction required of the sufferer. Another aspect of social anxiety is the physiological distress that those afflicted often feel. For some, social anxiety and panic disorder go hand in hand and certain social situations, or just the anticipation of them, will trigger a full-blown panic attack with all its discomfort; sometimes accompanied by the fear that one is suffering a heart attack or that their racing thoughts will cause them to go permanently insane. These are not easy episodes to endure and the fear that such an attack may be precipitated in public makes it all the worse.

Most people with SAD realize that that their thoughts and fears are unfounded and irrational, though this is of little comfort to them. Although people with SAD know that others are really not critically judging or evaluating them, are not trying to embarrass or humiliate them, the social encounters they have to endure are often torturous and traumatic causing extreme mental and physical discomfort. Even though the afflicted individual may realize that their thoughts and feelings are exaggerated and irrational, their discomfort is still triggered regularly by certain social situations, normal encounters that others seem to navigate with impunity. It is these automatic “feelings” and thoughts that occur around social triggers that need to be addressed. Fortunately, with a new understanding of SAD, more effective treatments are available. An encouraging development is that SAD is now understood as a phobia rather than a generalized anxiety disorder. Phobias tend to respond quite well to specific set of treatments for a number of individuals. In the past, when treating SAD as an anxiety condition of unknown origin, the only available treatments were medication and traditional psychotherapy. Both of these have the potential to worsen the symptoms of the SAD sufferer over time.

How can social anxiety be treated? Social anxiety responds to relatively short-term therapy, depending on the severity of the condition. Completion of a behavioral therapy group can also be quite helpful. What socially anxious people do not need is years and years of therapy or counseling. You can’t be “counseled” out of social phobia. In fact, socially anxious people who are taught to “analyze” and “ruminate” over their problems usually make their social anxiety and fears much worse. The following is a partial list of treatments that have shown great promise with social phobia and social anxiety:

1) Cognitive-behavioral treatment methods, techniques, and strategies may help lessen anxiety for some and actually make it bearable enough to resume a normal life for the most part. This treatment is generally short-term and is designed to restructure thoughts and behaviors that reinforce the vicious cycle of the social phobia. One type of therapy traditionally used with phobias is desensitization. This holds promise for SAD sufferers as it gradually reintroduces the anxiety-provoking stimuli in increments that the client can handle. While it is effective with some, a number of participants quit as the stimuli become more painful to them. Adding a “coach” may be helpful here. The coach is in close contact with the SAD sufferer and helps them literally “walk through” the treatment regimen. They are also available for general support on a regular basis.

2) One approach I personally find quite helpful is affirmation and visualization, either as a stand-alone treatment or particularly in conjunction with other therapies. Most people are familiar with affirmation and the application as a support for new ideas, attitudes and behaviors. Used in tandem with visualization it can support changes in the response to social stimuli as well. Visualization is used to call up potentially threatening situations and then mentally work through them in a manner that is safe for the sufferer. By utilizing visualization as a “practice” scenario one can control the amount of anxiety experienced and increase or decrease it the session dictates. Ideally, one learns to increase the potential stressors while lessening the anxiety response to them.

3) Probably the method I’ve found most successful in recent years is the use of brainwave biofeedback. Brainwave biofeedback, like its predecessor autonomic biofeedback, teaches self-regulation of biological processes, in this case brain wave activity. By invoking certain slow waves (alpha), an individual can learn to put their central nervous system in a more relaxed and receptive state. Working with visualization, this skill can be internalized and applied in real-world settings. These technologies have been used to successfully treat a variety of panic and anxiety disorders.

While there are likely to be more breakthroughs in coming years, the behavioral and psycho physiological treatment currently available promise hope of a much brighter future for the SAD sufferer.
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.