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 beats app | best sleep meditation
Most people know that drugs like sleeping pills are simply not the answer to long term insomnia. But could a technique known as brainwave entrainment help you to sleep? Discover more in this article.
Tossing and turning all night, going to bed at 4am and waking at 6. Was sleeping ever meant to be difficult? I thought it was supposed to be a natural process? Could brainwave entrainment be the answer?
Before I talk about it, let’s remember why we get insomnia. If you look at the animal kingdom, you never see animals awake when they should be asleep. Insomnia is a response to the stresses and anxieties of modern living. For any cure to work, it must counteract or get around these stresses. Brainwave entrainment sounds like science fiction but there is actually much clinical data and evidence behind it.
Binaural Beats
It uses a technique called binaural beats which assist in putting your brain into various states. As you may know, various brainwaves are emitted and can be measured by scientific equipment. These waves are different depending on our mood and state. Binaural beats can be used to actually “put” you into a particular state.
Literally Put You To Sleep
Binaural beats can be used for all sorts of things – to give you confidence, for instance. They can transform a person from being nervous to being confident before an important speech or an interview.
But they are also great for putting you in the mood to sleep. A carefully selected pattern can defy all your stresses and anxieties that you have experienced that day and put you into the mood for sleep that you have been chasing for so long.
If you use this technique then within days and weeks your brain is trained to enter this state much more easily than before and you will not need to use it for the long term – basically, you are cured.
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.