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.
chi meditation | samsung earbuds
Half of what I read from experts turns out to be exaggerations and
irrelevant to my life, but first I have to read 100% of the research to find out
which 50% is useful. Some celebrity cut off her head, sorry, her hair, and I
cannot help seeing this mental movie and saving it.
If we see or hear it on the News (TV is more compelling than newspapers),
it registers in our brain (hippocampus) as long term memory. Half the time
it is junk submitted by Public Relations companies or disguised as fact by
a governmental agency. Yet, seeing is believing.
How Come Folks as Smart as us do not Automatically Reject This Junk as Urban Myths?
The term my father used was, what your eyes see, your heart is bound to believe.
You and I carry a neural network routine called Seeing is believing. We cannot
reject information without it first registering, if we see with our own eyes.
Our three super senses are: Vision, Auditory and Kinesthetic. If the information contains two of the three (reading is seeing, mentally hearing and touching the
page), it is Saved for long term memory. Can you still see her cutting off her hair in your minds eye? Me too.
Squinting at your computer is natural, but causes painful Dry Eye.
If you spend 90 minutes daily at your computer, the average is up to four hours,
you automatically reduce your eye blinking by 50%. Before you say, so what,
blinking serves two serious purposes:
a) blinking improves your eye focus for clarity from out of focus (fuzzy) details.
b) blinking also reduces the brightness of the display screen for ease of sight.
Wait, here is the secret to avoid dry eye, strain, and fatigue, plus headaches and stress. Purposely (voluntarily) spend 30 seconds of every hour on the computer,
to stop and blink your eyes. If you choose not to find 30 seconds to sooth and even save your eyesight, that is a conscious decision.
Brain Neural Networks
There are certain Central (Autonomic) Nervous System functions that are also
voluntary (conscious) if we choose to exercise our volition. Consider your eye
movements (six directions in each eye), breathing, and blinking.
If nature is not adequate for healthy survival and self-preservation, then D-I-Y
(do it yourself). Your conscious brain (neocortex) produces about 40 bits of information per second.
Compare that to your nonconscious brain that produces
up to 11 million bits of information per second. Nonconsciousness includes informational feedback from our senses and motor (execution) receptors,
including our brainstem and basal ganglia.
That means your heart, breathing blood circulation, and executing actions like walking and grabbing an apple from the refrigerator.
You know about Fight or Flight, our survival mechanism inherited and imbedded
as instincts through our DNA. Did you know that some brain structures are both automatic and voluntary?
The automatic Fight or Flight is produced by signals from our Amygdala and carried out by our Sympathetic Nervous System by squirting neurotransmitters
including adrenadline (epinethrine) and cortisol, the stress hormones, from our
glands and organs
Fight or Flight
When we get worried, anxious, and depressed, frightened and panicked, our immune systems, organs and glands go crazy. You know that, right?
But do you know that you can hit the Delete button (point and click) and switch off
mental movies and emotions of coming disasters almost instantaneously cancel Fight or Flight?
What happens, if you know how to cancel your negative programming, is to switch your brain to the Parasympathetic Nervous System and the neurotransmitter, Acetylcholine. It produces relaxation and peace of mind and overrides the dispersal
of adrenaline and cortisol. Do it and you no longer want to fight or run away. You cope with the circumstances and more often prevail.
How
You voluntarily exercise for a maximum of two-minutes, your six eye muscles in each eye.
Why?
It involves you in Beta brainwave rhythms of 13 to 40 cycles per second, and cancels
your right brain dominance exciting your Sympathetic Nervous System of Fight or flight.
Specifically how
Your extraocular eye muscles (six in each eye) move laterally, medially, upward or
downward. Four are Rectus muscles and two are Oblique. If you choose to voluntarily exercise them, your move your brain dominance from chronic stress
and depression (right brain) to turning power (dominance) over to your left brain.
The second set of eye exercises consists of voluntarily choosing to Blink your
eyes for 30 seconds for every 60 minutes on the computer. Make these two
conscious decisions and you win over Dry Eye and Chronic Stress.
Google: Ohio State University, published in the journal, Optometry and Vision
Science, 11.29.05, Professor James Sheedy.
Conclusions:
1. Computer display users: squinting even 5% of the time, the average is about 20%, reduces your eye washing blinks by 50%. Normal is 15 blinks per minute, but computer users blink only 7.5 times. You reduce healthful eye washes each minute.
2. When we read pages in a paper book for more than sixty minutes, our eyes
automatically begin to squint causing eye strain, redness and tearing.
3. For scholars only: we measure the effect on our orbitcularis oculi muscle
by electrodes attached to an electromylogram measuring the different
degrees of squint. This muscle encircles the eye socket and permits us to
squint and blink. Control it (voluntarily) and you save your eyes.
Endwords:
Information on computer display squinting is irrelevant unless we can offer an effective solution. Once you know the two-minute exercise for your six extraocular eye muscles in each eye, you are responsible for using or losing your valuable learning time and the health of your eyes.
Knowing about voluntarily blinking for 30 seconds each hour of
reading time is also powerful information, only if you choose to use it.
If you believe that reading and remembering three times more than your peers
is an important competitive advantage, you will add these two strategies to your
daily rituals. You brush your teeth twice a day; add exercising your eye muscles and intentionally blinking to maintain your healthy vision.
See ya,
copyright © 2007
H. Bernard Wechsler
http://www.speedlearning.org
hbw@speedlearning.org
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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.