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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There are lots of different opinions on the truly best way to meditate. Ultimately, the best meditation method for you is the one that you personally get on with best and that allows you to reach a deep meditative state as often as you want to. To my mind, the truly best way to meditate is with the aid of binaural beats. Find out why here:
Don’t get me wrong, traditional methods of meditation are great but they don’t always fit in with our fast paced way of life. Unless you’re about to become a hermit, there just aren’t enough hours in the day to be able to put in the kind of practice that the more traditional meditation methods entail. After all, you’re not wandering around a monastery all day, keeping your peace and being at one with whatever it is you’re supposed to be at one with.
A binaural beats meditation is the best workaround for this.
It’s a mixture of ancient and modern that just works. With no effort, no long learning curve and with the kind of almost instant results that we’ve come to expect in our modern lives.
A bit of background:
When you’re meditating deeply, your brainwaves slow down. Much the same as they do when you’re resting or asleep.
These brainwave patterns are reached with traditional techniques but they can take years to master.
The binaural beats “cheat” and put your brainwaves into the correct state on auto pilot.
The beats are called binaural because there are two – slightly different – tones involved.
They are played separately into each of your two ears, which is why most of these programs require the use of stereo headphones to work correctly.
The difference between the two beat tones is small but significant. If you heard them one after the other, there’s a good chance you’d say they were the same noise.
But the slight difference causes your brain to go to work. We’re naturally curious creatures and part of this curiosity extends to trying to match up and resolve the slight difference between the two binaural beats being played.
Doing this causes our brain to go into the required brainwave state, which is why binaural beats meditations are often also referred to as brainwave entrainment. Because, like a plant climbing up a trellis, our brainwaves follow the particular path they’ve been given.
And that path is the level that the particular electronic meditation you’re listening to has pre-programmed.
Because our brains take a bit of time to adjust to this idea, the various programs available take a variety of lengths of time to achieve full results.
The older technology takes it nice and slow, not achieving full results for years. Much the same as the more traditional meditation methods.
Newer technology realizes that we really don’t have time to spend waiting years for results.
We want it now!
So the more recently designed binaural beats meditation methods – the ones that I personally think are truly the best way to meditate – take anything from a few weeks to a few months to get your mind to the kind of levels that a Zen monk would envy (if their creed allowed them to envy anything!).
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.