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 anxiety | calming music
You don’t need me to tell you that these are tough times economically. Unemployment nationally remains around 10%, home foreclosures continue to ravage the American Dream, and countless savings accounts have been decimated. Against such a backdrop, especially if you’ve been directly affected by the bursting of the bubble, how can you feel anything other than a sense of all-pervading poverty? If you’re trying to manifest abundance by applying the Law of Attraction, you are going to feel the task is next to impossible. You need help to swim against this tide.
The Need To Believe in Abundance
One of the reasons why mainstream journalists were often highly skeptical of The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne, was its failure to explain why people are born into poverty. How can it be, they said, that we create our own realities with our thoughts and feelings, when millions of people are suffering in misery through no apparent fault of their own? Ms. Byrne made no attempt to address this issue, and this was a significant omission. She could have suggested, as others have, that behavior in past lives was to blame, but that wouldn’t have gone down too well, either.
But this does not mean that Byrne’s contention (which was hardly original to her) is incorrect. I know from years of personal experience – much of it difficult, confusing, and seemingly inexplicable – that my thoughts and feelings do make a difference to the quality of my reality – that they make things happen. Knowing this, we have to be able to pull off a bit of a mental balancing act: on the one hand, we must be cognitively aware of what is going on in the larger world; but on the other hand, we must be able to leave that reality behind and recognize our individual power to control our own destiny. In a time of economic recession, that means acknowledging the depressing statistics, but still – in the face of all the doom and gloom – being able to conceive of and believe in the kind of life we want. Failing to pull off this balancing act leaves us vulnerable to being submerged by the same waves overcoming others.
Prosperity Meditation – Your Helping Hand
Believing in prosperity is hardest in everyday waking life, when the logical left brain screams “poverty” and the chatter of the rapid Beta brainwave won’t let us get a word in edgewise. To believe in abundance against these odds, we need to enter a calmer, deeper state of awareness, one in which reprogramming of our belief system and consequent expectations can be far more effective. Specifically, this means slowing your brainwaves down to the more powerful territory of low Alpha and Theta waves. Here, we can be in direct communion with our subconscious minds, and can implant in ourselves the kind of “prosperity programming” that we need. If you think in images, use your imagination to visualize the kind of situation you desire. If you are a verbal person, repeat the kinds of words you would say to yourself in that situation, striving to feel it as a present moment reality.
But meditation itself is no easy task when ordinary life is difficult – be that for economic or other reasons. For most people, in fact, meditation is just too hard. This is where the new technology of audio brainwave entrainment can be so wonderfully helpful. Now, anyone with stereo headphones and 15-30 minutes of uninterrupted time can attain deeper states of consciousness and leave negativity behind. It remains important, even with this technical help, not to sabotage your sessions by telling yourself that you are wasting your time, or that your positive affirmations or imagery will not work. They will work, if you give them a chance and leave them alone. Miracles will not happen overnight, but if you persevere you will start to see changes at the margins – encouraging signs that you are moving in the right direction. And the more encouragement you perceive, the easier it will become for you to amplify the power of your meditation sessions and really feel yourself where you want to be.
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.