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.
alpha beta gamma delta | binaural frequencies
You step up to the three-point line. The pressure is on as the other team tries to block, but you effortlessly avoid them. The world narrows until all you see is the hoop. You take the shot. The ball floats through the air and drops into the basket…all net.
It’s every basketball player’s dream come true. Whether an NBA All-Star or one of the guys shooting hoops on the block, every player wants to be able to slide past the other team’s defenses, pass with precision and make scoring shots. Now, thanks to the power of creative visualization and relaxation (CVR), that dream may be your new reality.
Methods like sports psychology have helped players in the past, but the prohibitive cost–a hundred or more dollars per hour–put such aids out of reach of all but the wealthy. The field was wide open for a method that would offer a bigger boost in performance at a fraction of the cost.
That’s where CVR comes in.
The key to performance in any sport is practice. Mental rehearsal is one method many successful athletes use to instill skill and muscle memory without spending extra hours on the court. Creative visualization helps athletes picture the perfect play and then step onto the court and achieve it. The relaxation inherent in the process means no stress and no nerves; just calm concentration and motivation.
But can it really be that easy? Can you really visualize it and then realize it?
Apparently, yes. Athletes from the Olympics to the New York Knicks have already experienced positive changes in their games. That’s because CVR helps players eliminate distractions and employ laser-like focus to bring it on the court. Such visualization techniques can help basketball players develop the mind of a champion, transform weakness into strength, and even understand rotation, arch and the motion of release.
Of course, CVR is just one weapon in the arsenal of a truly successful athlete. Many pros also use brain entrainment, or light and sound, technology to enhance the effectiveness of CVR sessions. Such light and sound technology usually comes in the form of glasses and earphones that use finely-tuned light and sound frequencies to synchronize the left and right sides of the brain and produce deeply relaxed brainwave activity.
In technical terms, such brain entrainment technology features deep carrier frequencies. These are the actual sine waves that transport your mind into the deepest meditative states, magnifying the effect of the binaural beats and allowing you to achieve better results in far less time.
That may seem like it’s more in the realm of MIT than the New York Knicks. The bottom line, though, is more internal motivation, better coachability and easy access to the zone…all of which take players from novice to pro at incredible rates.
Most light and sound devices also don’t take an engineering degree to use; you can plug them into any MP3 player. And, 20 minutes in such mind training is equal to four hours of sleep, which helps keep athletes fresh and alert.
Most importantly, when used in combination with CVR audio sessions, brain entrainment helps basketball players to perform at their optimum levels both on and off the court. Play is enhanced by sessions that help athletes learn from the best, read their opponents and review their own performance without regret or self-incrimination.
Every athlete has brilliance inside. Now you can use CVR to bring your brilliance into your life and your game.
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.