What Is Brainwave Entrainment?
What happens when you walk into a club?
The rhythmic, repetitive beats have you unconsciously moving in sync with the music – otherwise known as dancing but even if you’re standing at the bar, your body naturally wants to move with that rhythm.
This phenomenon goes deeper than the urge to move. Researchers have found that the heartbeats of clubbers actually sync with, or entrain with, the music! Imagine a hundred people at a club, and their heartbeats are mimicking the beats coming out of the sound system!
Brainwave entrainment follows the same principle – except that you come out of meditation with your hearing intact!
Your brain operates at certain levels of activity – the normal waking, active Beta, the meditative Alpha, the asleep-and-dreaming or deep meditative Theta, and the deep sleep/unconscious Delta. Beta is characterized by one thing we all want to get away from – stress. But that brainwave state has its place. It’s the action mode, and that’s the way it should be! If we’re not alert when we’re awake, bad things can happen, right?
But modern life is full of stresses that won’t kill us like the sabertooth would, back in the day. Stuff like jobs, relationships, things that don’t work when they’re supposed to… and yet our reaction to them is the same as if we were on the run from a wild animal.
So to get rid of stress, we have to go into the slower, deeper brain activity states. And that’s not easy. As anyone who has tried meditation will tell you, it’s almost impossible to focus on the breath while you have drama and worries on your mind. And if you manage to get into the meditative state, it’s hard to stay there.
Again – drama, worries, and add to that the discomfort of sitting in the lotus position… this is why so many people get turned off by the thought of meditating. It’s hard! But then again, the benefits are outstanding. Hmm… dilemma…
That’s where brainwave entrainment comes in.
How Does It Work?
How does brainwave entrainment work? Consistent, precisely engineered audio frequencies in the form of binaural beats cause the brain’s frequencies to match the stimulus. Your brain perceives two beats with slightly different frequencies (which are inaudible to the ear) through your headphones. It takes the difference between the two and matches its own frequency to it. This is called the ‘frequency following’ response.
In a sense, it’s is nothing new – just like the beats at a club, ancient civilizations used the hypnotic effects of rhythmic drumming and chanting to elicit a trance-like state. Brainwave entrainment uses frequencies that are the same as the ones naturally produced in the brain during meditation.
Brainwave entrainment is the leader, the brain is the follower. Like the DJ and the dancer or the drummer and the trancer. (No, these are not Santa’s reindeer.)
Once you’re in meditation with brainwave entrainment, you stay there until the track ends. It’s hard to stay in meditation with traditional practice. Brainwave entrainment does that work for you. You just focus on what you want – to bliss out, relax, do some personal growth work, listen to your mind, whatever is meaningful to you.
Brainwave entrainment helps the brain do what the brain naturally does anyway – to synchronize to an external stimulus. And it gives you a consistent experience every time. No more adding to your stress by trying to get into Alpha and failing… or to stay in Alpha… and failing! You can press play and bliss out anytime you want.
