Yogis and mystics spend years meditating and performing rituals and exercises in order to gain spiritual insights and achieve enlightenment. People have seen the effects of these practices, causing scientific researchers to try to explain spiritual phenomena through experiments and measurements. One interesting concept is the understanding of binaural beats and its effect on the human brain. Some even think that binaural beats can train the brain to automatically enter a state that’s identical to that achieved by experienced meditators. Is there anything to it?
What are Binaural Beats?
The phenomenon was actually discovered in 1839 and is basically a mechanism for getting the human brain to perceive frequencies below the typical threshold of 20 Hz. If two different tones of sufficiently low frequency (below 1 – 1.5 kHz) are presented to each ear and the difference between the tones are no more than 30 Hz, then the brain perceives the difference as a separate beat. In this way you can get the brain to perceive frequencies well below 20 Hz. So to get the brain to perceive, say, a 5 Hz tone, the two tones must be 5 Hz apart in frequency – for example, one 500 Hz tone presented to one ear and one 505 Hz tone presented to the other ear.
So what’s the point? Well, this has some interesting applications in the matter of brain entrainment.
Brain Entrainment, or Brainwave Synchronization
Brain entrainment is the process of changing the brain’s dominant frequency by exposing it to an external frequency. Over time the brain’s frequency will match that of the external stimulus, especially if there is not too much difference between the two.
This isn’t far fetched. The entrainment phenomenon occurs in all kinds of physical systems. Check out this video that shows the effect that metronomes have on each other:
So why would we want to do that with our brain? Well, consider some interesting brainwave frequencies and their implications:
| Frequency range | Wave Name | Typically occurs during: |
|---|---|---|
| > 40 Hz | Gamma | Higher mental activity, including perception, problem solving, fear, and consciousness |
| 13?40 Hz | Beta | Active, alert, focused concentration |
| 8?12 Hz | Alpha | Relaxed (while awake), reflecting, visualization |
| 4?8 Hz | Theta | Drowsy, dreaming (REM sleep), relaxation or deep meditation |
| 1?4 Hz | Delta | Deep sleep (dreamless) |
Now brain activity doesn’t consist of only one frequency – there are always many frequencies being generated at any time. But during certain mental states there will be a predominant frequency, and this is what is meant by the list in the previous table.
So imagine being able to enter certain states, such as deep meditation, just by entraining your brain to produce that corresponding frequency as the predominant one. This is the idea behind listening to binaural beat recordings using stereo headphones.
Does it work?
Many such recordings are available online. Because a pure sine wave is not pleasant or relaxing for most people, the beats are generated within a background of white noise. You can download an example here:
This recording was created using a freeware program, and gradually moves from theta waves to delta waves. When I listen to it, I immediately start to feel a tingly energy across my back and shoulders.
There are several companies that produce CDs of various binaural beat recordings. The advantage to these is that they are produced with more sophisticated sound equipment and many of the nuances are fine-tuned. For example, I’ve had the opportunity to try one of them, Immrama’s Insight CD. They’ve created a relaxing soundscape of falling rain within which they embedded the binaural beats. Instead of including only one beat, the Immrama Institute’s recordings incorporate a set of harmonically layered beats to more closely mimic the activity of the human brain.
The CD consists of three tracks, each designed to guide your brain into different levels. I haven’t listened to all three tracks for extended periods of time, but only focused on listening to the first track.
My experience with Immrama’s Insight CD
The falling rain is very soothing and I thought that it would be best to listen to it before I went to bed. Within a few minutes of putting on the headphones the sounds lulled me into a very relaxed state and it was easy to lay there for the 25 minutes or so it took for the track to complete, at which point it gradually – almost imperceptively – trails off into silence. By the time it finished I was definitely in an altered mental state, and as I took off the headphones and went to bed I was able to drift easily to sleep.
At the very least, listening to the Insight CD is a very effective way to achieve quick physical relaxation. I would even compare it to the level of relaxation achievable after having practiced meditation for some time. But is that all there is? One strange effect that it has on me leads me to conclude that there is more to it.
After several days of this routine I began to notice a reaction that I have not heard associated with listening to binaural beats. I started to experience symptoms of restless leg syndrome (RLS). This is something that I’ve felt in recent years which occasionally manifests itself in the evening, especially if I’m inactive such as when watching a movie or TV. For some reason, the extremely relaxed physical state that listening to the binaural beats induced also brought to the surface the sensations associated with RLS. The feeling is difficult to describe, but it feels like a build-up of energy in my legs that eventually needs to be released. I can either shake or twitch my leg to release it, or remain motionless and allow the feeling to naturally move my leg on its own – although that is also accompanied by a strange “sour” sensation which is difficult to describe any other way.
But the sensation became more pronounced after several days of listening to the CD – to the point of affecting my whole body. For that reason I had to stop listening to it in the evenings, but I intend to experiment with listening to the CD in the mornings, when I’m active physically. Hopefully, I can then focus on the mental effects of the binaural beats instead of the physical.
The Kundalini Mystery
Why would listening to the CD affect me in this way? Well, it might not be a coincidence that some believe that restless leg syndrome is often a misdiagnosis for kundalini syndrome. Without going into too long of an explanation, many Eastern spiritual traditions teach of a spiritual energy (kundalini) that is coiled at the base of everyone’s spine. Many exercises and practices are designed to awaken this energy so that it flows up the spine and eventually reach the top of the head, at which point there is often a mind-exploding experience that some say is the ultimate in spiritual awakening. (I’ll save my views of that for another post.)
There are many reports of people experiencing “spontaneous kundalini awakening”, or a spontaneous movement of this energy. For some reason, this is sometimes accompanied by such sensations as
- Energy rushes or immense electricity circulating the body
- Itching, vibrating, prickling, tingling, stinging or crawling sensations
- Intense heat or cold
- Involuntary bodily movements which occur more often during meditation, rest or sleep, and which may be misdiagnosed as epilepsy, restless legs syndrome (RLS), or periodic limb movement disorder (PLMD).
These and other symptoms can occur as the result of meditation, yoga, or other intense spiritual practices, and are manifestations of an accelerated release or burning up of karma. Could my RLS be related to Kundalini syndrome? And could listening to certain binaural beats be affecting me in the same way as other practices?
More than a relaxation method?
I’ve definitely experienced how brain entrainment using binaural beats can quickly induce relaxation. But are binaural beats, through brain entrainment, doing more than just inducing relaxed states? I have reason to believe that they do produce many of the same effects as meditation or yoga beyond just the physical relaxation. While I have yet to experience them, the Immrama Institute claims that other benefits include increased learning ability and creativity, reduced stress, and better personal insight. For myself, it may be simply a matter of listening to the CD earlier in the day in order to give these results a chance. If I notice anything, I’ll be sure to post another article.
Interested in some professionally made binaural beats?
- My Mindshift II has twelve different compositions for various effects.
Our Conscious Mind As An Electromagnetic Field
Are our thoughts made of the distributed kind of electromagnetic field that permeates space and carries the broadcast signal to the TV or radio( My comments:— sending the energy back to Time Domain). Professor Johnjoe McFadden from the School of Biomedical and Life Sciences at the University of Surrey in the UK believes our conscious mind could be an electromagnetic field.
?The theory solves many previously intractable problems of consciousness and could have profound implications for our concepts of mind, free will, spirituality, the design of artificial intelligence, and even life and death,? he said.
Most people consider “mind” to be all the conscious things that we are aware of. But much, if not most, mental activity goes on without awareness. Actions such as walking, changing gear in your car or peddling a bicycle can become as automatic as breathing.
The biggest puzzle in neuroscience is how the brain activity that we’re aware of (consciousness) differs from the brain activity driving all of those unconscious actions.
When we see an object, signals from our retina travel along nerves as waves of electrically charged ions. When they reach the nerve terminus, the signal jumps to the next nerve via chemical neurotransmitters. The receiving nerve decides whether or not it will fire, based on the number of firing votes it receives from its upstream nerves.
In this way, electrical signals are processed in our brain before being transmitted to our body. But where, in all this movement of ions and chemicals, is consciousness? Scientists can find no region or structure in the brain that specializes in conscious thinking. Consciousness remains a mystery.
?Consciousness is what makes us ‘human,’ Professor McFadden said. ?Language, creativity, emotions, spirituality, logical deduction, mental arithmetic, our sense of fairness, truth, ethics, are all inconceivable without consciousness.? But what?s it made of?
One of the fundamental questions of consciousness, known as the binding problem, can be explained by looking at a tree. Most people, when asked how many leaves they see, will answer “thousands.” But neurobiology tells us that the information (all the leaves) is dissected and scattered among millions of widely separated neurones.
Scientists are trying to explain where in the brain all those leaves are stuck together to form the conscious impression of a whole tree. How does our brain bind information to generate consciousness?
What Professor McFadden realized was that every time a nerve fires, the electrical activity sends a signal to the brain’s electromagnetic (em) field. But unlike solitary nerve signals, information that reaches the brain’s em field is automatically bound together with all the other signals in the brain. The brain’s em field does the binding that is characteristic of consciousness.
What Professor McFadden and, independently, the New Zealand-based neurobiologist Sue Pockett, have proposed is that the brain’s em field is consciousness.
The brain’s electromagnetic field is not just an information sink; it can influence our actions, pushing some neurons towards firing and others away from firing. This influence, Professor McFadden proposes, is the physical manifestation of our conscious will.
The theory explains many of the peculiar features of consciousness, such as its involvement in the learning process.
Anyone learning to drive a car will have experienced how the first (very conscious) fumblings are transformed through constant practice into automatic actions.
The neural networks driving those first uncertain fumblings are precisely where we would expect to find nerves in the undecided state when a small nudge from the brain’s em field can topple them towards or away from firing. The field will “fine tune” the neural pathway towards the desired goal.
But neurons are connected so that when they fire together, they wire together, to form stronger connections. After practice, the influence of the field will become dispensable. The activity will be learnt and may thereafter be performed unconsciously.
One of the objections to an electromagnetic field theory of consciousness is, if our minds are electromagnetic, then why don’t we pass out when we walk under an electrical cable or any other source of external electromagnetic fields? The answer is that our skin, skull and cerebrospinal fluid shield us from external electric fields.
?The conscious electromagnetic information field is, at present, still a theory. But if true, there are many fascinating implications for the concept of free will, the nature of creativity or spirituality, consciousness in animals and even the significance of life and death.
“The theory explains why conscious actions feel so different from unconscious ones ?- it is because they plug into the vast pool of information held in the brain’s electromagnetic field,? Professor McFadden concluded.
The University of Surrey is one of the UK?s leading professional, scientific and technological universities with a world class research profile and a reputation for excellence in teaching and research.
(Reference: The paper ?Synchronous firing and its influence on the brain?s electromagnetic field: evidence for an electromagnetic field theory of consciousness” by Johnjoe McFadden is published in the current edition of the Journal of Consciousness Studies, along with a commentary by Dr. Susan Pockett.)
Thanks for the great article. I myself have researched binaural beats extensively and even created a website with tons of audio material for download. Please visit http://www.transcendentaltones.com and check it out!
It’s incredible that blog writers possess sufficient time to craft good posts so regularly. The whole net is a bit like that, I guess. Either way, terrific post, I truly enjoyed checking it out it. I hope there will be more in the future
~ Lilly
The body feeling heavy and the inability to move freely. Feel free to join here. All the best!