Meditating Brainwaves
I’ve started dabbling with binaural beat technology, again. I had some old Hemi-sync cassettes, some Brainwave Suite tapes, and a few other tapes that I used a few years ago. I eventually captured them to .WAV and audio CD, and finally to MP3s (and recently onto my iPod). But I only used them once in a while, mostly as a relaxation aid in the afternoon after work.
A few months ago I purchased Holosync CDs and really saw an improvement in my meditation practice.
But, I like to customize things.
I don’t really like the music, Tibetan bells, rainforest sounds etc. mixed with the binaural beats, something all the commercial products seem to do.
So I used BrainWave Generator to create a few 10 minute segments at various brainwave frequencies without any other “added ingredients”.
I use a 40 hz tone that I can barely hear. Above 40 hz, it sounds too much like AC hum, and at higher frequencies the audible tone can get a bit annoying.
I use Goldwave to edit files and convert them to MP3 format. A 1/4 second sample of a regular song looks something like this:
A 1 second sample of the brainwave generator output looks like this:
For kicks I mixed a Sally Oldfield song, Flaming Star (I just discovered Sally's music a couple of weeks ago) with the one of the brainwave files:
posted by J. Stull @ 6:36 AM
7 comments
7 Comments:
Wow, I'm impressed. MANY years ago I tried the Hemisync tapes and it was a little too strange for my taste. I understood the concept and it makes absolute sense, but I felt somehow that my brain was 'vibrating' in a way and it scared me a bit so I stopped.
Your post about the hemi sync tapes made me wonder if you ever read any of Robert Munroe's books?
Katherine, yes I did read a little Bob Monroe, but I have to admit he seemed a bit “out there” at times. He focused a lot on out-of-body experiences, but I lean a bit towards thinking of OBE’s as a type of lucid dream like those that Stephen LaBerge calls Wake Induced Lucid Dreams (WILD). I have had a handful of those type of lucid dreams where I maintained awareness between the waking state and dream state and experienced the OBE sensation of buzzing and getting sucked out of my body and then hovering over my body. (Though not from using hemi-sync)
But, I know there is a controversy over the question “Are OBEs really lucid dreams?”
BTW (RGMB), the hemi-sync tapes never did much for me except help make me feel relaxed and refreshed. I never felt particularly “odd” when using them. But, I did like that relaxing effect in the afternoons.
“Are OBEs really lucid dreams?”
I never wondered about that. But perhaps there is a distinction, just as there is between different types of dreams or different types of meditative processes. There are processes that seem to take people away from the physical world and than there are different processes where it is more as if energy is coming into form.
Interesting post. I had a device many years back, which was called something like a "SuperMind". Basically, a similar sort of concept to the binaural beats, but with flashing lights mixed in.
I still remain a little skeptical about using high tech to try to achieve meditative results. It seems to me that the effort one exerts to do this the old fashioned way still has the biggest long-term payoff.
I'll have to check out one of these at some point to figure out if it does much for me.
Thanks for another intersting post.
“Are OBEs really lucid dreams?”
I've had a bunch of lucid dreams over the years, but nothing that would be classically termed an OBE. I have yet to see any good research that can show that OBE's are anything other than a type of dream.
Katherine,
Good points. I will try to broaden the contextual perspective a little bit.
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