Meditation and AVS

[Bob]

Hi Marisa,
There is a phrase in the review paper that you referenced that I think succinctly describes the post-meditation state that I suspect I've seen glimmers of:
"...the alert calm and peace of yogic practice or the effortless but appropriate behavior of Zen Buddhist and Taoist adepts."
Bob

[Marisa]

bob: NMR or EEG assessment would be very interesting. My real interest is in developing the ability to utilize whole brain functionality at will. Training up control of specific intermediate states would seem to be one approach. The Zen style sudden complete transition has a record of success and has the benefit of just happening (not to mention the drawback of just not happening).

Re: Developing ability to utilize the whole brain. I would think that the best way to do this is to break it down into sections to work on. Much like you do with your martial arts training ... built up your strength and speed through specific exercises and practice and eventually put it all together so that your mind and body work as one.

So, for example, to improve the visual ability - you would do specific exercises designed to improve peripheral vision or tracking ability. A really good way to do is through a Nintendo DS Lite game called "Flash Focus".

The Martial Arts that you do, take care of developing and using hand/eye coordination, balance and other physical/mental related skills.

Taking an NLP Practitioner course would be excellent for learning how your brain creates it's programs, thus giving you control over mood, state and beliefs (to name a few). Much of the knowledge is complimentary to controlling your mind as they teach in Buddhism, martial arts strategy (for lack of better word) -- being able to recognize weakness in your opponent and psych him out in battle. Of course there are other ways to learn this sort of thing but NLP puts it all together nicely in a compressed package of knowledge, knowledge that you would have to other wise search for in bits and pieces.

Back to Nintendo ... brain exercises such as you can do with Brain Age and Big Brain Academy are also useful in exercising all the different areas of the brain.

The AVS machines and Biofeedback are also useful for conditioning the nervous system as well as stimulating certain brainwaves. The ThoughtStream has Mental Games which also have many of the games that stimulate the brain. I like the Nintendo because it's more portable than mental games, where you need the computer. On the other hand, Mental Games is designed to interact with your physiology and given your stated desire ... it may just be the thing for you.

Finally, there is the nutrition aspect specific for improving brain function. Let me know if you want a list.

bob: deep meditation appears to combine two unusually related states. Traditional meditators appear to reside in Theta but can be very aware of the outside. I have a suspicion that the binaural beat tracks I've used combine (probably some balance) of delta and beta(/high alpha)

LOL I've gotta get you off the delta thing. I'm telling ya, its only a good state for sleep and body regeneration.

In theta, you are aware of what's around you, you just are not paying particular attention to it because you are focused on the "inner planes" per se'.

If you use a BB in the delta range along with another beat in the Beta range, your brain will likely pick a range in the middle. I don't see this as an efficient way to achieve the goal. I suppose, if you want, you could try creating a program that is delta beta and then see for your self if the results are what you want. I don't think it would work .. but then I've been wrong before ... once. ha ha

bob: sounds like I didn't grow up perhaps ...or got stuck somewhere in subsequent childhoods. Seriously though: meditation opens the unconscious mind to progressive degrees. The state that you switch to following meditation need not be the same as during meditation. The claim that I am making is that I frequently function differently for some hours following meditation using claimed delta based binaural tracks. I am able to e.g solve complex design tasks whilst only seeing immediate decisions and just passively watching the present. Replaying the design route later leaves me to believe that the problem decisions were made from a sound position covering all the design facets. Looks like went to bed with a complex decision, woke with a really tidy, well thought through solution only only didn't need the 7 hours of background processing.

It makes sense that you would be in an altered state for hours after meditation. The effects of the AVS machines also last for a few hours after the session. I totally agree with you on the outcome, I'm just not certain of the details concerning how you got there. :-)

Is this program that you speak of a cd? Are you using it with a Proteus or Procyon? Does the program say that it is using Delta BBs or are you just figuring that it is delta?

bob: I personally dislike this as a waking state, (possibly why I've never owned a TV...). I've found that hi-tec meditation has close to eliminated it.

Like it or not, theta is the twilight state that your brain naturally goes into as you fall asleep and naturally wake up to. The only way you can change that is by setting your alarm clock to wake you at a different point in your sleep cycle but you'd likely feel out of sorts for the day. If you are referring to a really groggy feeling, then it could be that you've been woken up during a delta cycle. The AVS machines on all programs, except the sleep ones, are designed to bring your mind back to a more alert state after the session.

Ah TV ... I love TV. Mindyou my butt isn't glued to the couch endlessly or anything like that but I do get a kick out of it.

bob: I'll try running some of your alternative AVS sessions and see if the final outcome has a different bias. I'm fairly certain that I can increase beta with eyes open (unsurprising given the martial arts background) and am wondering if the theta region may also be under partial conscious influence...

You want to avoid doing the eyes open thing while using the machine. For what purpose do you want to increase your beta? Do you need better concentration? BTW, too much beta = anxiety.

Label says spirulina, must read the "Use By:" date more carefully in future

[Marisa]

Hi Marisa,
There is a phrase in the review paper that you referenced that I think succinctly describes the post-meditation state that I suspect I've seen glimmers of:
"...the alert calm and peace of yogic practice or the effortless but appropriate behavior of Zen Buddhist and Taoist adepts."
Bob

The calm comes from the alpha/theta state and the alert comes from SMR. So ... technically speaking ... the AVS program would need to speed up towards the end of the session so that you are feeling awake and alert.

What you could do is "anchor" that feeling when you are having it so that you can extend the feeling longer. Anchoring is an NLP procedure that can help you induce or prolong a particular state.

I found a couple of links on the net that explain how to do this:

http://video.aol.com/video-detail/nl...ing/1202208224

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKvMIWdTviA

http://www.renewal.ca/nlp31.htm

[indigoladuk]

Dear Bob & Marissa

I have read your thread but am a little lost as to exactly what you are trying to work out.

But here's my penny's worth on binaural beats and meditation.

Binaural beats, in my experience, help you to get into deeper more expanded states very quickly but may limit the complexity of brain pattern possible. I tend to find meditation with binaural cds dissapointing. However, when I meditate in the usual fashion, I find that the meditation is stronger than usual. So i consider binaural entrainment, and I guess AVE too (as i just bought Procyon) to be less of a meditation more of an pre-exercise to true meditation. Why? Maybe the cd's / lights take into levels rapidly but limit your expansion across levels.

You mention meditation being in theta, or alpha, or delta. What if it is none of these, but a mixture of brainwaves? I am thinking of the Awakened Mind pattern discoverd by Anna Wise, creator of the Mind Mirror. She discovered experienced meditators and others in peak states, shared something in common. Beta, alpha, theta, delta, Gamma branwave pattern. I did buddhist meditation and miraculously achieved full synchronisation and awakened mind just like this in 12 weeks!

AVE will never help me achieve that unless you have a binaural with all the frequencies at once (there are some of these on the market). As for lights, am I wrong in assuming that they are even more limited in entraining multi-level brainpatterns?

Peace,
Jamie

[CraigT]

Jamie,

I'll be interested to see what others make of your statements, but you've put in words very much what I have felt.

Nothing I've experienced using BWE/AVS is comparable to what I would call 'meditation' as I have known it by other means, but BWE/AVS has assisted me in attaining specific states of consciousness that I believe to be therapeutic or useful with almost surgical precision.

Meditation, for me, has tended to be an unbounded state, whereas the states I work with using BWE tend to be very specific. The nearest thing to meditation in terms of expansiveness that BWE has helped me with would be lucid dreaming, but that's a whole other subject, and I would say that BWE has facilitated it rather than caused it.

Thanks for your experience,
Craig

[indigoladuk]

Craig

I think you said it all when you said,

"...BWE/AVS has assisted me in attaining specific states of consciousness that I believe to be therapeutic or useful with almost surgical precision.

Meditation, for me, has tended to be an unbounded state, whereas the states I work with using BWE tend to be very specific."

Indeed. This is often because 'meditative' states via BWE focus on one or two main frequencies. very limited. I am wondering though, if say, mimicking a complex pattern like beta-alpha-theta-delta-gamma would be any different. One must also remember that in true meditation, in the classic awakened mind and I know because I saw my eeg as an e.g., one produces a balanced hill of frequencies with no gaps, from 1-40hz. If you used a Cd, you might have beta-alpha-theta-delta-gamma ...but if you set beta as 14 and alpha as 11 and so on, what would the brain do with the 'spaces' in between? Would it fill them? In other words, even with an awakened mind BWE would it be the same as an organic awakened mind?

Interesting. I wish i had an EEG spectrum analsyser or something to check this out!

I agree that as a therapeutic tool it's great. I use it for 'adhd' hence attention, concentration, learning and memory, I prefer it as a tool for 'higher frequency work' than meditation tbh. My meditations are usually quite disappointing with AVS or BWE. Also, there is the added fact that, say with buddishm, your meditation is way more complex, and your philosophy etc adds subtle information to your experience. i wonder if you crteated a BWE replicating, say, a buddhist meditation, what the similarity/difference would be between someone doing a buddhist meditation with/without BWE? How would the two snythesize if at all?

I tend to use BWE/AVS meditation separate from Buddhist meditation, It would be weird to do my buddhist meditation on an AVS i think! But would be an interesting experiment I guess...

Gosh im babbling, trying to share my perception,
Jamie

[indigoladuk]

...but if you set beta as 14 and alpha as 11 and so on, what would the brain do with the 'spaces' in between? Would it fill them

You could of course make BWE to run all frequencies 1-40hz...but even then. Oh and when I saw my 'classic' awakened mind on the EEG, she showed me that the frequencies were balanced from 1-40hz also, like a little hill, perfectly shaped. I guess you could encourage this through amping up the medium range and distributing the powrr accordingly, but still--would it be the same?

I tend to think there are many ways to the mountain top, what you see when you get there is determined by your belief. Maybe I COULD be a buddhist with a mindmachine after all !

[CraigT]

I'd be delighted to be shown to be wrong, but I fail to see how multiple frequency entrainment could be possible. Sound/audio signals do strange things when mixed and entrainment is a very specific phenomena associated with repetitive stimulus. At the most obvious level, two differerent entrainment frequencies will interact to create a third (the principle of binarual beats). By the time you try to create 'broad band' entrainment, I believe you'd end up with a completely meaningless soup. I'm finding it a little difficult to put into words the images I have in my mind, but I'm picturing the oscilloscope images of tones and pulse-streams as I add more frequencies to the mix. By using sound and light you can get two frequencies going - if you're interested I could email you a fun little session I've written called "Dis" that does Beta and Delta at the same time, crossing between light and sound and all over the place.

Our ability to interpret music shows that we have extraordinary ability to decipher complex sound, but that ability is dependent on the fact that each instrument has discernable characteristics. There may be some clever way of using this to 'encode' multiple entrainment frequencies, but I really don't know.

What I do is that the brain is a very malleable, and that as I have spent more time using single frequency entrainment mine has become more willing to 'entrain on demand' and that I can summon various mental states just by thinking about what a particular entrainment tone sounds like and remembering how it feels. I'm experimenting with summoning mixed-states during my 'quiet times' by deciding, for example, that I want to be in an 'alert contemplative state' or a 'creatively analytical' state and setting my mind apparently conflicting tasks, hoping that it will be possible to use the lessons learned through BWE to consciously induce the more broad-band experiences of what I would call 'true' meditation.

Crikey, what a lot of nonsense that ends up looking like - and I can't think of any way of saying it that expresses my meaning better. Oh well, I've said I'm quite nuts before, so if these rambling just on to prove it, so be it

Cheers,
Craig

[indigoladuk]

CraigT

Hemi-Sync claim that their binaural beats are 'multi-layered', even for simple usage like concentration (beta). By multilayerd i assume they mean a range of Beta frequencies simultaneously. But they also produce cds like Transcendence which is for meditation. I highly recommend this track. It induced full bodily numbness, I had the sensation of fast movement, saw amazing white light with a kundalini type effect, and then I could hear lots of female voices singing behind me. There were many of them, but they were at the same time One! I know.... Some real transcendent and unusual experiences with that cd, certainly for me it managed to help me reach some genuinely meditative and mystical types states, though only like that on the one occasion. Every meditation since with it has been 'business as usual'!. (This happens to me a lot on first usage of brainwaves, I think that's because the brain is wired to a higher more organised level and is really pushed beyond it's limits, but by second listening it's already adapted).

Hemi Sync Transcendence starts off with one frequency loud, then it quietens, whilst a new frequency comes in, which then dies down, and so on and so forth. I assume all these keep playing simultaneous, with a new frequency taking dominance, until the end at which point it plays all frequencies simultaneous at the same volume which is an unusual sound indeed! This would be similar to the Awakened Mind pattern measured and talked about by Anna Wise.

She made a cd with Dr. Andrew Weil 'A Symphony of BrainWaves' which did something similar. It goes through beta, then alpha, then theta, then delta, then she ends by creating an awakened mind type state by simultaneously mixing all four. That cd is defo worth a listen, anyway, it has beautiful classical music with it that appropriately gets slower and slower, and is cleverly constructed in terms of brainwave technology.

Then there is Kelly Howell's BrainSync. I think her tracks 'BrainPower' and 'Advance to Higher Levels' are similar to Awakened Mind, beta-alpha-theta-delta-gamma all at the same time.

I do believe it is possible to entrain the brain on multiple frequencies. I tried it with brainwave generator, and although there weren't enough presets (I was trying to create awakened mind, so I wanted 40 individual frequencies 1-40hz!), I nevertheless managed a broad range of key frequencies from 1-40hz, which sounded a bit strange (similar to the end of Transcendence, may I add), but when I listened and closed my eyes indeed had similarities to the awakened mind state I have experienced organically. A soft expansive feel, and easy perception of white-gold light. Try it! hehe

A qustion, I tihnk i may be wrong about multiple-frequency entrainment with light and indeed the Procyon AVS, when I used editor last night it seemed you could set lights at different frequencies. I'm thinking this would produce multiple entrainment frequencies, or if the blue is on 10hz and the green on 15 it entrains somewhere between these, i.e. cannot distinguish the two? *Thinks* But then they're different colours, so I'd imagine the brain CAN be entrained at 10hz and 15hz simultaneous because the two frequencies would have different colours?

Jamie

[CraigT]

Jamie,

I have to confess that I haven't had the pleasure of listening to Hemi-Sync or anything much else along that line, as they are not available locally (NZ), and rather expensive to import.

Reading the promotional material, and the accounts of users, I find myself wondering what is entrainment, what is placebo, what is due to beautiful sounds. I know that I can go to great places listening to Brian Eno, and that is nothing but music. I also know that 'disentrainment' sessions, that jump around randomly, can give me an expansive, fresh feeling and quiet a disquieted mind.

Alongside the Procyon, I make extensive use of Transparent's NeuroProgrammer and Mind Workstation software. With them it is possible to blend all manner of entrainment frequencies and effects, adding entrainment to noise, background sounds/music. What I'm finding though is that the more complex I make a session, the harder it is to work out what's working. A simple, single entrainment track will result in entrainment - I don't need an EEG to know that my state of mind changes in a predictable manner. More complex sessions result in more complex states, but I would be reluctant to guess at what's really going on in my head - it comes to a very subjective 'did I like it or did I not'.

It's a very exciting subject, and while there's some good research, I think the human mind is of such complexity, and the variables possible in sound and light, will make it a while before any of this could be called a hard science.

Cheers,
Craig