Regulating Anxiety With Brainwave Meditation

Did you know there is an audio meditation technique called "brainwave entrainment" that can help you quickly enter a state of deep meditation? You can listen to your meditation on your phone with headphones using an audio track you can purchase from my recommendations below.

Regular meditation practice is challenging for most people, which can lead to giving up on a meditation practice altogether. Brainwave entrainment makes meditation easier for people who want to enter a meditative state without so many years of patient practice.

I have been a meditator for the past ten years, and in this introductory lesson, I share the three meditation programs that I have tried. This article shares my personal experience with the following programs in the interest of providing you with options to regulate your anxiety with brainwave entrainment.

The History of Brain Wave Entrainment

In the 70s biophysicist, Dr. Gerald Oster found a way to help rewire the brain to move into the correct state of consciousness for peak mental operation called "Brain Entrainment". Dr. Oster shared this discovery in his article “Auditory Beats in the Brain,” published in the October 1973 issue of Scientific American.

Oster discovered that when two tones with similar but different frequencies were played in a person’s two ears, the person’s brain integrated the two tones to create and “perceive” the third sound. He called that third sound the binaural beat. He discovered that these binaural beats can also be used to develop the brain’s ability to enter the deeper meditative alpha, theta, and delta states.

In this way, your brain can be entrained to relax, meditate or sleep by adjusting the frequency of its brain waves. Another major advantage of this process is that the effort required for the brain to synchronize the two sounds forces the brain's two hemispheres to work together more efficiently, reinforcing and enhancing their natural communication through whole-brain communication, which contributes to heightened intuition.

Four Brainwave Patterns

Beta (14-30 Hz)

~ Concentration, arousal, alertness, cognition

~ Higher levels associated with anxiety, unease, feelings of separation, fight or flight 

Alpha (8-13.9 Hz)

~ Relaxation, super learning, relaxed focus, light trance, increased serotonin production

~ Pre-sleep, pre-waking drowsiness, meditation, beginning of access to the unconscious mind.

Theta (4-7.9 Hz) 

~ Dreaming sleep (REM sleep)

~ Increased production of catecholamines (vital for learning and memory), increased creativity

~ Integrative, emotional experiences, potential change in behaviour, increased retention of learned material

~ Trance, deep meditation, access to the unconscious mind.

Delta (.1-3.9 Hz)

~ Dreamless sleep

~ Human growth hormone is released

~ Deep, trance-like, non-physical state, loss of body awareness

~ Access to the unconscious and “collective unconscious” mind.

Disclaimer

Brain entrainment is just one of many approaches to mental, behavioural and emotional health. Traditional talk treatments, such as cognitive, behavioural, somatic, and holistic therapies, should always be considered. However, I’ve found that brainwave entrainment can work well in tandem with most psychotherapy approaches.

Reducing Anxiety And Stress

Many popular brain entrainment programs offer a series of audios that cover the full spectrum of frequencies required for brainwave entrainment. To get into a deep state of relaxation, your brainwaves need to reach a theta or delta state. Binaural beats can help calm your nerves, reducing your overall stress and anxiety levels. A Canadian study, published in the January 2001 issue of Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, demonstrated that subjects who listened to binaural beats at theta and delta frequencies showed a significant reduction in anxiety levels.

Benefits

Benefits of brainwave entrainment meditation include: a) A lowering of situation-specific and overall stress levels, b) Improvements in cognitive function and creativity, c) Easing of negative emotions, d) An overall sense of peace and well-being

Possible Negatives

Not all programs are created equal, and not all audios have the same level of expert research and development to ensure you are using a high-quality product. Free binaural beats tracks on YouTube can cause side effects such as headaches. There is also such a thing as “too much” brainwave entrainment. If you are just starting to meditate, 15-30 minutes is best. However, some programs offer audio recordings lasting up to an hour, which are best suited for people who have been meditating for a long time.  

 

Three Suggestions

Here are three brain wave entrainment programs that I have tried over the past ten years. I currently use Holosync for my daily meditation practice. Please visit the listed websites to try the free samples to see which meditation programs feel right for you. 

1. Zen12 by Inspire3 - Free Meditation Sample

2. Lifeflow by Project Meditation - Free Meditation Sample

3. The Holosync Solution by Centerpointe - Try Holosync for Free

The Zen12 Programs offer up to 12 months of support, with 4 new meditations each month, each timed at 12 minutes. Zen12 maintains that 12 minutes of meditation is enough. This meditation music has high production quality and spacious ambient sound. If you have not meditated much in your life, this would likely be a good place to start.

My personal experience: I find these short meditations are good when I need a short break, but I prefer a one-hour deep meditation.

Lifeflow by Project Meditation - Beginner to Intermediate

Lifeflow uses a slightly different approach to Brain Entrainment. It’s based on Isochronic Tones and Monaural Beats, rather than Binaural Beats, which differ in each ear as discussed above. The main difference is that Monaural Beats are easier to listen to with speakers, as you don’t need to create a tone differentiation in the brain. 

My personal experience: While I quite like the Lifeflow program, and it is much gentler than Holosync, in my experience I have found that it does not take me into the deeper states of meditation like Holosync does.

 Holosync by Centerpointe - Intermediate to Advanced

The Holosync program takes much longer to complete than other programs. This is an advanced Brain Entrainment program consisting of 13 different levels beginning with an introductory track called "Prologue."

This program can take up to 10 years to complete, and each session takes a full hour. Also, in the recordings, the sounds never change. You will hear Tibetan singing bowls and rain throughout the entire ten-year program, but it sounds pleasant.

My personal experience: This program has been powerful, but it does take an hour a day. This program has felt calming for my nervous system and has supported deep emotional healing for me over the past ten years. Because this brain entrainment program can feel quite strong at times, it might be best to try the milder programs above if you are a beginning meditator.

With love,

Shelley

Please note: This article reflects my personal experience with three brainwave meditation programs. This post is not sponsored, nor am I an affiliate for any of the aforementioned meditation companies.