binaural meditation

Even beginners can enter deep meditation or trance in minutes using binaural entrainment if they are more or less open and calm.

This can be taken much further. For example there are various binaural recordings suitable for alert concentration, meditation, sleep, relaxing and conscious dreaming.

how it works
When two tones of different pitch frequency are presented, one to each ear, using stereo headphones (not speakers) a single tone is heard with a frequency half way between the two tones but with its volume fluctuating (beating) at the frequency of the difference between their frequencies.

For some reason brain waves entrain to this beat as the brain resolves the two frequencies into one. This induces a state of consciousness characteristic of that frequency.

brain waves
Brain waves are measures of fluctuating electrical voltage potentials near the surface of the brain. What is happening deeper is not understood at the time of writing this. All the different frequency ranges are exhibited most of the time somewhere in the optimally functioning brain.

volume
Louder volume overrides internal chatter and external distractions. The volume needs to be high enough to retain attention but not so high as to cause ear damage. It is so easy to become habituated to high volumes with head phones. Initial discomfort however slight in the first minute or so is a warning sign. This goes away as the ear adjusts, so the first minute or so is the only chance to get it right. Ringing in the ears after taking off the headphones might mean the volume is too high.

A low volume may be enough if a relaxation exercise is used before to prepare.

If the effects are disturbing in the beginning then lowing volume may reduce this.

the recordings
Samples can be downloaded online. Free ones can be as effective as expensive ones but each feels different depending on the way the frequency gap between the right and left channels is varied by the composer.

Some progress quickly and deeply and others are slow. Some sound more pleasant than others. Some may seem disturbing played through speakers. Some contain subliminal affirmations which I find useless.

effects
If preoccupations or anxiety levels are too high this meditation can be agitating with no useful entrainment effect. A relaxation exercise before hand helps.

The dissociation and relaxation of this meditation can be dangerous in traffic or complex situations so trance should be completely broken before leaving the safe meditation space. These meditations should not be done while driving, walking or operating machinery.

The higher frequencies can be used to become alert and focused. They may help getting out of withdrawn, foggy or dissociated states that are useful refuges from trauma but numb us into inactivity.

One can use this meditation to learn to change state any time at will. Just the memory of a binaural recording or a memory of its effects can be used to shift state.

Some of the hypnotic effects may be due to other factors:

• Listening to sounds through earphones. Cutting out ambient sounds tends to induce a dissociated hypnotic state.

• Listening to pure tones. The human system is hard-wired to feel pleasure hearing pure tones (sine waves). Noise (jagged waveforms) and discords cause a feeling of discomfort or pain.

• The pink noise of ocean or rain often used as a background to the entrainment sound can be hypnotic or relaxing.

• The inclusion of higher frequency sounds is relaxing and interesting.
  The pitch of a city and domestic machinery is lower than natural sounds and is depressing and enervating. Sound therapies usually provide a more natural mix of sounds.
  Music recordings cut out at a top of around 16KHz or less and most Hi Fi systems reproduce up to 20 -25 KHz. The effects of this truncation has been shown to induce anxiety. This varies from being subliminally irritating to being quite disturbing for those with a developed musical ear.
  The natural environment including the wind in trees contains more higher pitched sounds well up beyond the hearing level of humans. Tones above the consciously heard range affect humans and give music more presence up to about 40,000Hz.

Reflecting
How does this feel now? What has changed?. •

• mood

• endurance

• breathing

• strength

• manual dexterity

• reaction time

• problem solving

• understanding people and situations

• spatial orientation

• creativity

• health

• vision

• hearing

• smell

• taste

• need for sleep

diy
If you decide to make your own recordings the most comfortable and effective pitch (carrier pitch) of the sound is the tone that when hummed vibrates the head. This resonant frequency varies from person to person.

The beating frequencies must be below 1,000 to 1,500 hertz for the beating to be heard. The difference between the two frequencies must be below about 30 Hz otherwise the two tones will be heard separately without a beat.

Some recordings are made with the beat frequency starting at higher (at a faster rate) to resonate with the awake frequencies of the listener and gradually lowering to the slower meditative frequencies with occasional spikes of higher frequencies. This engages listeners who are starting in an alert awake state and then takes them gradually down into trance, occasionally presenting some higher frequencies to retrieve anyone who might have become distracted and drifted away from being entrained at the lower frequencies.

A fire or flickering candle has frequencies fluctuating around theta and so can be used to induce deep trance in a similar way. Also a pulsed sound or strobe light or a combination of the two.

Binaural meditation also stimulates cooperation between the right and left hemispheres.

Binaural meditation can be used to facilitate the meditations and exercises on the body, mind and stress pages.