What is Brainwave Entrainment?

Brainwave entrainment is a rather unfriendly word for a simple and very natural process. The dictionary tells us that "entrain" means to follow. So "entrainment" means to cause one thing to follow something else. brainwave entrainment means that we cause brainwaves to follow something, for example a beat.

Why should we want to do that, you may ask. Well if we can induce your brainwaves to change their rhythm and adopt the rhythm we are offering it, then we can make a huge difference to you.

Brainwaves are the electrical pulses that your brain creates at all times of the day and night. When the brain receives a stimulus, through the ears, eyes or other senses, it emits an electrical charge in response, called a cortical evoked response.

These electrical responses travel through the brain to become what you see and hear and feel. They also govern how your body reacts to any stimulus.

So if you can change the stimulus then you can change the way your body reacts. Brainwave entrainment changes the stimulus so that your body reacts in a different way. So if you are all stressed out and anxious your body is reacting to that. The brain response to anxiety is to produce fast waves, called high beta waves, which can be demonstrated on an EEG.

It has been found that if you can slow the brain waves down this results in calming the body too. Meditation is one of the ways in which people slow down their brain waves in order to calm their minds and bodies. The idea in meditation is to produce alpha waves. Brainwave entrainment can do the same thing.

This Is What Happens in Brainwave Entrainment

When the brain is presented with a rhythmic stimulus, such as a drum beat for example, the rhythm is reproduced in the brain in the form of rhythmic electrical impulses. If the rhythm becomes consistent enough, it can start to resemble the natural internal rhythms of the brain, called brainwaves.

When this happens, the brain responds by synchronizing its own electric cycles to the same rhythm. This is commonly called the Frequency Following Response (or FFR).

FFR can be useful because brainwaves are very much related to mental state. For example, a 4 Hz brainwave is associated with sleep, so a 4 Hz sound pattern would help reproduce the sleep state in your brain.

The same concept can be applied to nearly all mental states, including concentration, creativity, learning and many others. It can even act as a gateway to exotic or extraordinary experiences, such as a numinous experience or lucid dreaming states.

The MP3 Downloads and Brain Waves

So brainwave entrainment means that you can change your mental state to one which you desire. In our brainwave entrainment audios the music that you hear has the desired frequency embedded in it. You may be able to hear this tone or beat if you listen carefully, but we have made it as unobtrusive as possible because a loud beat can be annoying.

The aim of the audios is to coax your brain waves into the frequency associated with the mental state you desire to achieve.

When we are wide awake our brain waves pulse at a faster rate than when we are relaxed. We call the waves made at this faster rhythm Beta waves. When we are relaxed but still awake our brain waves slow down to a much lower frequency and produce waves that we call alpha waves.

So lets imagine that we want to help you to relax. We would ask you to listen to one of our relaxation audios in which we have embedded the beat that will produce alpha waves. As you sit back and relax and listen to the audio your brain waves slow right down and begin to produce alpha waves.

Research has found that as the listener relaxes and the brain begins to produce alpha wave other bodily processes controlled by the brain also began to slow down. The heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, respiration rate and muscle tension all slow down.

What Else Can Brainwave Entrainment Help Me With?

Relaxation is just an example. There are many different rhythms that can be induced in your brain using brainwave entrainment audios. In Asian countries brainwave entrainment is used for increasing ability to learn. So fo rexample, listening to our "Accelerated Learning" MP3 can help you to remember what you are studying.

If you have questions about brainwave entrainment not answered here you may find the answer in the brainwave entrainment FAQ

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