Better Meditation With Binaural Beats
There’s no big deal to making a binaural beats meditation. You just need a stereo headset, and listen to one frequency with one ear, and another frequency in the other ear that is almost but not quite the same. So why are some psychological and spiritual researchers making such a big deal about them? And why do they think they can improve your mental state and help your meditation get better?
When you hear two sounds at the same time that have frequencies that are almost the same, you’ll hear “beats”. The frequency of these beats is equal to the frequency of one sound minus the frequency of the other sound. One example would be having one frequency be 500 Hertz, and the other being 520 Hertz. This causes a beat with a frequency of 20 Hertz. If these two sounds are played in different ears, then it’s called a binaural beat.
There’s been a lot of research done on this phenomenon. Scientists have shown that brain waves respond to binaural beats, in a process known as “brain wave entrainment”. You can see a similar phenomenon when one guitar string starts vibrating when the one next to it is plucked. Physicists call this “resonance”. In the same way, binaural beats can stimulate brain waves with different frequencies. These different brain waves correspond to different mental states. Slower brain waves are associated with meditating, relaxing, and being creative. Faster brain waves produce mental stimulation, kind of like a mental cup of coffee. It’s possible that faster brain waves also improve memory.
Take note that it takes more than just listening to binaural beats to put you into a higher state of consciousness. There are lots of other factors which have been studied by lots of researchers, including both scientists and gurus. Breathing exercises, humming, background music and other techniques have all been used in various ways.
Interested to try it out? There are plenty of suppliers on the web who can sell you equipment to generate binaural beats meditation. You can experiment and try it out for yourself. There are also plenty of books and tapes that will give suggestions on different ways to improve your meditation.
