Thought Spectrum

When an area of your brain is active, it produces more electricity. Wherever there’s electrical activity, there’s an electromagnetic field. This field creates resonant frequencies that communicate moods through the mind. It may be a clue as to the appeal of music, and how it resonates with our inner states so beautifully.

You feel these resonances every moment. Low frequency activity is slow, dull, like a fog – high frequency feels like stress, excitement, or a scream. All frequencies are active all the time in ever changing proportions. These resonant beats are called brain waves, and tell us a great deal about a person’s emotional state and function. This is what we work with in our practice.

Brain waves were discovered nearly a century ago, though it wasn’t given any serious study until the 1960’s when the scientific dogma of a mechanical mind was weakening. Entrainment technology (not what we do) works with this resonance, like the brain tapping along to a beat. Brainwave entrainment is how flashing lights can set off epileptic fits.

Though operating in a continuous spectrum, brainwaves are divided into bandwidths to describe their function.

Delta waves are the slowest but loudest (high amplitude and deeply penetrating). They are generated in deepest meditation and dreamless sleep. Delta waves suspend external awareness and are the source of empathy. Healing and regeneration are stimulated in this state, and that is why deep restorative sleep is so essential to the healing process.

Theta waves occur most often in sleep but are also dominant in the deep meditation. It acts as our gateway to learning and memory. In theta, our senses are withdrawn from the external world and focused on signals originating from within. It is that twilight state which we normally only experience fleetingly as we wake or drift off to sleep. In theta we are in a waking dream; vivid imagery, intuition and information beyond our normal conscious awareness. It’s where we hold our ‘stuff’, our fears, troubled history, and nightmares.

Alpha waves are present during quietly flowing thoughts, but not quite meditation. Alpha is ‘the power of now’, being here, in the present. Alpha waves aid overall mental coordination, calmness, alertness, mind/body integration and learning. Low alpha is also the resonant frequency of the planet (Schumann resonance). When we go into this resonance, we feel refreshed, in tune, in synch. Our minds return to this resonance when truly at peace.

Beta waves dominate our normal waking state of consciousness when attention is directed towards cognitive tasks and the outside world. Beta is a ‘fast’ activity, present when we are highly alert, engaged in problem solving, judgment, decision making, and high focus mental activity.

Gamma waves are the fastest of brain waves, and relate to simultaneous processing of information from different brain areas. It passes a lot of information very quickly, and is the most subtle of the frequencies so the mind has to be quiet to access it. It is highly active when in states of universal love, altruism, and the ‘higher virtues’. Gamma rhythms appear to modulate perception and consciousness, disappearing under anesthesia.