202 replies to this topic

[ironfistx]

however BWE shoudl be used cautiously if misused it can be very dangerous.

Is it possible for you to give more info about this?

I usually hear only about a drop in clarity and an increase in fogginess (not mild, like serious brain impairment) and that's from someone playing a session longer than they should have (for example, repeating the 40Hz entrainment track for hours).

Is there a correct amount to play it for safely?

[ironfistx]

I seriously doubt LBGSHI is part of some conspiracy by the government to cover it up. There's nothing wrong with skepticism. Though I do not reject the idea that the government would want to suppress methods and ideas of boosting intelligence. The dream of any power-stricken government is a dull population.

To address this idea:

Also, the side effects I'm seeing in this thread are strange. I usually hear only about a drop in clarity and an increase in fogginess

This can be made sense of. Every brain has an internal rhythm set in some manner to help it function to the best of it's ability. Some people naturally have faster rhythms, some slower. Maintaining this rhythm is the work of many systems working together.

When you use Binaural beats, you are basically forcing the brain to operate at a faster, or slower rhythm. This can indeed cause a brain-fog and lack of mental clarity, initially. This is because the brain is not used to operating at this rate. One of the systems have been tweaked by the BWE and the other systems are not calibrated to be in sync with it. This can cause a certain disharmony in thoughts, intially, until the brain can get used to this altered state.

So is that a bit like putting a turbo in your car in that you get more performance but shorten the useful period of your engine?

[Zalman]

Can i listen to many different binaural beats at the same time? Like 2hz, 10hz, 30hz and 40hz. Honestly this seems kinda strange, wats the benefit over listening to white noise (wich i sometimnes do while studying). 

Edited by Zalman, 04 August 2014 - 06:19 PM.

[tolerant]

Do you need a set of earphones to listen to binaural recordings? Or can you indeed listen through a computer using YouTube videos and such? Does the computer has to have stereo speakers? Are most modern laptops equipped with stereo speakers these days?

[tolerant]

What I don't understand is this: it seems that entrainment of various different frequencies have their own unique benefits. But you can only entrain certain frequencies "at the expense" of other frequencies. By entrainment you move your brain towards certain frequencies, which means you are moving it away from other frequencies. So if you want to achieve a state of relaxation by entraining alpha waves, you will be doing it at the expense of restful sleep which comes with delta waves. Can somebody correct me?

[River of Life]

Have you tried incorporating in other frequencies? i was thinking of the DNA frequency

528 Hz

? that might yeild further unlocking allowing your minds subconsious to use your heightened proccessing skills to "unlock your DNA"

just a theory. maybe the pineal gland frequency as well.. i beleive its 936 hz

something else i read said 288hz.. "The frequency that energizes the Third Eye is 288Hz. The word that programs the Chi/ Prana life force inside of you to activate your Third Eye / Midbrain / Pineal Gland is „M". When you pitch the word „M" to 288Hz, you not only activate but also energize; compounding the effect.".
im going to attempt to use the BWGEN as well but i figured you were at a more advanced stage than i am and have alot to do before i can get to where you are.

 

[River of Life]

What I don't understand is this: it seems that entrainment of various different frequencies have their own unique benefits. But you can only entrain certain frequencies "at the expense" of other frequencies. By entrainment you move your brain towards certain frequencies, which means you are moving it away from other frequencies. So if you want to achieve a state of relaxation by entraining alpha waves, you will be doing it at the expense of restful sleep which comes with delta waves. Can somebody correct me?

 

uhh, im new to the whole forum chat thing. but from what i understand.. the limitation is yourself. from various sources, i have read that you are... basically expanding your mind. rather than redirecting it. does that answer your question? basically if you ONLY listen to theta waves you will be SIGNIFIGANTLY stronger in that feild. and in perspective to that strength, the other waves appear weakened.
balance is key... also i would personally reccomend PHYSICALLY doing things too. like jumping jacks. (not neccassarily during) my theory behind this is like.. your putting a super compter inside a machine to make it function. what kind of machine do you want to be? i vote SUPER MACHINE. (for me motivation is an issue to getting fit)
 

[River of Life]

 

I seriously doubt LBGSHI is part of some conspiracy by the government to cover it up. There's nothing wrong with skepticism. Though I do not reject the idea that the government would want to suppress methods and ideas of boosting intelligence. The dream of any power-stricken government is a dull population.

To address this idea:

Also, the side effects I'm seeing in this thread are strange. I usually hear only about a drop in clarity and an increase in fogginess

This can be made sense of. Every brain has an internal rhythm set in some manner to help it function to the best of it's ability. Some people naturally have faster rhythms, some slower. Maintaining this rhythm is the work of many systems working together.

When you use Binaural beats, you are basically forcing the brain to operate at a faster, or slower rhythm. This can indeed cause a brain-fog and lack of mental clarity, initially. This is because the brain is not used to operating at this rate. One of the systems have been tweaked by the BWE and the other systems are not calibrated to be in sync with it. This can cause a certain disharmony in thoughts, intially, until the brain can get used to this altered state.

 

So is that a bit like putting a turbo in your car in that you get more performance but shorten the useful period of your engine?

 

 

^^ engines dont repair themselves. if you constantly upkeep your body i feel like you can probably LIVE FOREVER if you can acheive a state of mind where you can actively tell your body to repair. you (in my theory) could "reverse" age by shedding older flesh and fixing broken parts of your dna.

you have to do this all manually so it would require a rediculous amount of self awareness and intelligence (and capability)

[resveratrol_guy]

I think these binaural observations are connected a neurological iceburg, to put it mildly. I've been reading this thread and connecting it to other seemingly unrelated areas of neurological phenomena, and it's starting to feel like a technological crystalization is about to occur. I think it would be useful to begin with a summary of reported effects (which I have also experienced, so it's good not to be alone and totally crazy). These effects apply to isochronic and binaural alike, I think; obviously sound rendering issues complicate the analysis in the context of multitasking operating systems.

 

MEDITATIVE ENTRY & TECHNICAL EFFECTS

You can't just listen to the sound as though you're listening to a dial tone or a song. You have to "push back" against it, perhaps by generating the same sound using your imagination, so that some sort of intraneuronal resonance occurs. This resonance must build for seconds or tens of seconds in order to invoke the measurable gamma power amplification effect on EEG; failing this resonance, no such EEG burst would be measured IMO. The resonance may not be sufficient, but it is necessary.

Next, there is something described as "nasal pressure" or a feeling that one's head is physically expanding. This, and a flareup of goosebumps, is IMO the indicator that a meditative transition has occurred. The measurable effect of this appears to be an increase (roughly an order of magnitude) in gamma EEG power; some may experience a rough frequency doubling, as well.

Time compression is frequently reported, and I've experienced the same. It stands to reason that time perception is inversely proportional to gamma synchrony frequency, if in fact Stuart Hameroff is on the right track with his theory that gamma pulses correlate to instants of consciousness. Experiencing meditation is like living somewhere between ambient time and bullet time.

When the tone stops, there is an unmistakable deflative effect for some of us, myself included. This probably reflects a lack of proficiency with meditation; experienced practitioners should be unmoved by nonthreatening external stimuli.

 

"It doesn't work." If you don't do (at least) the above, then it's all just an annoying sound.

 

LONGTERM EFFECTS

Emotional blunting. Superficially, this contradicts the reports of experienced meditators feeling more compassionate and developing their sense of empathy. But (1) the type of meditation is paramount in this regard and (2) emotional blunting is not contradictory to increased empathy; to the contrary, it can indicate that one is making morality decisions based on more globally oriented thinking, so that dispassionate local actions might actually be prompted by a more global analysis thereof, for example, feeding the family cat on commodity cat food because feeding it fish would cause harm to fish stocks and release more CO2.

Reduced sex drive. Unsurprising. Deep meditation is better than sex.

Hearing impairment. Unless the sounds are played at painfully high volume, which would damage the auditory cilia, this is likely due to neuronal rejection of constant components of the sound, in just the same way that the eyes adjust themselves to the mean lumosity of a scene by altering pupil diameter. The effect should be reversible, if it matters.

Burnout. If you experience this, perhaps it's because you're depleting a neurotransmitter. I doubt that meditation produces significant oxidative stress above and beyond the "respiration tax".

Visual experiences. Deep meditation is IMO highly visual. Under circumstances of extreme focus and minimal distraction, it becomes the perceptile equivalent of reality itself, with all five senses firing at full resolution. Rapid visual modeling, shape morphing, temporal shifting, and sometimes higher dimensional spatial navigation is possible. IMO modeling 4 spatial dimensions is tough, but meditating topologists would probably excel in this regard.

IT'S ALL PLACEBO

Placebo is the inadvertent art of creating physiological benefit from mental processes alone. Meditation is surely that; techniques such as auditory tones which ease meditative entry are transitively placebo as well. But the effects are real, as seen on EEG, fMRI, magnetoencephalography, and even pulse rate; placebo does not mean "ineffective".

EEG evidence of an effect is weak at best. This is unsurprising. If Hameroff is on the right track, then we are upregulating macroscale quantum entanglement (perhaps mediated by dendritic pore coupling), so most of the benefits will not radiate environmentally measurable effects in any immediate sense. (In one of his videos, he mentioned a study of psylocibin (sp?), in which users reported extremely vivid meditative experiences, despite subbaseline fMRI activity, strongly suggesting enhanced entanglement and concommitant reduction in measurable ULF emission.) However, cognitive remodeling will occur over time, so improvements should be evident. I think existing studies clearly demonstrate longterm fMRI changes. But more data is needed concerning effects on areas other than emotional stability, such as working memory, response latency, etc. We have some good anecdotes, but I think we can do better in the future.

WHERE FROM HERE?

We're obsessing too much about waveform, binaural vs isochronic, power spectrum, background music, etc. Ultimately we couldn't care less about what happens to our EEG. We want global cognitive enhancement. Auditory tones are part of the answer. But ideally this should be a very personalized biofeedback process: modulate your own "neuromusic" in order to target specific enhancements. Use tools like Cambridge Brain Sciences, Lumosity, etc. to measure the effects, not to mention daily introspection. In the absence of realtime audio sculpting tools (whose use might itself interfere with the objective), we could at least try various frequencies or chords and try to measure the effects in subsequent days.

 

Simultaneously engaging in LLLT, particularly with pulsed as opposed to continuous light, might achieve synergistic benefit; to my knowledge, no one has tried this. OTOH it might be possible to blow one's brains out with exogenously driven gamma of sufficient amplitude; tweak carefully!

 

If it's essentially true that gamma frequency controls the rate of time perception, then perhaps what we really need is specialized artificial ganglia (at first, merely epigenetically enhanced neurons) which can respond to very high frequencies, so that we can experience some sort of interesting life on very short timescales. This would result in "intragevity": extending one's local lifespan independent of the surrounding temporal rate. One could imagine a Moore's Law of intragevity, whereby we could obtain clinical immortality merely by increasing the frequency of mental processing in the absence of any life extension technology whatsoever. No doubt, any such technology would exert asymmetrical cognitive influences. For example, maybe we could create a pineal gland capable of operation at 40 Hz (so it works with the rest of the brain) or 40 GHz under optical excitation; in this manner, we could be happy for millions of (local) years, despite being cut off from perceptile systems during meditation.
 

Edited by resveratrol_guy, 05 December 2014 - 03:58 AM.

[Mind]

I wish I could at least get some placebo effect from the beats...no luck. I still listen to the tones when I want to concentrate on computer work and tune out the rest of the world.

[resveratrol_guy]

I wish I could at least get some placebo effect from the beats...no luck. I still listen to the tones when I want to concentrate on computer work and tune out the rest of the world.

 

You're not the first to voice this complaint with regards to audio therapy, or meditation in general. It's most likely a matter of technique. Apart from what I described above, I don't know how I'm doing it. Anyone else have suggestions on how to enter a trance (or whatever you call it) using audio pathways? (I've spent a long time trying to analyze this in order to respond to exactly this sort of complaint, but it's not much easier than telling you what steps I go through in order to breathe.) At least, I can say that you should start by tuning out other stimuli to the maximum extent possible, and certainly to close your eyes while sitting in a darkened room.

 

For whatever reason, I find this tone most helpful (sorry for the stupid YouTube ad at the start).

 

Shiitake-maitake extract is particularly useful, at least with the visual aspects of the trance state (a few hours after ingestion).

 

Perhaps this will give you some clues...

 

Just for the sake of experimentation, I decided to try what would happen if I entered a trance state while jogging. (I like to jog in wilderness areas at night, safely away from vehicular traffic.) I had never tried this before, but as luck would have it I was jacked up on shiitake and chocolate, so I gave it a try. It was challenging to initiate because obviously this was not a particularly quiescent state. I would push the gamma resonance by listening to environmental sounds, then trying to simulate them simultaneously. I could feel the trance rising, several times, and I could suddenly see another "rainforest" world around me, transparently overlaid with the real (nonrainforest) world (rather like augmented reality, but more like dual reality). But within seconds I would return to ambient cognizance ("alphacrash") and the rainforest world would disappear. Eventually, I got it to last for several minutes, allowing me to run along a muddy trail in the rainforest, complete with thick foliage, jaguars, parrots, and river fish, amid green mountains and a distant waterfall. Ultimately, of course, I alphacrashed again, and it disappeared, leaving only a "sterile" memory of the experience. When that happens, it's not just that the "other world" disappears, it's that you can feel unmistakable physiological "regrounding" back into reality. The goosebumps disappear, time speeds up, and "that weird feeling" in your head goes away. By contrast, when in the trance, it felt a bit like trying to jog through molasses.

 

This is the difference between imagination and trance: when you imagine, you're simulating something in your head; when you're in a trance, you're there. (This is indeed a spectrum, but it's unusual to be caught anywhere in the middle (like I was last night) as opposed to the extremes.) And yes, it could very well be that "reality" is simply a trance state inside a higher-technology outer reality, but that's a whole other thread to say the least...

 

Edited by resveratrol_guy, 05 December 2014 - 07:10 PM.

[Flex]

I havent read the full thread, but has anyone considered that when You want to make sure that Your brain gets the right frequency, You should measure Your current frequency and adjust it via a program to the right one.

Means: Is it for any reason possible (e.g. wrong resonance) that when even using a certain frequency, Your brain wouldnt pick it up and You would need another one for a certain time to adjust it to the former one ?

 

If Yes, then this could be the reason why some people doesnt get any benefits.

Edited by Flex, 06 December 2014 - 05:07 PM.

[resveratrol_guy]

I havent read the full thread, but has anyone considered that when You want to make sure that Your brain gets the right frequency, You should measure Your current frequency and adjust it via a program to the right one.

Means: Is it for any reason possible (e.g. wrong resonance) that when even using a certain frequency, Your brain wouldnt pick it up and You would need another one for a certain time to adjust it to the former one ?

 

If Yes, then this could be the reason why some people doesnt get any benefits.

 

This makes total sense. Wrong frequency = no benefits (at best). But it's even more delicate than that, in addition to the probability that calibration is highly individualized. Analogously, lostfalco advises against daily LLLT, which advice is backed up by rodent research on the nonbeneficial effects of longterm daily LLLT without pause. The same hazards no doubt carry over to audio therapy. Although the power density may be less than with LLLT, we are still jacking around with neurotransmitters in a powerful way. So regimen is just as important as frequency selection. Worse still, appropriate regimen no doubt varies with brain state in some complicated way.

 

Unfortunately, we live in the dark ages of brain imaging. There's no way to see in real time when "enough is enough" in any particular region, in an economical manner. So pragmatically, we're probably down to spreadsheets and data logs in a crude attempt at biofeedback. On the plus side, audio therapy seems safe, even in excess, relative to other nootropic techniques.

 

I'm sure others here have good ideas along these lines.

 

[fairy]

Go to Gnaural's (Gnaural dload) installation folder and edit schedule.gnaural with notepad:
 

<!-- See http://gnaural.sourceforge.net -->
<schedule>
<gnauralfile_version>1.20101006</gnauralfile_version>
<gnaural_version>1.0.20110606</gnaural_version>
<date>Wed Dec  11 00:00:00 2014
</date>
<title>Gnaural Default Schedule</title>
<schedule_description>...</schedule_description>
<author>fairy</author>
<totaltime>1801</totaltime>
<voicecount>2</voicecount>
<totalentrycount>2</totalentrycount>
<loops>1</loops>
<overallvolume_left>1</overallvolume_left>
<overallvolume_right>1</overallvolume_right>
<stereoswap>0</stereoswap>
<graphview>1</graphview>
<voice>
<description>...</description>
<id>0</id>
<type>0</type>
<voice_state>1</voice_state>
<voice_hide>0</voice_hide>
<voice_mute>0</voice_mute>
<voice_mono>0</voice_mono>
<entrycount>2</entrycount>
<entries>
<entry parent="0" duration="1800" volume_left="0.50" volume_right="0.50" beatfreq="20" basefreq="100" state="1"/>
<entry parent="0" duration="0001" volume_left="0.70" volume_right="0.70" beatfreq="40" basefreq="200" state="1"/>
</entries>
</voice>
</schedule>

Basically beat frequency rises linearly from 20 to 40 Hz and so does the base frequency, from 100 to 200 Hz. totaltime is the sum of the duration of the two entries: 1800+1 s. The entries give two points in the base graph and two points in the beat graph. The respective points are connected with a straight line. Beat frequency values make sense* but I don't know how to properly choose the base frequency, so have a look at Siro/#entry563079.

From wiki (wiki/Binaural_beats): (*) The brain entraining is more effective if the entraining frequency is close to the user's starting dominant frequency[citation needed]. Therefore, it is suggested to start with a frequency near to one's current dominant frequency (likely to be about 20 Hz or less for a waking person) and then slowly decrease or increase it towards the desired frequency.

Documentation: help/schedule_format.html.

[KCzar]

Just making a contribution here,

 

Luckily for me, I stumbled across some binaural beats during some metaphysical research. Each of the beats videos were decorated with some very symbolic meaning, so it intrigued me further to try it out. (To correlate this, I was doing research on Saturn and stumbled upon the same symbolism in the videos with Binaural Beats music on YouTube. It was too good to be true really. But that's another story.)

 

The first beat I tested was Alpha 12Hz. Looking back, I felt really good while listening and afterwards. My eyes were STRETCHING open, so to speak. Everything was brighter, I wasn't tired like I normally am and I had some creative output.

 

Then I tested Beta 20Hz. Well, this is like the caffeine of Binaural beats. My limbs became lighter to move. I had so much strength, energy and motivation it was unbelievable ( just a sound is stimulating me like this? ) I do not need caffeine or other stimulants anymore simply because of this beat. It does the same thing caffeine is supposed to do but with better effects.

 

After a long day I tested out Theta 7Hz. Whoa, talk about wisdom. It was like dreaming with my eyes open, I came to many realisations without stressing to think about any particular subjects. They weren't really spectacular or relevent revelations but they were definitely things I hadn't thought of before.

 

Delta; the most useful of all Binaural beats. Tired, fatigued from the day? No problem! An hour of Delta 4Hz was the same as sleeping for 8 hours! I felt better from an hour nap than I normally did with an average nights sleep. Now, to note, I have not been able to nap... ever. I try to close my eyes and nothing happens. I didn't really rejeuvenate during those closing-eye times (what's a nap?) I can now stay up for 13 hours straight without needing to rest. If I work/workout, I listen to Delta right after to recover. Close my eyes, let my body loosen and nap for a short time to refresh.

 

Gamma is an interesting subject. I don't know what to say other than this: It sustains my state... If I feel happy when I listen or aroused then I'm kept in that state perpetually until I stop listening. On the down side, if I'm stressed, tired or upset then these states are also perpetuated until I stop listening to Gamma.

 

These are short notes and really just some simple findings. I will eventually publish a paper with all of my findings for the majority waves (Delta, Theta, Alpha, Beta, Gamma. In that order.)

 

I have made positive changes since I started listening to Binaural Beats. I have more energy, more creativity, more wisdom, more compassion. This is more of a literal Placebo effect than a simple imaginative regeneration. I am able to feel the effects of each beat within minutes, the longer I listen the stronger the effect is.

 

 

[fairy]

Amazing! Have you any experience with meditation?

[KCzar]

In short, I have never consciously tried meditation. It seems I do it while I'm napping. When I listen to Delta waves I think a lot about things mostly about random stuff. It's the period where I shut my eyes and rest to recover.

 

I would like to try meditation. I'm sure there's more to it than just closing my eyes and thinking.

 

 

[Sebbie]

As promised, here is a quick no-frills gamma MP3 I put together using SHARM to target 48Hz. It's 10 minutes long. no music, I guess the only "frill" is there is a sort of bilateral "warble" effect to make the tones less "boring" but no music or noise covering the tones.

www.mindaudios.com/download?file=GammaForLC

For anyone who's willing to give it a shot, let me know what, if anything, you get from it.

Edit: Made the link clickable

 

I know it's an old thread and probably nobody will come back to check it out... I still wanted to thank you. I've stumbled upon this conversation today, downloaded your audio file, tried it and found it AMAZING. I'm still at a loss of words to describe everything I felt but it was so good I then had to loop it three times ^^

 

What I can say is even though it's only 10 minutes, the first thing that surprised me was a feeling of being surrounded with the sound to the point it felt as if my mattress was vibrating to the wavelengths (obviously not). Then, it was just interesting to see how my mind would wander and hear voices, conversations, etc. Things that typically don't relate to anything in my everyday life, at all.

 

Then I don't know what happened but I did say I looped it three times. That's 30 minutes. But when I thought it was time to stop the experiment I was shocked to find out roughly one hour had gone by! Oh well... THANK YOU!

[RealBillPerry]

Glad you got something out of it!

[vtrader]

Have touble sleeping, tried some of the sleep binurals of youtube, nothing works. What delta are you listening to?

 

Just making a contribution here,

 

Luckily for me, I stumbled across some binaural beats during some metaphysical research. Each of the beats videos were decorated with some very symbolic meaning, so it intrigued me further to try it out. (To correlate this, I was doing research on Saturn and stumbled upon the same symbolism in the videos with Binaural Beats music on YouTube. It was too good to be true really. But that's another story.)

 

The first beat I tested was Alpha 12Hz. Looking back, I felt really good while listening and afterwards. My eyes were STRETCHING open, so to speak. Everything was brighter, I wasn't tired like I normally am and I had some creative output.

 

Then I tested Beta 20Hz. Well, this is like the caffeine of Binaural beats. My limbs became lighter to move. I had so much strength, energy and motivation it was unbelievable ( just a sound is stimulating me like this? ) I do not need caffeine or other stimulants anymore simply because of this beat. It does the same thing caffeine is supposed to do but with better effects.

 

After a long day I tested out Theta 7Hz. Whoa, talk about wisdom. It was like dreaming with my eyes open, I came to many realisations without stressing to think about any particular subjects. They weren't really spectacular or relevent revelations but they were definitely things I hadn't thought of before.

 

Delta; the most useful of all Binaural beats. Tired, fatigued from the day? No problem! An hour of Delta 4Hz was the same as sleeping for 8 hours! I felt better from an hour nap than I normally did with an average nights sleep. Now, to note, I have not been able to nap... ever. I try to close my eyes and nothing happens. I didn't really rejeuvenate during those closing-eye times (what's a nap?) I can now stay up for 13 hours straight without needing to rest. If I work/workout, I listen to Delta right after to recover. Close my eyes, let my body loosen and nap for a short time to refresh.

 

Gamma is an interesting subject. I don't know what to say other than this: It sustains my state... If I feel happy when I listen or aroused then I'm kept in that state perpetually until I stop listening. On the down side, if I'm stressed, tired or upset then these states are also perpetuated until I stop listening to Gamma.

 

These are short notes and really just some simple findings. I will eventually publish a paper with all of my findings for the majority waves (Delta, Theta, Alpha, Beta, Gamma. In that order.)

 

I have made positive changes since I started listening to Binaural Beats. I have more energy, more creativity, more wisdom, more compassion. This is more of a literal Placebo effect than a simple imaginative regeneration. I am able to feel the effects of each beat within minutes, the longer I listen the stronger the effect is.

 

[diabeticNorm]

I would first like to say what an interesting thread, with some heated debate :-P I feel compelled to add my experiences with binuaral beats/hemi-sync.

 

Firstly regarding the brainwave theory that the brain synthesises the difference between the frequencies.  I don't know enough to be able to tell you whether I think this is right or wrong.  I think one poster on here said that you can't alter brain waves because they are a product of the brain's function therefore the theory is wrong.  My response to that is that I would imagine that the sound may affect the brains function which may in turn (indirectly) alter the brainwaves.  I would agree though that the synthesising the difference idea seems a bit strange in the sense that I can't conceive of how that would happen.

 

  My main reason for posting is that I wanted to share my experience with binaural beats (the hemi sync version).  I have nearly exclusively used hemi-sync theta but also some binaural beats theta.  I will refer to them both as "binaural beats", as that is what they both essentially are.  The reason for using binaural beats is because I have had an anxiety disorder (among other things!) and I have done as much research as I can to control the disorder.  I wanted to get to "Alpha" (just above theta in this paradigm) as quickly as possible.  Theta actually (apparently) corresponds to sleep and I have fallen asleep many times as a result of listening to these binaural beats in theta range.  

 

I can appreciate that somehow it might be placebo.  If it is, then it is interesting how powerful this effect really is.  I have had periods of extreme fear and stress and I really feel that the binaural beats calms you down and it also brought me to a quality of relaxation which was just so amazing.  You just get so relaxed its like I can only describe as a pure relaxation, like a piercing relaxation feeling which can sometimes suddenly occur after a period of distress.  It really does have, placebo or whatever, a very pleasant unique quality to it, different from just feeling relaxed.  Reading about the placebo effect possibility had no effect on the effects.  Although mindfulness meditation can get you to deep relaxation and experiences which are extremely pleasant, it was different from this (not better or worse, but different).  Very useful, if you are too tired or exhausted to focus on your breath for an hour! (Meditation and binural beats are my main tools for deep relaxation).  

 

I would usually find that the effective levels of relaxation would only occur after 1 to 2 hours of use.  The longer you listen, the better it is.    Sometimes I would have to use it for three hours to feel an effect.  After some sessions of an hour or more, there would be no noticeable effect whatsoever.  It would depend on many things but one important factor is how stressed I was to start off with.  If you use it for short periods, like 30 minutes, it makes hardly any difference to how I feel.  I think this has significant implications on the results of studies where the effects of Binaural beats on anxiety were being investigated.  I wonder if the state of mind of the patients were controlled for or if the duration of a treatment session was more than 30 minutes?  

 

I would also (without fail) feel a lasting balanced feeling for many hours afterwards.  

 

 

Note: I am unsure about the idea that there are different electromagnetic brain waves ranges corresponding to differing states of mind.  I haven't seen the research.  I just accepted it for the purposes of reasoning to an outcome and it appeared to work for me.  This does not mean its real.     

 

 

 

 

[Jochen]

I am just going to throw it out here, but doesn't anyone here use CES? apologise if I missed it somehow in the thread.

 

I find this to be much 'faster' than binaural beats, and you are more likely to respond to it I guess.

There is also some research to back up it up and is cleared as a medical device by the FDA. Granted the latter part is not that convincing but it is a step.

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm....les/PMC3381625/

 

 

I am having some nice synergetic effects with neurofeedback.

 

The reason for not listening to BN is that I can then listen to podcasts, videos, ... while doing a CES session.

The opposite can of course be true: to block out external noise etc.

 

 

[diabeticNorm]

I havent seen many studies on the effects of binaural beats on anxiety.  I wonder if more research is needed.  My experience with anxiety is that there is most often something creating the anxiety and that this, certainly in the short term is a temporary fix and the anxiety will ultimately return within a period of time (although regular listening can sort of make it permanent perhaps).  I read that it can also change the brain over time as well.  

 

I have had such a severe anxiety disorder that I literally was too ill to be able to do anything like mindfulness meditation.  But if you are able to focus, then mindfulness meditation is just wonderful.  The best there is that i have found.  I also think Dale Carnegies recommendation of religion (even if you don't really believe) is spot on.  You can hypnotise yourself into believing on an innate ("automatic thinking") level even if you have doubt's on a conscious intellectual level.  Doing this hypnosis (or guided meditation as it is called) once a day really is great at relieving anxiety: www.godtalkstoyou.com.