Your brain on meditation: Brain waves
Increase creativity, improve memory, access your intuition & take yourself into a healing state by understanding your brain waves.
Read the article (under 3mins) or listen to the video below, enjoy!
Your brain is constantly emitting electrical activity in the form of brain waves. There are 5 types of brain waves, each one has it's own functions & elicits different ways of thinking, being & behaving.
From lowest to highest frequency they are: Gamma, Beta, Alpha, Theta, Delta.
Let's explore them each a little.
Gamma: The highest frequency, gamma waves elicit a highly focused state. In this state you are at your peak performance & are better able to process information & remember it. If you're super interested in a topic & placing all your focus on understanding, you're likely in gamma.
Beta: Most of our time is spent in beta waves. Here you are alert & processing information, such as through reading, writing & speaking.
Alpha: Now here's where meditation comes in. Here is where your brain waves start to slow down from your usual state, your thoughts slow down too & you enter a relaxed state. You are no longer singularly focused on a task & you may notice spontaneous thoughts arising (& going).
According to professor Ellingsen this spontaneous wandering "represents a kind of mental processing that connects various experiences and emotional residues, puts them into perspective and lays them to rest."
This is process is further enhanced during meditation through the instruction to watch thoughts & let them pass.
This state is sometimes referred to as 'wakeful rest' & is where we have greater access to creativity & visualization.
Theta: Now in deep meditation or relaxation, you start to produce theta waves. Here we move away from the thinking mind & enter a more expansive state of consciousness. Our ability to encode things into memory is also enhanced here.
Delta: The lowest frequency state. For most people, this occurs only during dreamless sleep. In this state you may feel in a state of non-attachment. Interestingly, very experienced meditators with decades of practice, have been found to be able to maintain this state while awake. This state is also where our body & mind begin the process of healing.
So, what happens during meditation?
During meditation, your mind begins to slow down, as do your brain waves. You have the opportunity to move away from the usual beta waves & instead move into & prolong your time in alpha & possibly theta waves.
This is a move away from our usual patterns of thinking and behaving.
The longer we can stay here, the more we are able to familiarize ourselves with new ways of Being.
Interestingly, different types of meditation will have slightly different effects. Yoga Nidra in particular, due to the increased relaxation response (vs. regular meditation), allows you to enter these deeper brain wave states faster.
During seated meditation, most people begin to enter alpha waves after about 20 minutes. Comparatively, during Yoga Nidra, you could enter alpha waves in as little as 5 minutes.
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