Brain Waves 101 Revisit 2024
Different brain waves are associated with different functions in the body. When our brain waves are slower we have more of a tendency to be creative and productive along with increased ability to rejuvenate through lengthening telomeres and increased stem cell activity.
When we are in the zone working our brain waves slow down to about the same as that of meditation — the alpha brain wave.
Whereas the beta brain wave is a faster brain wave and is the brain wave we are in when we are working and doing busy ness in our days. In the active beta brain wave we don’t do much rebuilding, we do more thinking. It is our consciousness that we live out of most of our days. While its not bad, and quite necessary to spend some time in Beta brain waves, Continual high frequency processing is not a very efficient way to run the brain, as it takes a tremendous amount of energy.
Our brain needs to ‘reboot’ at times, it can not reboot when it is in high frequency processing all day.
Brain waves effect our physiology. I have been starting to see a “snapshot” of what happens to several different mechanisms on our body when we get tweaked — lets look at heart rhythms, brain waves, and our DNA under stress:
We know our heart rhythm is effected by our mood — and our heart rhythm effects how our brain operates – as we learned from HeartMath about coming into “coherence”. Here is a reminder of what we learned from HeartMath:
- When under stress our heart rhythm (using heart monitors) is erratic and disordered — these erratic signals travel on the neurons from the heart to the brain limiting our ability to think clearly, remember, learn, reason, and make effective decisions.
- In contrast the more ordered and stable patterns of the heart’s input to the brain has the opposite effect – it facilities higher cognitive functioning that benefits the entire body and also profoundly affects how we perceive, think, feel, perform.
And our brain waves do this as well, it can be seen on EEGs when we are stressed our brain waves became erratic vs. when we are happy and calm they smooth out nicely.
Our DNA does this too!
- When we are stressed our DNA literally closes up – gets tight — and does not function optimally.
- When we are happy or relaxed, our DNA in turn relaxes and opens up where it can perform its healthy functions.
Pay attention — when we get “tweaked” it literally effects our health in many different ways. You want to “choose your battles wisely” — and don’t let others tweak you too often.
Brain Wave Coherence (from EEGs)
We want a smooth pattern to our brain waves — and coherence between the portions of our brain.
The yogis figured this out a loooooooong time ago … how? Who knows! Now with biofeedback EEGs, and heart monitors we can see different types of pranayama exercises shift our brain into different wave patterns.
Brain waves speed up or slow down depending on what we are doing and thinking — both our physical and mental activities can effect our brain waves.
- As we become more calm and slow down our thinking brain waves slow down too.
- As we become more active in thinking they speed up.
When our brain waves are slower these are some of the ways they effect our physiology
- Better mental resourcefulness and better mental coordination
- lower blood pressure, heart rate, and lower levels of stress hormones
- DNA replication become more efficient
As the brain waves get slower
- Creativity and Intuition increase
- Learning and memory improve
- Stem cell activation improves!
- Importantly, certain frequencies stimulate the reproduction of stem cells, while other frequencies cause the stem cells to migrate and adhere where needed. To use stem cells for healing, those are the three things required: replication, migration and adhesion, and all three can be triggered through meditation.
As they get Slower and slower
- Brain efficiency increases improving mental performance
- Cellular regeneration
- Telomere lengthening happens
- Empathy increases
Brain Waves 101:
- Beta waves are the thinking, problem solving brain waves we use most of our days — at least those of us with brains.
- Beta waves are during normal wakeful activity, it is a higher frequency at 13-36 HZ
- Beta is a ‘fast’ activity, present when we are alert, attentive, engaged in problem solving, judgment, decision making, or focused mental activity. Excerpts from: https://brainworksneurotherapy.com/what-are-brainwaves
- Beta brainwaves are further divided into three bands; Lo-Beta (Beta1, 12-15Hz) can be thought of as a ‘fast idle’, or musing. Beta (Beta2, 15-22Hz) is high engagement or actively figuring something out. Hi-Beta (Beta3, 22-38Hz) is highly complex thought, integrating new experiences, high anxiety, or excitement. Continual high frequency processing is not a very efficient way to run the brain, as it takes a tremendous amount of energy.
- Alpha waves are the light meditative state — sustain it for 15 seconds and you are “meditating” 🙂 Alpha is during rested, relaxed, meditative states at 8-13 Hz
- (From the Daily Mind) Alpha Waves: Healthy alpha wave production supports mental resourcefulness and better mental coordination. The presence of alpha waves is indicative of a general state of relaxation and relief from weariness. Many believe that alpha waves are the bridges between consciousness and unconsciousness. Meditation synchronizes alpha activity between the four regions of the brain: left, right, anterior and posterior. This effect positively correlates with creativity.
- The presence of alpha waves is a sign of deep relaxation, without requiring the mind to be empty—they characterize wakeful rest. Alpha waves also promote calming changes in the nervous system. The result is lower blood pressure and heart rate and lower levels of stress hormones that are conducive to a calm mind.
- In the alpha state we are more present.
- Nose breathing and yoga increases alpha brain wave activity. (Mouth breathing exercise produces a significant amount of beta brain waves that are associated with a stress response).
- Theta Brain Waves – this is the deep meditative brain wave. They occur during during deeper meditations and light sleep – during the twilight phase between as we wake or drift off to sleep. Our brain also slows down to theta waves when we practice imagery or visualization. They are at 4-8Hz.
- Theta waves enhance creativity and intuition. Theta waves are our gateway to learning and memory. In theta waves we withdraw our thinking from the external world and focus on signals originating within. Theta waves are the 5th limb of the yogic 8 limbed tree – pratayahara or the withdrawal of senes.
- Theta waves are said to help open the “third eye” increasing awareness.
- Theta waves promote inner awareness and give us access to our unconscious thinking patterns.
- Theta waves increase stem cell production.
- In theta we are in a dream; vivid imagery, intuition and information beyond our normal conscious awareness. It’s where we hold our ‘stuff’, our fears, troubled history, and nightmares.
- Yoga increases Alpha and Theta brain waves
- Delta Waves: These waves are characteristic of sleep — deep dreamless sleep, unconscious. Extremely slow, but loud brain waves at .5-4 Hz, low frequency but deeply penetrating. Maybe very experienced mediators can find delta waves in the waking moments.
- Delta waves suspend external awareness.
- Increases in delta waves is associated with higher brain efficiency and may improve mental performance and health.
- Delta waves will cause a decrease in the stress-producing hormone, cortisol.
- Delta brain waves increase cellular regeneration and telomere lengthening supporting healing and regeneration. This is why deep restorative sleep is so healthy for us.
- EFT tapping meditations increase delta waves
- Delta state is the kundalini state. Fusing of mortal mind w/ the divine mind.
- The delta state is a source of empathy.
- Infra-Low are known as Slow Cortical Potentials that underlie our higher brain functions. They are so slow they are difficult to detect and measure. They are <.5Hz They appear to play a role in brain timing and networking. Very little else is known about them.
And then there is the new Brain Wave on the block:
- Gamma brainwaves. They are the fastest wave with a high frequency (like a flute) and are able to process information from different brain areas simultaneously. They pass information rapidly and quickly.
- They are the most subtle of brain wave frequencies, your mind has to be quiet to access gamma waves.
- It is thought they help modulate perception and consciousness.
- Gamma waves are only active in states of universal love, altruism, and higher virtues. This could be why it took so long to discover them.
- Gamma brainwaves are the “download” brain waves —when a master of some type learned something as a download from the universe — it is in the gamma brain waves this happens
- Gamma brain waves were thought of as “spare brain noise” (just like scientists used to call our RNA junk DNA).
- Gamma waves are above the normal frequency of neuronal firing so how they are generated still remains a mystery. It is theorized that a greater presence of gamma waves is related to a higher consciousness.
- Gamma is the wave length of happiness and integration.
Gamma is the brain wave of integration.
Integration is important — whether it is a fun experience or one of loss or grief — we need to digest and integrate our life experiences so we can move forward in our life.
In my herbal medicine circles there is always a lot of talk about how digestive herbs not only help our body digest food — they help our mind and emotions digest experiences so we can grow.
Gamma waves are our brain waives of higher consciousness —and of happiness 🙂
How can we integrate or shift into gamma brain waves? We have tools 🙂
#1 is perception! Your perception can effect your brain waves. How are you perceiving your life? If you perceive your life as being a vehicle for higher consciousness you may be encouraging gamma brain waves.
#2 Bhastrika! The pranayama bhastrika or bellows breath produces brain waves similar to gamma waves — our brain waves of higher integration and higher consciousness.
Bhastrika initially gives one a sensation of excitation (due to its effect via EEG on activating temporoparietal cortical area brain waves) followed by emotional calm and higher mental alertness.
Bhastrika is fun to do and has many other benefits including those of all yoga and meditations like reducing stress, heart rate, and blood pressure, in addition bhastrika offers us:
- Quicker reaction time
- decreased distractibility
- greater aerobic performance
- Better focus
- Reduces physical, mental, and emotional blocks (according to yogic lore).
What does all this mean? What mind to matter — or minding your mind stuff shows is that our consciousness has an enormous effect on our cells. This is a big leverage point for you health! Don’t ignore your brain stuff — Your thoughts effect your biology.
What this is also showing is is that we can consciously shift our brain wave patterns into healthier wave lengths. How? Stay present, increase your awareness of when you are spinning stories in your mind.
A tip to stay present
- When you are doing daily activities of living such as putting the dishes away; put your tongue on the roof of your mouth, take your breath deeper and slower, maybe even breathe in rhythm with your movements. And Smile 🙂
Research finds when you start your day with a short meditation you encourage synchronicity within the regions of your brain. By slowing down your brain waves your problem solving ability goes up 260%, creativity doubles, and productivity increases.
When your brainwaves are out of sync it is associated with emotional and neurological conditions.
- Over arousal in some areas is linked to anxiety, sleep problems, nightmares, OCD, anger/aggression, and chronic pain.
- Under arousal in certain areas leads to depression and ADHD.
- A combination of over arousal and under arousal — which is instabilities in your brain waves or brain rhythms correlate with tics, bruxism, panic attacks, bipolar disorder, migraines, narcolepsy, epilepsy, sleep apnea, vertigo, and tinnitus.
Here is research from Dawson Church on brain waves and stem cells:
“Research shows that when you expose cells to a frequency of 7.81 hertz (theta and delta), DNA replication becomes far more efficient. Importantly, certain frequencies stimulate the reproduction of stem cells, while other frequencies cause the stem cells to migrate and adhere where needed. To use stem cells for healing, those are the three things required: replication, migration and adhesion, and all three can be triggered through meditation.
The more I learn about the body the more amazed I am at its healing capacity — it is a self healing machine! They body heals naturally if you give it what it needs.
Pay attention to your thoughts and words to increase your healing potential. Any process that changes your perceptions can change your brain waves. You want to think thoughts that synchronize your brainwaves and areas of your brain.
When times get tough it can be easy to fall into negative thinking patterns and detrimental self talk — kind of like our brains default mode network – which takes over and subconsciously keeps us in a negative pattern.
With consistent meditation and practicing awareness — catching yourself when you start the negative self talk or brain chatter and replacing it with uplifting thinking, its possible to retrain your brain to a more positive default mode.
When you are going about your day — be aware of what your are doing, one thing at a time. If your mind is spinning while you do the dishes or take a shower you won’t be creating slower brain waves where healing and regeneration happen —instead you’ll support the aging process.
We can also use Nature
EEG allows researchers to see how different scents impact brain wave patterns and their associated mental states.
The specific measured changes in brain waves align with observed psychological effects of certain scents and their essential oils; for example lavender increases alpha brain waves. Both lavender and alpha brain waves are associated with the relaxation response.
By documenting alterations in brain waves from various aromatic plants we can use plants and essential oils to induce physiological, emotional, and psychological/cognitive changes. Different scents have distinct neurological actions allowing us to use nature to help with conditions like anxiety, depression, and insomnia.
- Lavender increases alpha waves and is supportive of reducing anxiety, improving mood, and supporting sleep.
- Peppermint increases alertness y decreasing theta waves. Peppermint has been shown to improve cognitive performance and attention.
- Rosemary decreases beta and alpha brainwaves, giving us a clear minded alertness. It counteracts mental fatigue and boosts cognition. It is also used to enhance memory.
- Ylang ylang supports alpha and theta brain waves increasing relaxation and tranquility. Has such a sedative effect that it may impair memory and cognition— in doing so it also supports sleep.
- Lemon activates attentional networks in the brain by reducing alpha and beta waves. It supports calmness, reduces anxiety, improves mood, and increases motivation, energy, and focus.
The brain is so powerful it doesn’t need scents or other support if you can control your thoughts. The brain can simulate being in the woods just by looking at a picture of the woods or even just imagining yourself there. Until you have that strength of mind you have yoga and nature to support you
More on brainwaves in my next blog “Flow and Awe”