In the last article I talked about stress. Stress, you may recall, is the result of prolonged activity of the sympathetic nervous system. It is the curse of our age. We live in an age of information and because of the operation of supply and demand, a lot of our daily dose of information is bad news. Part of the reason for this is that a mild dose of adrenalin is arousing or exciting. So, hearing about a very scarry situation that doesn’t actually affect us personally is stimulating and excites us. Not unlike watching an action-adventure film or playing a computer game. But when added to real situations that actually affect us, the effect is accumulative. To put this in perspective, if the current pandemic happened 300 years ago, you might only be aware of anything significant happening if a local doctor mentioned that there had been more old people dying of pneumonia this year than was usual. I’m not underplaying the seriousness of the illness for many younger people, but if you lived in a village of a thousand people you might have one younger person get very ill, that would not be significant enough to overly worry you. Now we know about every conflict or riot that happens worldwide. There is more information in one edition of the times than a medieval man would have read or heard of in a lifetime. A lot of this information will cause us to become alert to danger or stressed. We can easily find ourselves in an almost permanent state of alert in which the sympathetic nervous system is activated, preparing us for a quick response to a type of danger that never materialises.
Meditation is one of the very best ways of dealing with this stress. I could mention Self Hypnosis at the same time, because the brain state is essentially identical to that induced by meditation. We are talking about a low Alpha wavelength or even a Theta state. If you are not familiar with this idea, I’ll summarise what you need to know to make sense of what I’m writing about. The brain is an electrochemical organ. The electrical activity of the brain is usually described as brainwaves. There are four general classifications of these brainwaves, ranging from the highest frequency to the lowest. When the brain is aroused and actively engaged it generates waves in a frequency of 15 – 40 cycles per second, but of a relatively low amplitude. This range is typical of someone debating, teaching, giving a speech or hosting a game show. This range is classified as the Beta wavelength range, or as a Beta brain state.
Slower than the Beta range is the Alpha frequency range. In an Alpha state the frequency ranges from 9 to 14 cycles per second, but with a higher amplitude. A person taking a break from work, who takes a leisurely walk in a garden, is often in an Alpha state. This is the normal range for most people’s meditation, until they have achieved a degree of mastery.
Theta brainwaves, are of slower frequency but much greater amplitude. This frequency range is classified as between 5 and 8 cycles a second. This is the state that hypnosis will generally induce. When you are glazed over and just staring out of the window and someone askes you what you are thinking about and you realise that you were thinking of nothing, you are in Theta. When you are driving on a motorway and realise you can’t remember the last 10 miles, you were in Theta. What is fascinating about this state, is that you will often get a flow of great ideas. It is as if your unconscious mind is more open, or better able to communicate, because your more conscious mind has shut up and stopped its constant chatter. People often say that their intuition is more active in this state. Repetitious mantras or prayers, that you know so well they require no active or conscious thought, are often used to induce a Theta state.
For the sake of completion, I will mention Delta waves. These are generally in the range of 1.5 – 4 cycles per second and you will be asleep. At the lower end of this range, you are in deep dreamless sleep. If you ever get down to 0 cycles, you will be pronounced brain dead.
What do we know about the benefits of meditation? I shall summarise some of the results of the tens of thousands of scientifically conducted studies into meditation.
Brain electrical activity slows down and brain waves slow down to low Alpha or even Theta.
The sympathetic nervous system reduces activity and this is mirrored by an increased activity in the parasympathetic nervous system, which regulates heart rate, breathing and the other involuntary motor functions. This includes, but is not limited to, a reduction in cortisol, adrenalin, blood coagulant, heart rate & blood pressure, an improvement in peristalsis (the process of moving food through your digestive system) nutrient uptake and an improvement in the immune system.
Meditation increases relaxation, not only when meditating, but during the rest of the day.
Improved accuracy of perception. This has been demonstrated by a tendency to be less fooled by optical or other illusions.
Need for less sleep, because much of the bodies recuperating processes can function during meditation.
Less stress as reported by people in clinical trials.
Evidence of marked decrease in the thickness of artery walls.
Significantly reduced risk of stroke and heart attack.
Less depression, anxiety, anger and confusion.
More energy, fewer heart and gastrointestinal problems.
If you have listened to any of my guided meditations and if you have any background in hypnotherapy you may well have noticed that I use a number of linguistic devices generally used for hypnosis. It is important to understand that no one hypnotises you; they guide you into consciously shifting yourself into a slower brainwave state. The best hypnotherapists are teaching you how to meditate, even if neither you nor they know that’s what they are doing. The best guided meditation is teaching you how to enter into a state of hypnosis, again, whether either of you know that’s what’s happening. I have met someone who told me that when they go fishing, they can stare at the water rippling for hours, lost in the moment. They said that hours can fly past when they haven’t even considered the float, but they’d been totally relaxed and daydream a bit. They were also someone who wouldn’t go to a hypnotherapist or use “strange eastern meditation mumbo-jumbo” practices. These practices may have developed in different ways, but whether you call it ‘relaxing, staring at a river,’ ‘self-hypnosis’ or ‘meditation.’ I can assure you, you are inducing the same brain state. The biggest difference is that the angler is not deliberately using his brain state to produce changes in his thinking process; any benefit is accidental and haphazard rather than planned.
What I do, in the Guided Meditation, is simply enable you to achieve this low frequency, high amplitude, brain state and show you how to consciously and deliberately use it for personal development.
