Brainwaves and The Subconscious

BrainWaves and Your Conscious Awareness

Have you ever wondered how some people are always so cool, calm and collected, even in the trickiest of situations? On the flip-side, some people are always so excitable even when there's nothing to really get excited about. The reason for this is that people are reacting to their given situation because of the brainwave patterns that are running through their minds at any particular moment. As you read this, your brain is oscillating electrical pulses. These pulses can be measured with an EEG machine and be seen on a monitor as brainwave patterns. These brainwave patterns can be measured in hertz or cycles per second and are called frequencies. These frequencies are divided into four major categories:

Beta Brainwaves (14-32 Hz)
Beta brainwave patterns are the most common and fastest brainwave pattern. They typically range from 14 Hz to 32 Hz and beyond. Beta brainwaves are produced by your conscious mind during the normal everyday thought process and waking consciousness.

Alpha Brainwaves (7-14 Hz)
Alpha brainwaves are the 2nd fastest brainwaves and have a frequency range of between 7-14 Hz. They're the strongest and most prominent brainwave pattern (which is why they were discovered first).

Theta Brainwaves (3-7 Hz)
Theta brainwaves range between 3.5 Hz to 7.0 Hz, below Alpha. Unlike Beta, which is associated with the conscious mind, Theta brainwaves are produced by the subconscious mind.

Delta Brainwaves (0.1-3 Hz)
Delta brainwaves are the slowest of all brainwaves, ranging from 0.1 - 3.5 Hz. If the frequency of your brainwaves where to go any lower, you would be brain-dead! Delta is the unconscious level, different from Theta (subconscious mind). It's also one of the least understood brainwaves.

Let's Take a Look at these Brainwaves in More Detail...
In 1924, Dr. Hans Berger, an Austrian psychiatrist, discovered the existence of electrical waves in the brain. He called them Alpha brainwaves because they were the first electrical waves discovered in the brain. It was Dr Berger who invented the electroencephalograph (EEG), a machine which amplifies and records the electrical activities in the brain. Soon after this, scientists began discovering other types of brain waves, Beta, Delta and Theta (named in the order that they were discovered). In the 1950s researchers realized that it was possible for people to learn to control their own brainwave patterns. They discovered that during meditation we could slow down our brainwaves from Beta to Alpha, and even into Theta. This led to the development of many self-help products and techniques that claimed to be able to instantly achieve the bliss and peacefulness sought after in meditation, as well as other health and mental benefits associated with meditation.

Beta Waves and Daily Life...
The Beta brainwave is what you use to navigate and function in your daily life. Without Beta brainwaves, you would not be able to function during your conscious waking state of mind. Your brain is more than likely producing Beta brainwaves right now as you read these sentences, or when you work and focus on something. Beta brainwaves are associated with concentration, reasoning, logic, alertness and critical thinking. You use Beta waves when you need to process information, think critically, memorize, plan, schedule and organize things.

That Little Nagging Inner Voice that Never Shuts-up - Blame it on the Beta!
Have you ever thought about setting and achieving a really ambitious goal? The kind of goal that gets you really excited and enthusiastic? You're all hyped-up and ready to get started. Then, a little inner voice in your mind starts talking non-stop and asking doubting questions. "Are you sure you can do it?", "What makes you think you can?", "You've never done it before. That's beyond your capabilities", "You're not smart enough", "They'll laugh at you when you fail", etc. Or, maybe you've gotten started on your plans. However, before long, you hit some challenges or difficulties. Maybe, you're just feeling tired. Then, that little doubting, inner voice in your mind starts to come back... Before long, you start doubting yourself. Soon, you convince yourself that you can't succeed and don't even bother to try. You forget all about your plans and go back to your normal, everyday routine. Sometimes, you just wish you can tell that nagging, doubtful voice in your mind that never stops talking to just shut-up! That's actually your high Beta brainwave patterns speaking. When high Beta brainwaves are dominant in your mind, your mind goes into overdrive, thinking endlessly of things unnecessarily. If you're like most people, your mind (or high Beta brainwaves) is likely to be reliving the bad times in the past or imagining fears in the future, creating unnecessary anxiety, negative and self-doubting mind-talk.

But Beta Brainwaves aren't That Bad, After All...
After all that, it's not surprising that a lot of people think that Beta brainwaves are no good at all. However, whilst High Beta brainwaves are not always desirable, Beta brainwaves still play an important role. The Beta brainwave patterns are best for thinking, learning, focusing, concentrating, planning and scheduling events, processing and interpreting data. However, sometimes it's easier said than done to silence the "inner critic" and stop getting stressed out, especially if you have negative attitudes and habits already ingrained in your mind. So, the next time you find yourself getting panicky and flustered, just relax, take a deep breath, count to 10 and remember to slow down your brain waves. You'll feel much better for sure.

Alpha Brainwaves - a link between the conscious and subconscious mind...
Alpha waves allow you to be aware of what is happening in your subconscious mind, for example when you're dreaming or in deep meditation. Without Alpha brainwaves, you wouldn't be able to remember your dreams when you woke up. Alpha brainwaves also provide vividness and clarity to your visualizations. It allows you to clearly imagine and visualize, seeing the shape, colors, hearing the sounds, feeling the texture, the warmth or coolness of the object or your visualized surroundings.

How do you know when you're in Alpha?
Every time, you day dream, when you are about to fall asleep but not quite there yet, or when you have just woken up but are not fully awake yet, you're in the Alpha pattern. You can also slip into Alpha brainwaves when you're relaxing and enjoying the warm water in your bath or shower.

Theta Brainwaves Link to the Subconscious Mind...
Theta brainwaves are very important because they enable you to directly access and influence your subconscious mind. By doing so, you bypass your conscious mind. You see, the conscious mind often acts as a filter, and sometimes prevents you from changing your thought patterns and negative thinking. This makes it difficult to change your attitudes and negative thought patterns. In contrast, the subconscious mind blindly accepts any statement or affirmation that you give it without question, and begins to act on it immediately. So, it's much easier to clear any negative thinking, thought patterns or attitudes that you may want to change, and to install new, desirable thinking and attitudes as part of your personal development and growth. In fact, that's the basis behind self-help techniques such as subliminal messages and hypnosis. These self-help techniques work by bypassing your conscious mind and installing positive statements and affirmations directly into your subconscious mind. Your mind produces Theta brainwaves when you dream in your sleep and during the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) part of the sleep cycle. About 60% of your sleep time is spent in Theta brainwaves. You also slip into Theta during deep meditation, hypnosis or relaxation. If you quiet and slow-down your mind further during Alpha, you'll naturally go into the Theta pattern. Theta brainwaves enable you to go deep into your subconscious mind. This is where your long-term memories and experiences, creativity, deep spiritual connection and any emotional baggage is kept. Theta brainwaves are also very important in deep healing of the mind and body.

Theta BrainWaves & That "Oh-Now I Get It!" Moments...
Despite what many people think, the subconscious mind is the source of all creative ideas, inspiration and those "oh-now I get it" moments. That's why you always hear artists, writers and other creative people talk about "finding inspiration". This also applies to scientists and researchers. The typical image of scientists is that they spend all day in a lab trying to create new discoveries. However, nearly all of the life changing scientific inventions and breakthroughs have resulted from dreams, flashes of inspirations, messages, hunches and hints that scientists received when they were sleeping, relaxing, going home, doing other things instead of work periods when their subconscious minds were dominant. In fact, many of the most creative scientists in history are aware of the importance of the subconscious mind. The greatest achievements of Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison and many others have actually come about after an insight or inspiration from their subconscious mind. Clearly, the ability to use the power of the subconscious mind is one of the most important factors in determining the success of great scientists, researchers, artists, writers, etc. Imagine how much more effective you could be if you knew how to go to theta and use the power of your subconscious mind to solve your problems and challenges.

Delta - Unconscious, Intuition & Insight...
Generally people are asleep in Delta, when all the other brainwaves switch off. It's a deep, trance-like, non-physical state. People waking up during their delta sleep often feel disorientated and irritable. Delta is associated with intuition and psychic awareness. In some people, delta brainwaves are present in a waking state, in combination with other brainwaves. These people tend to have strong intuition or psychic abilities. Delta brainwaves are used as our early warning system to sense when danger is present. It's a very primal and animalistic brainwave which acts as a kind of radar. It enables you to be aware of information that isn't available on a conscious level. Delta brainwaves are also associated with deep healing of mind and body. It's been documented that certain frequencies of delta brainwaves stimulate the brain to produce many beneficial substances, including human growth hormone, DHEA and melatonin. All these substances reverses the effects of aging. At the same time, Delta brainwaves also appear to reduce the production of cortisol (a "stress hormone" which accelerates the aging process).

The Ability to Control Your Brainwave Patterns...
Many successful people have the ability to naturally control their brainwaves, even though they are not aware that they are doing it. On the other hand, most other people live their lives being controlled by their brainwaves instead of the other way around. They will often react to their situations based on their current brainwave pattern. As a result, they don't get what they truly want and don't perform as well as they should. Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you said or did something that you might have regretted later? Or have you ever tried to study and memorize something but just end up falling asleep instead? Maybe you have tried to sleep but, no matter what you do, you just can't fall asleep? Wouldn't it be great to be able to put your self in the right mind state to handle any of these situations as and when they arise? Well if you could learn to induce certain brainwave patterns then you certainly could!

Learning to Master Your BrainWaves...
You can learn to slow down your brainwaves from Beta to Alpha and other deeper states of mind. The benefits of this are obvious, you would feel more energized and refreshed and have increased concentration and focus. It's actually quite simple to learn how to do this. Not surprisingly, many self-help techniques and products help you achieve your objectives by influencing your brainwave patterns. Other techniques such as hypnosis are based on slowing down your brainwaves so that you're in a more receptive state of mind to receive and accept their suggestions and affirmations. If you can master your brainwaves, you'll be able to ensure that you are always in the most optimal state of mind to accomplish whatever task you have to do, whenever and wherever you choose to do so. Imagine always being at your best, most optimal state of mind and body to accomplish all of your tasks and achieve your goals.

All Four BrainWaves are Necessary to Master Your Mind...
Delta brainwaves tap into the external collective unconscious, the universal psyche or mind, beyond our personal self. The collective unconscious is a kind of pool of the cumulative unconscious understanding and knowledge of all humanity. Delta brainwaves provide the gateway that links to the collective unconscious and is the source of our intuition. This is different from Theta brainwaves, which provides us insights from our subconscious mind, our inner-most being and inner spirituality. Theta looks inwards and is more personally meaningful to us. Alpha then brings the messages and insights from Theta and Delta by adding imagery or visualization around the content so that the message can be understood and experienced by the conscious, waking mind. Finally, the message is processed, interpreted and acted upon in Beta, our normal, conscious, waking mind. As you can obviously see by now, you need to master all four brainwave patterns to master and harness the power of your mind. One way of mastering your brainwaves is to go to a monastery and learn to meditate for years. Problem with this is that it takes a very long time, and besides, not many people can just give up everything and go live in a monastery! It's just not practical. Another way is to rely on mind-power techniques and the more reliable self-help audio programs. The better techniques can really make a difference in your personal development and self-help journey.

BrainWaves - The Science Behind the Power of the Mind...
By now, you've learnt about the 4 major types of brainwave frequencies, their characteristics, the benefits and disadvantages of each brainwave pattern. I have also discussed the science of how these brain wave patterns achieve their benefits, including the physiological changes in your body under different brainwave frequencies. So if you want to learn to master your mind... Master your brainwave patterns!

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