Using Binaural Beats in Your Meditation Practices

Meditation is the practice of maintaining a state of complete mental stillness. It is through this stillness that one becomes a conduit through which inspiration and cosmic knowledge flows. Visionaries, spiritual leaders and gurus all say it – meditation is an essential part of daily life. It provides clarity, improves cognitive abilities, and helps you in remaining calm and stress-free throughout your day. But, if you're like most people, you may find it hard to meditate. The mental chatter or, as some like to call it, “the monkey mind,” is all-consuming, and despite your best efforts to stifle it, it possesses no will to simmer down.
Luckily, for those of you whose thoughts are in a state of perpetual motion, there's a fun alternative that'll finally put the clamps on that monkey's mouth, and allow you to experience all the benefits that meditation has to offer. How? By incorporating binaural beats into your meditation practices.

So what are binaural beats? To put it simply, binaural beats are sounds that synchronize your brainwaves to a certain wavelength: beta, alpha, theta, or delta. Each of these neural oscillations are associated with a different level of consciousness, and different benefits.

If you're awake and walking around, your brain is operating in beta, a frequency of about 13 - 30 Hz. This is our normal, waking brainwave level. It provides for thinking, conversing, and everything else we do when we're awake. Alpha is associated with relaxation and reflection, an inner peace, and hovers around 8 – 12 Hz. It puts you in the “chill-out” zone, like closing your eyes and relaxing while you're awake. People who are able to access alpha are said to experience better results on physical and mental tests.

Theta is a very relaxed state that is associated with meditation and some sleep states, its frequency being at 4 – 7 Hz. It is in theta that we experience extreme relaxation, enhanced creativity and innovation, and vivid mental imagery. When in theta, the human mind is very open to suggestion – so theta binaural beats can be used in self-hypnosis. The next wave oscillation is delta, which is a frequency of 3 Hz and under, and is associated with deep, dreamless sleep. Don't expect to stay awake while listening to a delta binaural beat though – you're almost guaranteed to fall asleep. Even Zen masters can find it difficult to remain conscious.

For binaural beats to work, simply plug in some headphones, listen to the audio, and experience. By synchronizing your brainwaves to alpha, theta, or even delta, you will enter a meditative state induced by the binaural beats. It's quite an interesting feeling your first few times. If you're feeling adventurous, give it a try and let us know how it worked out for you!

Want to know more? Read Get High Now (without drugs) by James Nestor.

Download the “Get High Now” app on the iPhone to experience a number of binaural beats, mind blowing audio loops, and amazing auditory illusions, or use the good old Google to find more ways to listen.

Book Review: Remember, Be Here Now by Ram Dass

Remember, Be Here Now is a book on spirituality, mediation and yoga, written by Ram Dass (formerly Dr. Richard Alpert). The book contains four sections: 


Journey: The Transformation: Dr. Richard Alpert, PhD. into Baba Ram Dass
A short biography.


From Bindu to Ojas: The Core Book
A fine mix of the spiritual, metaphysical and religious, with beautifully written words, artful typography, and thought-provoking illustrations. 


Cookbook for a Sacred Life: A Manual for Conscious Being
A manual for starting on a spiritual or yogic path, with practices for pranayama, yoga, and meditation, and quotes from well-respected spiritual gurus and visionaries.


Painted Cakes: Books
A list of recommended books on consciousness, spirituality and religion.


If you're on the spiritual path, this book is a must-read. Its words provide the reader with the knowledge necessary to live a fulfilling life, to be calm and have clarity.

Get it at Amazon today!

Creating Your Vision For Your Ideal Life

After you've set some goals for yourself, the next step is to create your vision for how your life is going to be. Creating your vision is a crucial part of the creative process, and shouldn't be skipped. Goal-setting isn't always enough. The goals you've chosen paint a picture of your new life – now it's your job to depict what that picture looks like, in a way that you can look at it every day.

There's quite a few ways to do this, and guess what? It doesn't have to feel like work. There are tons of fun and creative ways to create your vision, and you get to choose the one that works best for you.

Creative Visualization Tools:

1. The Vision Board
2. Mind Movies
3. LifeBook
4. Journaling

The Vision Board, a term coined by visionary John Assaraf, is a great tool to use for any age. It's fun, creative, and gets you thinking about what your goals look like. A Vision Board can be on anything – a bulletin board, poster board, or you can even glue or tape pieces of construction paper together to make your own. It doesn't matter, as long as you're happy with the end result and had fun doing it.

Next you'll want to take a look at that list of goals and find images that correspond to them. Surf the internet and print pictures to cut out and post on your vision board, cut pictures out of magazines, or draw. You can put scraps of colored paper or Post-It notes behind your pictures to spice it up, use glitter or virtually anything else you can think of. Once you've finished, put your Vision Board in a place where you'll see it every day. Look at it and think about what it feels like to have those things that you've put on your Vision Board, and really feel it. It's the emotion attached to your vision that's really going to bring it to you.

Mind Movies! This is one of my favorite tools. It really works. Mind Movies was created by Ryan Higgins and Natalie Ledwell, and enables people all over the world to reach their goals through motivational, customizable movies. They have the software to make these movies online, and let me tell you – you don't have to be a video editor or any sort of computer wiz in order to make this work for you. They make it easy on the user.

Mind Movies consist of photos that you either choose from their database or upload from your own computer, backed with music of your choosing and any number of present tense, positive affirmations. There's a wide variety of ones to choose from, but an example of these affirmations is “I am completely content” or “I have more than enough money.” Just watch your Mind Movie a few times a day and watch as your dreams come true.

If you don't want to pay the membership price, we suggest you try your hand at making your own. There's simple, user friendly video editing software that comes with most computers. If you're using Windows, you should have Windows Movie Maker already installed. If you're a Mac user, iMovie is a simple program to use and you should have your very own visualization movie in no time. We do suggest signing up for the mailing list at Mind Movies, as they provide you with 6 free, already made Mind Movies for your personal use. They also send a number of cool and inspiring videos, and sometimes they even have online seminars which are extremely beneficial.

Lifebook is a personal development tool created by Jon Butcher, and is a book that depicts the way you want your life to be, in all aspects of your life. This is particularly powerful for some people because it is based on their individual values, beliefs, goals, needs, and desires and encompasses twelve categories of life, so it is a very straightforward tool which allows for a clearer vision of your ideal life. These categories include your vision for your health and fitness, intellectual life, emotional life, character (characteristics/traits you want to have), spiritual life, love relationship, parenting, social life, financial life, career, quality of life, and your life vision (what it's all supposed to look like).

Jon has a program you can follow, or you can make your own, much in the same way you would make a Vision Board. Just get yourself a journal, notebook or scrap-booking book and you'll be set and ready to make your own Lifebook. Use pictures, words, and anything else you might think of to make this picture of your life-to-be.

The last tool we're going to talk about is journaling. This is definitely an option most enjoyed by the writers of our world. Basically you write the story of your life, much like you would write a fictional story, but here's the best part – it's your story for your dream that's going to come true! The key is to write everything in the present tense, and be as positive with your wording as you can. Write it how you want your life to be. Read that story every day and feel the feelings of having the life of your dreams.

Happy creating!

Check out these websites and what they have to offer:

Vision Board – www.johnassaraf.com/events-attractions/the-complete-vision-board-kit-is-here

Mind Movies – www.mindmovies.com
Lifebook – www.mylifebook.com