Hi again, TheRisingOne,
First of all, I am really pleased that you are making progress and that you have an understanding psychiatrist. It was late when I arrived home last night, however, this morning I have read through the following thread which you began last year to try and understand your situation more.
I noticed a great deal of good advice and if you have not read this, you may find it useful in the future:-
Having difficulty with new awareness
We’re all unique and what works for many does not mean the same thing works for everyone and/or every situation. One thing I do know is you are not alone. A couple of years ago I introduced a 13 year old school boy to a friend of mine. This boy had not attended school for a whole year, would hardly ever leave the house and his mother did not know where to turn. He was being sent to school psychologists and because they could find nothing wrong with him, the social welfare were about to be brought in and if he did not return to school, his father may face prison charges.
The result was, the boy had a yeast infection as well as other things. Because of this he was not getting any nutrition from the food he was eating and had a raging vitamin B deficiency.
He abstained from sugar and some other products, added particular items into his daily diet and took some nutrition which included all the B vitamins for 12 weeks.
What a difference it made – he now is the happy boy he used to be. He’s back in full time school and going out with his friends. He didn’t seem interested in meditation but enjoys Peace and Harmony or Classical Magic which I am pleased about because, like many young boys, he spends quite a bit of time on his Xbox etc.
Maybe you could ask your doctor for some really good vitamins which include all the B vitamins as these calm the neurons in the brain and nervous system. Epsom salts in a bath are also very relaxing. Please keep us informed of your progress and I wish you an abundance of peace and joy
Hi there TurkeyOnRye,
I have copied a piece for you from the following link in reply to your comment and hope you find it helpful:-
Another common misconception is that entrainment is going to force your brain into doing something beyond its native capabilities, or at least beyond what it is accustomed to doing. This mistaken belief is often the root that leads to posts on the forum that read something like, “When I meditate with Lifeflow my face gets flushed (or my hair vibrates or I develop x-ray vision, or any of the other things we so often see posted here). If I meditate without Lifeflow the face flushing doesn’t happen. Lifeflow must be causing it.”
No, it isn’t, at least not in the way the people who post these kinds of comments are thinking. Neither would any other entrainment product you could purchase for that matter. Part of the problem is the proliferation of utter nonsense about entrainment one can read all over the internet. There is one site in particular that comes to mind, and the contents of that site are often copied by other websites. It is a list of Hz frequencies with their corresponding (alleged) physical effects. The list runs on for many pages. I won’t bother with the link because you can Google it and find it for yourself if you feel the need for a good laugh, but here are some examples from this site:
3.07 Associated with hara (3cm or 1.5 inch below navel, balance of pelvis)
3.6 (a remedy for) anger & irritability
3.84 Associated with ovaries (Effects=vitality, life at every level)
4.11 Associated with kidneys (Effects=strength)
4.6 Associated with spleen & blood (Effects=Emotional Impulse)
5.35 Associated with lungs (Effects=Oxygen, Heat)
6.26-6.6 Hemispheric desync, confusion, anxiety, low Reaction Time, depression insomnia
6.88 Associated with collarbones (Effects=vitality, overall balance, stability)
9.41 Pyramid frequency (outside)
10.3 Associated With Nasal Passages (Effects=breathing, taste)
These are just a few examples. This silly list literally goes on for pages and pages, and it is pure hogwash almost without exception. Unfortunately there are many people dealing with personal problems that read nonsense like this and want very badly for it to be true. Perhaps they don’t believe every word, but they believe or hope that at least some of it is accurate information. These hopes and beliefs contribute to the generation of false expectations, so that when listening to an entrainment frequency of 10.3Hz doesn’t clear up their stuffy sinuses they conclude entrainment doesn’t work. The digestion of such foolishness is an impediment to realizing the true value of entrainment.
Michael posted a nice, short chart of the various brainwave ranges and the types of effects they generally have and what sorts of activities they may be able to enhance. There simply is nothing more detailed than what this chart contains about entrainment frequencies and what they are useful for. These elaborate lists to be found on the internet are nothing but the product of overactive imaginations.
When people begin to believe these kinds of claims it is only half a step further for them to begin to attribute all of their own curious little experiences to entrainment. After all, they reason in the back of their minds, if 3.84Hz can cure an ovarian cyst, isn’t it just as reasonable that listening to a track at 8Hz might cause the room to appear to spin and change colors? There is an old saying that suggests that the more outrageous a claim is, the more people will be inclined to believe it. Don’t fall for outrageous, ridiculous claims. If you do you're heading for disappointment, guaranteed.
Another issue has to do with our need for reassurance. Put simply, we all want to feel validated in our experiences. We come to meditation and entrainment with the idea these practices are beyond our ordinary set of experiences. This is not entirely inaccurate. They are not beyond what is “normal” but for most of us they are outside of what is “typical”. Whether we consciously seek them or not, somewhere in the back of our minds we hold beliefs that because meditation and entrainment are beyond our usual set of experiences, then the evidence that they are having some sort of effect on us must also be outside of our normal range of experiences. And so we (not too surprisingly) begin to experience “symptoms” or “signs” of something that we do not ordinarily experience. Immediately we associate these with the entrainment or the meditation. We wonder if this is something real or imagined so we often start asking others if they have experienced the same or similar things. We seek validation that our practices are producing tangible effects on us.
There are various reasons we seek this sort of validation. Many of us first try meditation to find relief from all sorts of different problems. Some seek relief from physical or emotional ailments; for solutions to personality shortcomings, such as a short temper or a tendency towards jealousy, etc. Some problems may be quite serious, even life threatening. Our search for relief may have been going on for a very long time without having found exactly what we were searching for.
It cannot be any wonder then that we are almost desperate to find some sign, some indication that our practice of meditation aided by entrainment is having tangible, definable effects. We seize on these odd little experiences like flushing of the face or seeing spirals of color when our eyes are closed, hoping these are signs suggesting the elusive relief we’ve been after is finally within our grasp. We ask others to validate our experiences so that we can reassure ourselves we’re on the right track at last.
All of this is entirely understandable, even somewhat predictable. Unfortunately, it quickly becomes counter-productive. Such experiences, while having a certain feeling of solidity to them, are largely the product of our desires and expectations. Did your face get flushed? One look in the mirror confirms it did. Was this caused by the entrainment? No, it was not. It was the result of what was sought after and what was expected or even hoped for.
Entrainment tracks guide our brainwaves into targeted ranges, but they are ranges we go through naturally many times every day. Lifeflow 10, for example, takes the brain to a 10Hz frequency. We experience this same frequency when closing our eyes and taking a deep breath, or when consciously relaxing physical tension in the body, or when we are find ourselves lost in a daydream, or when we view a beautiful sunset, or when we find ourselves caught up in an especially peaceful bit of music. If there was a cause-and-effect relationship between these 10Hz brainwaves and our face flushing, then our face should also flush when we enter that daydream, listen to that piece of music, watch that sunset, or close our eyes and relax. The same brainwave patterns are present during all those activities as they are while listening to LF-10. But these other activities don’t bring on the same face flushing.
Why not? Because the flushing has nothing to do with the brainwaves or entrainment, and everything to do with the expectations we bring to the use of entrainment. We didn’t watch that sunset with any expectations of face flushing. We didn’t have any of those expectations while listening to that music. In short, there is a cause generating the effect, but the cause is our expectations, not the entrainment.
When explaining this to others they frequently respond with something like, “But I had no expectation or even any idea that my face might experience flushing. I didn’t even know that was possible. Now every time I listen to a particular entrainment track that specific face flushing occurs. If it is a specific phenomena, and it only happens when I use one certain entrainment track, doesn’t that prove it is the entrainment causing it?”
Short answer: No.
Longer answer: We are creatures of conditioning, just like those infamous dogs of Pavlov. When we first use entrainment we may not have anything specific in mind that will happen, but we hold a general expectation that “something” should happen. As we begin the process of entrainment we are on high alert looking for any little indication that something is happening. Pretty soon we identify some feeling or twitch or unusual perception. The moment we focus on whatever it is, the act of focusing on it magnifies the thing. Since we were already viewing the situation with an expectation that it was the entrainment that was going to produce some sort of result, we automatically associate whatever our phenomenon is with entrainment. Afterwards we think about it some more. We examine every little nuance of the experience. We talk about it with others. We discuss it on forums like this one. We seek (and usually find) validation in the opinions of others.
After fixation upon our phenomenon takes place, what started out as a random perception is now cemented into our experience of, and is conditionally associated with entrainment. We condition ourselves to relive the same experience associated with entrainment each time we use entrainment. It isn’t random any longer. It is explicit conditioning, and it repeats as predictably as the sunrise using entrainment as its new trigger.
Some would argue, “But what I experienced is unpleasant. It isn’t something any intelligent person would want to experience. It makes no sense that I would want to experience it over and over again, or that I would go looking for it when it’s clearly something undesirable.”
The thing about conditioning is, it doesn’t matter whether the conditioned response is pleasant or unpleasant, desirable or undesirable. The process of conditioning works just as well both ways. You went looking for any indication you were getting an effect by using entrainment and you happened to have an unpleasant experience that you focused on. To the mind it is irrelevant whether it was pleasant or unpleasant. One way works just as well as the other. But the fact remains; it was your general expectations that resulted in a specific situation of conditioning.
This is not to say that entrainment cannot produce some physical effects, particularly negative ones. It is possible to induce epileptic seizures using entrainment, especially visual entrainment that employs flashing lights. That’s why people with seizure disorders are uniformly told to consult with their health care provider before using entrainment if they have a seizure disorder or some other serious medical condition.
It is also possible that some people experience headaches which are almost always the result of the binaural waves. Fortunately Lifeflow can also be used without headphones, since it contains not only binaural waves but other forms as well. If you’re one of the people who suffer from headaches using entrainment, you can take off the headphones and use Lifeflow over open speakers. This usually solves the problem.
Our brainwave states are natural. Guiding the brain into those states intentionally by using entrainment is just another way of experiencing those same natural states. Nothing “unnatural” is produced by the brain as a result of using entrainment. The only thing that is different is that when using entrainment we often go into the experience with either general expectations, or a well defined laundry list of specific expectations that we associate with entrainment. We have no such list going throughout our normal day when we’re not using entrainment.
Other than that the experience of those brainwave states is no different. Once we achieve a particular brainwave state using entrainment there is one significant difference to the experience and that is that we are usually still at a high level of consciousness. We’re not (hopefully) zoned out as we are when daydreaming or unconscious as we are when we’re sleeping. We maintain awareness and therefore we get to consciously experience what those brainwave states feel like in some detail.
Whenever we become very relaxed and the usual chatter of the mind slows down a little bit, if we remain aware and do not slip into sleep or unconsciousness, we begin to perceive things that we had not noticed before. This is slightly different than the issue of “expectations” discussed previously, although a relationship to them can develop which will be discussed below. These have to do with the fact that in our typical state of consciousness our mind is racing so fast and so loud, and our body is so engaged with activity and physical tension, that we are unaware of some subtle perceptions that are there all the while, but which get buried beneath all the physical and mental noise.
Initially these are not caused by expectations per se, but if we focus upon them, fret over them, fixate on them, discuss them with others, etc., they will quickly become yet another form of conditioned response, just like those discussed previously. They, too, will then take on the illusion of a “cause-and-effect” relationship.
Here’s a link to the complete article if you would like to read more:-
Principles of Meditation & Entrainment
Wishing you an abundance of peace and joy
PTSD/Depression on Wellbutrin Meditations - Terrible experience
HI there TheRisingone
Linear Mode
