Silent Lifeflow

[philpot]

hi could someone explain to me how lifeflow works if it is silent i thought you had to hear something for entrainment to happen

[Itlandm]

Well, scientifically speaking your brain needs to hear the sound. You don't need to be aware of them. Most of the sound on LifeFlow (and competing products too) is not part of the entrainment. Instead the nature sounds, music etc serve to make it more pleasant to the human listener.

If you turn down the volume it will still work as long as your brain can hear the tones, even if "you" cannot. But you will eventually reach a point where there is no entrainment if you are new to that particular frequency. If you are used to it, however, your brain may still respond. This is because the body can "fill in the gaps" when it knows how something work.

For an example of just how powerful is the body's ability to learn: A study published in 2003 by F Benedetti and others injected volunteers with a drug that increases production of growth hormone and reduces the production of cortisol. After a series of injections, a harmless thin salt solution was used instead of the drug. The body then released the same hormones as it had when given the real drug. But it first needed to be shown how to do it. It is not enough to just tell people to produce growth hormone.

You may have heard that people who are given placebo pills made to look like painkillers will feel relief from the pain. But did you know that if you give them a drug that blocks the effect of the painkiller - even if they eat it without knowing what it is - the pain will return? They did not simply believe that they felt better: The body actually created the painkiller chemicals. So it is no wonder that, once you have learned how to enter a certain meditative state, you can easily enter it again without actually hearing the sounds. But first your brain needs to learn how to do it.

[philpot]

so what you are saying is that all the sounds that you can "hear" are just there so we are aware consciously that something is happening, while the real work is taking place beyond our hearing capacity but as we get more used to the particular meditative state we dont need those sounds as props and the cues are there in place in the "silent" listening.

[Itlandm]

You can hear the sounds that are used for entrainment, in the background, if you know what to listen for. But they are not the main soundscape and most people won't notice them, especially if you play softly. Once your brain has learned a frequency, it can make it with less and less sound. Eventually you won't need the sound at all, but can simply remember how it felt and you can go into that state of meditation anywhere. But this takes time, and it varies from person to person.