Brain Wave Entrainment For Beginners - What is Brain Wave Entrainment? By Jon Beebe

There are lots of complex definitions and technicalities surrounding brain wave entrainment, but I feel as though the internet lacks a very simple, yet understanding explanation of the whole thing. For the sake of this article; however, I'll focus on only one type of brain wave entrainment, and that's entrainment through the use of audio. If I had to describe brainwave entrainment in just a few sentences, I would say:

Brain wave entrainment through sound audio is a simple audio track that has audible "pulses" embedded in with either soft music or nature sounds, for the sole purpose of causing your brain to enter a specific frequency. Your brain operates on different "brainwave frequencies" depending on the physical or mental activities you are engaged in, and these frequencies can be altered or changed by applying a repeated stimulus for only a few minutes.

When you are exposed to brainwave audios, the audible pulses are spaced out evenly, and what determines how much time is between the pulses will determine the frequency range that your brain will "clone" or "entrain" itself to.

How Do We Know About Brainwave Frequencies?

EEG Machines can "scan" the brain and measure different frequency ranges that the brain is currently in. While performing certain physical or mental activities and the various mental states (physical activity, reading, writing, sleeping, anger, sadness, etc.), the frequencies among everyone's brain are consistent. So when someone has been focusing and is in deep concentration for a period of time, their frequency range would be the same for someone doing the same thing.

The problem is, your brain might not always be in the right frequency range for certain activities, or you may be in a frequency range that stimulates anger, when you most likely would want to be "happy" if you had a choice.

Brain wave entrainment allows you to change your brain's current frequency, and experience a higher concentration of it at the same time. So, for example, someone who has been reading a book and focused for a long time would not be AS focused as someone doing the same thing but listening to a brain wave entrainment audio designed specifically for the purpose of promoting deep focus and concentration.

What is brain wave entrainment? It is a powerful tool for self-improvement that anyone can benefit from, and it is completely safe and extremely effective.

To learn more about brain wave entrainment, and to access a growing library that provides brain wave audios for nearly any benefit you can think of (increased brain power, memory enhancement, concentration, caffeine replacement, etc.).

Please visit EntraimentLab.com to view the growing library of brainwave entrainment audios, which come in different session lengths and all use high quality isochronic tones.

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Jon Beebe - EzineArticles Expert Author

Violence - When We Lose Touch With Our Soul By Peter Vajda, Ph.D

"Speak when you are angry and you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret." Ambrose Bierce

All violence - overt, subtle, verbal, physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual, etc. is about one issue, and one issue only power. Generally, violence manifests in three ways: our actions, our words and our thoughts.

At work, at home, at play and in relationship, people tend towards violence when they feel threatened and powerless. A threat can be real or perceived. Folks resort to violence as an inappropriate way to re-establish their own sense of power over someone or something they perceive as a threat.

There are three kinds of violence: one, through our deeds; two, through our words; and three, through our thoughts.

At the very heart of violence is a disconnect from one's soul. When we disconnect with our soul, it's due to an emotional disturbance. How so?

There are two parts of our brain that do not operate together: the prefrontal cortex and the limbic brain. The prefrontal cortex of our brain is the "executive" functioning part, where we engage in rational thought, decision-making and logical thinking. When we're connected to our soul, we are orienting to, and focusing on, our experience through this part of our brain. To maintain this connection and focus, we need to be in a place of peace where we're not being combative or defensive in thought, word or deed.

Our limbic brain engages when we sense a real or perceived threat and we experience fear. In a state of fear we move into a fight, flight or freeze reaction. Fear causes us to disconnect from our prefrontal cortex. When we're afraid, we cannot think logically, rationally, or compassionately. Being fearful blocks most people from contacting the prefrontal cortex. When people are afraid, they do not think creatively, compassionately or independently. This kind of thought requires the use of the higher brain.

Those who have a well-developed prefrontal cortex can most often cope with real or perceived threats. Those with a less developed prefrontal cortex (and note that incessant engaging in electronic interactions Twitter, Facebook, IM, video-games, etc., - prevents us from developing our prefrontal cortex) react rather than respond.

Those who have developed their prefrontal cortex are often able to cope with threatening situations can be "cool under fire." These days, it seems that these folks are few and far between.

When we encounter a threat, when our higher brain wants to engage and our primitive, limbic, defensive brain is activated through fear, we have a conflict which usually results in our experiencing a heightened state of stress, anxiety, chaos, confusion and depression. In this mental-emotional state, our natural tendency is to seek "relief." Violence is one way we attempt to seek relief. Violence helps us act on, and discharge, the tension.

The good news-bad news dynamic of violence is that violence can give us an immediate release of the tension but the underlying cause, the fear, remains. Until and unless we confront our fear, and deal with it consciously and directly, we will not experience inner peace or well-be-ing. We'll remain disconnected from our soul, from our True and Authentic Self.

"The root of all violence is in the world of thoughts, and that is why training the mind is so important. - Eknath Easwaran

To deal with the root cause of our anger, the fear, there are two actions we can take:

First, we can look at the truth of what is causing us to feel afraid. We can explore why we feel threatened, and if the threat is real or perceived. Here, we need to engage our prefrontal cortex and intelligently and rationally examine the validity of the threat. Is it real or am I creating a "story" to make it real? What are the facts and what is the truth?

Second, we need to access our own inner authority, our Higher Self, to ascertain right knowing, right understanding and right action vis--vis next steps, choices and decisions. This step requires a great deal of honesty, sincerity and trust that we have the inner strength, courage, intelligence and ability to be at peace while we assess our immediate experience. We CANNOT take this step while being driven by our limbic, emotional brain.

What makes these two steps possible and builds our capacity to be "cool under fire" requires a "spiritual" practice. By consistently taking time for meditation, quietude, silence and self-reflection we condition our brain to reduce the frequency and intensity of beta brainwaves that are heightened when we experience fear and stress, while building the capacity to produce an abundance of alpha brainwaves that supports us to feel peaceful and facilitate soul connection.

It's impossible to experience fear while we are producing strong alpha waves. In a relaxed and meditative state our mind can be receptive to our soul's impulse - the source of inner strength, love and intelligence. By regularly practicing of this inner state of connection, we are more able to disconnect from both "internal" and "external" real or perceived threats and gradually learn to trust the inner, higher authority of our soul.

In this place, we are able to make more creative, compassionate and life enhancing choices and decisions for ourselves and others. In this place of empowerment (and not reactivity), we are often able to extricate ourselves from a place of "victimization" and feel less need to be "violent" in thought, word and deed. We can feel secure within ourselves. Violent thoughts, words and actions are replaced by loving and healing thoughts, words and actions.

So, some questions for self-reflection are:

· Who or what threatens you? Are these threats real or perceived? What is the truth of these threats?
· Do you create stories about others causing you problems and then acting as if these stories are true when they may be false?
· Are you too quick to anger? If so, why?
· How do you maintain balance and freedom from irrational fears?
· When do you most often lose connection with your soul? Do you see any habits or patterns here?
· How often do you think vicious thoughts?
· Do you tend to be silently violent?
· Are you guilty of abusing others verbally or emotionally (e.g., sarcasm, gossiping, bullying, demeaning one-liners and put-downs, etc.)?
· Do you believe you're being rationale and logical when operating from a place of fear or threat?
· What was your experience around trust and betrayal like when you were growing up?
· Can you envision a world where you consistently feel focused, "cool under fire" and empowered?

"Never use violence of any kind. Never threaten violence in any way. Never even think violent thoughts. Never argue because it attacks anothers opinion. Never criticize because it attacks anothers ego. And your success is guaranteed." - Mohandas Gandhi

---ABOUT THE AUTHOR---

Peter Vajda, Ph.D, C.P.C. is a founding partner of SpiritHeart, an Atlanta-based company that supports conscious living through coaching and counseling. With a practice based on the dynamic intersection of mind, body, emotion and spirit, PeterÂ’s 'whole person' coaching approach supports deep and sustainable change and transformation.

Peter facilitates and guides leaders and managers, individuals in their personal and work life, partners and couples, groups and teams to move to new levels of self-awareness, enhancing their ability to show up authentically and with a heightened sense of well be-ing, inner harmony and interpersonal effectiveness as they live their lives at work, at home, at play and in relationship.

Peter is a professional speaker and published author. For more information: http://www.spiritheart.net, or pvajda@spiritheart.net, or phone 770.804.9125.

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How to use the incredible power of anchoring to your benefit

Some sounds, pictures, smells, tastes or tactile sensations affect us in special ways. Such stimuli are called anchors in the field of Neuro Linguistic Programming [NLP]. A particular stimulus that is connected to a person’s particular behavior, feeling, or thought is an anchor. The process of making an anchor is called anchoring.

Anchoring works with the subconscious mind. There for, it is extremely powerful. You get anchored to many different stimuli in your surroundings. When a stimulus gets anchored with a negative behavior, it is a disadvantage to you. When you know how anchoring works, you can break bad anchors and create more useful anchors to your benefit.

When a certain stimulus occurs repeatedly when you are in a deep, relaxed, sensitive trance, a connection is made between the stimulus and the trance. Every one lives in different trances moment by moment and is exposed to various stimuli all the time. An anchor is created if a trance is intense, deep, or powerful and also if the associated stimulus occurs repeatedly when the trance is at its highest intensity.

When this happens again and again, the stimuli-trance connection grows stronger and stronger. When such a strong connection is established, the stimulus can be purposely used to trigger the trance. In other words, an anchor is created.

You can create an anchor to any trance you like. You can test the how effective your anchor is too. You have to follow the steps below in order to make an anchor successfully.

• If your trance choice is power, close your eyes, relax, sit straight, and relive in a very powerful moment of your life, seeing what was there then in your mind’s eye, hearing the sounds, feeling other sensations. You must be totally absorbed in the desired trance, both physically and mentally.
• Produce the stimulus when the trance is at its peak. You can feel it when the trance comes to the peak. Make sure the stimulus is not an ordinary, day to day one. Make it an uncommon one such as pushing your left finger back words with your right hand, pressing your left wrist with your right hand etc.
• You have to repeat the stimulus in the same manner.

Continue this several times a day, for a few days. When the anchor is established, you can trigger off the trance by just producing the stimulus. Keep repeating those steps until you are able to do that.

Now let’s see how you could collapse an unwanted anchor.

• Close your eyes. As before, in your mind, go to a moment of your life when you felt really powerful. See, hear, feel what there was, in your mind. When the feeling of power comes to its peak, pretend to take that feeling to your right hand. Imagine it clasped in your right hand, a bright and warm ball of energy.
• Now relive in a miserable, awful, helpless moment of your life in the same way. When the unpleasant feeling comes to its peak, pretend take it to your left hand. Imagine it clasped in your left hand, a dark and cold orb of energy.
• Now you are set to collapse the bad anchor. Clap your hands together and imagine the cold, dark energy in your left hand is overcome by the warm, bright energy in your right hand.
• Repeat this a few times and recall that unpleasant moment of your life. If the collapsing has worked, you will fell that it is just a mare memory and not so intense. If it is still intense, you have to repeat the collapsing steps till the unpleasant incident becomes a mare memory with out any power to make you feel uncomfortable.

There you are! You know how to benefit from anchoring now. Integrate it in to your overall self-improvement scheme. Start off and make a positive change in your life.

Are you a likable person?

How much attention other people pay you depends on how much you do likewise. There are some people who welcome anybody they meet very warmly and sincerely. They look to be happy to meet the other person. That makes the other person feel important, respected, liked, thus making him or her very flexible, friendly, and cooperative in return.

In marketing, some representatives work remarkably well, while the others struggle to make sales. The first group’s difference is their ability to get out of their ego and get in to other people’s ego. Every body has this ability as an inborn skill. When you approach a small child, she may smile, reach towards you, and make other affectionate gestures and you get very fond of her. There the child has won your heart by making you feel good about yourself. We can see the same behavior in our pets.

Every human being seeks attention, affection, and respect from others. If you want other people’s liking, help, or cooperation, you must get genuinely interested in them and show them that.

Try to be an easy person for others to keep company with. When ever you are in a conversation with some one, listen well with undivided attention and talk only what is necessary. That makes your companion relaxed and comfortable at your presence.

When you are praised by somebody for some thing you do, you tend to perform even better. Similarly, when you want to get someone to do some work for you, praising that person’s efforts drives him or her towards better performance.

How much of these qualities do you posses? Even though they are very simple to acquire, they can make a huge difference in our relationships, making both ours other people’s lives so much better.

Serendipity, dreams, and intuitions, how can they help you?

Some times, some things that happen to you are not favorable. You call them problems. Some of you will see a problem as a challenge, an exiting opportunity to prove yourself and to put your creativity and other talents in to test, some others will take a problem for a temporary draw back, a necessary evil, and once settled, everything will be back to the way it always had been. A problem can even be a tremendous obstacle of life for some of you. It all depends on how you look at and react to the problem, rather than severity of the problem. My intention right now is to discuss how you should go about solving a problem.

When a problem occurs, you may study it, gather facts and tools for solving it, and get help from others too. You might take a trial and error approach too, and it’s a possibility that some of you will even get depressed, and try to run away from it.

But there are some very powerful tools that can be used to solve problems, but they are taken for granted by most people. Can you recall a time, when you had a problem, that some coincident occurred that solved it even with out much of your own effort. Every body has that kind of experience and I will tell you about one of my own. I wanted to start an online business, but I got stuck because I was a complete newbie and there were a lot of things that I couldn’t understand. But my past experience told me help was on the way somewhere, and was I correct!!! A good friend and a colleague of mine gave me an instructional CD, which he had come to possess by accident. It gave me all the fundamental information I needed and links to all other information which wasn’t there. This phenomenon is called serendipity.

The other is called intuition, or instinct. There again I can give an example of my own. When I just finished schooling, I didn’t exactly know which way to go. But I had an interest in learning languages. My instinct told me that this interest was the way to go. So I decided to learn some English, that being a much used second language in my country and an international language. So I took a course that went on for two years, and I got selected for a two-year diploma in speech therapy, conducted mainly by a team of British professionals, and I’m now happily employed in the government health sector in my country, having completed that training successfully. A working knowledge of English was one of the essential qualifications for the recruitment of the course.

I don’t have any personal experience of the third phenomenon, but I know of people who have used it to solve their problems. Have you ever had a dream with a clue to solve a problem in it? Help comes in that way for some people when they are a sleep.

So, how could you optimize the use of serendipity, intuition, and dreams? Think back and make a list of such situations that you have experienced. Go through the list and pick the most frequent and apparent type/types out of it. That’s the particular thing for you. From now on, be alert and sensitive to such occurrences in your life and put them in to use. The more you use them, the more frequent and apparent their occurrence will be.

I told you his so that it will save you much hassle in solving your problems. By all means continue to apply your own problem solving techniques that have worked, just be more sensitive to serendipity, dreams and intuition so that things will be easier for you.

What Do You Really Know About Abundance and Prosperity? By Zoe Smith

Who doesn't want to be rich? Even the very rich want to be even richer and those who do not want excessive financial wealth still want an abundance of some other thing in their lives. Be it in finances, health or relationships - abundance and prosperity is what everybody aspires to have.

Of course, abundance mean different things to different people. For the sake of simplicity, let us use abundance in relation to finance and monetary value. Let's say a man has used a bicycle his whole life, finally having a car is an extremely extravagant blessing for him. If his neighbor grew up with a lot of cars at his disposal, then one car is hardly worth his attention. A helicopter will be what crowning success is to him. On the other hand, a person with a jet setting lifestyle won't be impressed with a parked helicopter in a hangar-maybe having his own island will be his pinnacle of prosperity.

As you can see, definitions vary for each individual. It is a personal matter only you can resolve for yourself. Unfortunately, many today find themselves falling short on their vision of personal prosperity. Economy and timing are relevant factors, but ultimately having abundance is a choice and anyone can receive it.

How do we go about doing that? Well, first of all we need to know what exactly we are talking about. What is the meaning of abundance? Abundance is defined as having an overflowing fullness and ample sufficiency of resources. It is not only having your needs met, you have more than enough besides.

Imagine a large empty glass on a table. Water is poured into it but it doesn't stop at the rim. It spills outside the glass onto the table and down its sides. This is abundance, an overflowing of what you allow to put inside your life. But you think, 'That's crazy talk. You mean to tell me, I need to allow money in my life so I can get more money? I don't even have money in the first place!'

You are absolutely right; you don't have the money- not yet. See, abundance and prosperity as the world perceives it, is having the physical manifestation of the resources you want. Not everyone realizes that being rich begins in your mind. So start by putting thoughts of prosperity in your head. Realign your mindset to what you want to become. See yourself rich-and believe it.

I have never seen a poor man with a rich mindset remain poor. In fact, look up on some of the world's billionaires and you will find many climbed up the ladder of success because they had a vision of what they want to be-or more to the point, who they believed they ought to be. If you see this clearly, unclouded by circumstantial factors like education, background and differing opinions; then no one cannot stop overflowing prosperity from pursuing you.

The wisest man that ever walked the earth once said, "If you can believe it, it can be done". Abundance is a personal, overflowing expression of blessings-- and it is yours for the asking.

Zoe Smith knows what is the meaning of abundance because she discovered the higher truth in her reality. Now she enjoys Abundance and Prosperity which you can have in your own life today.

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How to Face Your Fears Using Progressive Overload By Craig Harper

In the big wide world of exercise science there's a training principle called Progressive Overload (PO). PO is pretty much the cornerstone of any training program designed to produce performance improvements for the individual who is following the program. In layman's terms, PO simply means consistently graduating the intensity of the workout by manipulating the training variables - sets, reps, weight, recovery time, range of movement, speed, time under load, distance travelled, gradient, revs... and so on.

In terms of producing results, the sad reality is that...

1. The majority of current gym members don't train at all (upwards of seventy percent) and once the initial emotion and motivation subsides, so too does the commitment, the sweat and the results (for many people).

2. The majority of people who do work out - and not just in gyms - are essentially "going through the motions". That is, maintaining (at best) but not seeing significant improvement, adaptation or change.

Change... almost.

Naturally, most people who exercise are looking to create some kind of physical improvement via their training program; leaner, lighter, more strength, flexibility, speed, power, aerobic endurance, muscular endurance and of course, change in appearance. It's also true that most people won't achieve and maintain their exercise goals - and not because they don't have the potential to achieve great results - but because they won't get uncomfortable enough, often enough and keep doing it. And doing it.

Great at starting, crap at maintaining.

Working Against Resistance

If we want to see significant positive physical change with our exercise program then we need to be prepared to work against resistance consistently - because that's where the improvement lives. No graduated resistance, equals no improvement. Maintenance perhaps, but no significant physical change. This resistance might come in the form of a heaver weight, an extra rep or five, a steeper gradient on the treadmill, a faster speed on the bike, a different activity, less recovery time between sets, a higher target heart rate... and so on. Our body won't adapt / change unless we give it a reason to - and most people don't.

PO in our Head

This concept of Progressive Overload, adaptation and improvement is also true for life beyond the gym, beyond the running track and beyond the physical realm. Just like we subject our biceps, abs, thighs, heart and lungs to a certain level of stress in order to create particular desirable physical outcomes, so too do we need to subject our psychological and emotional muscles to a type of PO in order to become stronger and more effective at dealing with the realities, challenges and speed humps (all forms of resistance) that life presents us. Here are some of the muscles that can only be strengthened and developed by injecting some sensible and strategic PO into our world:

1. Decision making muscles
2. Dealing with feedback muscles
3. Standing up for yourself muscles
4. Self control muscles
5. Doing what scares the crap out of you muscles (too technical?)
6. Perseverance muscles
7. Attitude muscles
8. Problem solving muscles

How do we begin to address our fears? We do what scares us - that is, we work against emotional and psychological resistance; we lift that mental dumbbell. And then we lift a heavier one. Once we face our fears, we become stronger, we develop new skills, our mindset shifts, the "weight" seems lighter and we move to the next (heavier) dumbbell on the rack. This is PO of the psychological variety. And it works. Very effectively. How do we build our attitude muscles? We consciously and consistently choose to find the good, to ask better questions and to deal with "challenges" in a positive and pro-active manner. We choose to work against the resistance that people, circumstances and situations might provide and to do what most people won't. Lift the heavier dumbbell.

Decision Time

There comes a time when we all walk to the dumbbell rack (either literally or metaphorically) and we ask ourselves a question; do I keep lifting the same (comfortable) weight, repeating the same behaviours and producing the same less-than-desirable results in my world, or do I give my body / mind / potential the workout it actually needs?

Ciao x

Craig Harper (B.Ex.Sci.) is the #1 ranked Motivational Speaker (according to Google). He is a qualified exercise scientist, author, columnist, radio presenter, television host and owner of one of the largest personal training centres in the world.

Motivational Speaker - Craig Harper

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