Binaural beats are an auditory biohack designed to facilitate brainwave entrainment.

Just as pulses of neurons firing are measured with frequency, so too is sound.
The human ear can hear sounds with a frequency (pitch) between 30Hz and 18,000Hz.

The Range of Human Hearing

How Binaural Beats work

In order to induce any brainwaves other than Gamma brainwaves, you need the brain to follow frequencies below 30 Hz. If you want to use sound waves for the entrainment, the problem is that humans can only hear sound waves with a frequency above 30 Hz. That’s why you need to use the phenomenon of Beats as a bio-hack to entrain the brain:

Wearing headphones, you listen to an audio track that pumps one frequency or tone in one ear and a different frequency or tone in the other ear. This means that there is an almost imperceptible difference in sound coming into your left and right ear.

Hence the term bi (meaning two) and aural (of the ear). The difference in the frequency between the left and right ear will be the frequency of the beating and therefore the target frequency for your brainwave entrainment.

If you want to play around with creating some beats, check out this applet.

Often times white noise (rain) is used in conjunction with these tones to help relax the mind and put it in a more malleable state. The result is that you can target a variety of different brainwave states that can yield varied benefits.

While the effect of any form of music on a human individual is highly personal and therefore resistant to generalization, a variety of research shows potential improvements for everything from cognitive performance to enhanced relaxation.
A UK study with control group from 2005 showed significant reduction in anxiety for pre-operative patients listening to binaural beats prior to surgery (source: http://www.binbeat.com/images/binauralsandanxiety.pdf).

Where to get Binaural Beats

You can find binaural beats tracks for sale online or on YouTube.
Aubrey Marcus, the author of ‘Own the Day, Own your Life’, has produced two albums of binaural beats. Together you can purchase them for US$35 here.

Click here to download ‘Earth Piece’ for free, Aubrey’s favourite 30 minute track for a mid-day power nap.

My favourite Binaural Beats App is Brainwave: 35 Binaural Programs.

You can get it on iTunes. It’s only US$4.99 and has a programme for all sorts of occasions. Check it out. Definitely worth its money.

How many of us have struggled to relax or fall asleep after a stressful day? How many times have you tried to meditate, waiting for your brain to slow down and turn off? This problem occurs in many cases, because your brain is not in the ideal state for restfulness or relaxation.
What does determine the state of your brain? What determines your thoughts at any given moment?
At the root of all our thoughts, emotions and behaviours is the communication between neurons within our brains.

Brainwaves

Brainwaves are produced by synchronised electrical pulses from masses of neurons firing in your brain in order to communicate with each other.
They form pulses whose frequency is measured by a device such as an EEG in Hz.

Our brainwaves are a physiological reaction to our environments. They change according to what we’re doing and feeling. When slower brainwaves are dominant we can feel tired, slow, sluggish, or dreamy. The higher frequencies are dominant when we feel wired, or hyper-alert.

Brainwaves can help us optimize mental functioning for our current situations. There are five common brainwave states: gamma, beta, alpha, theta, and delta and each one is put to its highest and best use in different situations.

Brainwave Entrainment

If you are navigating daily decisions, slipping into beta frequency is the most useful. If you need to surf a big wave or write your novel, alpha frequency is helpful. And if you are trying to rest, theta frequency is most powerful. Unfortunately, it can be a slow and frustrating process trying to rely on our environment alone to get us naturally into any one of these brain-wave states, so sometimes we have to be more purposeful about it. We have to target a specific brainwave frequency.
That’s where brain-wave entrainment comes in. Entrainment can help round the corners so you can reach your intent faster and more effectively. Brainwave entrainment is a method to stimulate the brain into entering a specific state by using a pulsing sound (beats), light, or electromagnetic field. The pulses elicit the brain’s ‘frequency following’ response, encouraging the brainwaves to align to the frequency of a pulse.

Frequency Following Response

This ‘frequency following’ response of brainwave entrainment can be seen in action with those prone to epilepsy. If a strobe flashes at their seizure frequency, the brain will ‘entrain’ to the flashing light, resulting in a seizure. That’s the reason why the Ajna Light can’t be used if you’re epileptic.
On the positive side, this same mechanism is used to induce many brainwave states: such as a trance, enhanced focus, relaxation, meditation or sleep induction. The brainwave entrainment effectively pushes the entire brain into a certain state.

One way to do this is with binaural beat technology, another one is with the flickering Ajna Light.

The more we learn about brain waves, the more we understand how important they are in generating desired states of conconsciousness. Binaural beats are a very basic technology, not too dissimilar from a rhythmic beat of a drum. The Ajna Light on the other hand is hi-tech that can be combined with Binaural Beats.

With the increasingly chaotic environment in which we live, assistive technology like the Ajna Light can be a game changer for a lot of people. Brainwave entrainment is so effective, because it creates an automatic response. You don’t need to do anything special to feel the effect. The only requirement is to lay down peacefully with your eyes closed. Therefore it works for almost everyone and it allows you to experience what states of consciousness, you have usually difficulty reaching, feel like.