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By now few are unaware that the activity of the human brain creates
patterns of electrical energy, that the electrical signals of the
brain can be monitored by placing electrodes against the scalp, and
that a device known as an electroencephalograph (or EEG ) can record
the brain waves by means of a sensitive mechanical pen tracing,
across a long sheet of paper, a mountain range of jagged lines - as
immortalized in a thousand science fiction movies and television
hospital series. Flat line equals brain death - cart him away, nurse.
These brain signals have a tendency to fall into certain patterns
which scientists have classified in four types:
Beta.
When the brain is generating mostly beta waves, whose
frequency is about 13-30 Hz ( that is, a rhythm of 13 to 30
cycles per second ), it is in what is called its waking
rhythm: The brain is focusing on the world outside itself,
or dealing with concrete, specific problems.
Alpha.
As the brain
waves slow down they take on a more coherent rhythm, and can
be seen on the EEG as a regular sawtooth pattern at about 8
- 12 Hz. These waves are often present when the brain is
alert but unfocused, and most people generate alpha waves
when their eyes are closed, even if only bursts of one or
two seconds. Frequently, alpha waves are associated with
feelings of relaxation and calmness.
Theta.
As calmness and relaxation deepen into drowsiness, the brain
shifts to slower, more powerfully rhythmic waves with a
frequency of about 4 -7 Hz. Everyone generates these theta
waves at least twice per day: in those fleeting instants
when we drift from conscious drowsiness into sleep, and
again when we rise from sleep to consciousness as we awaken.
The theta state is accompanied by unexpected, unpredictable,
dreamlike but very vivid mental images (known as the
hypnagogic images ). Often these startlingly real images are
accompanied by intense memories, particularly childhood
memories. Theta offers access to unconscious material,
reverie, free association, sudden insight, creative
inspiration. It is a mysterious, elusive state, potentially
highly productive and enlightening, but experimenters have
had a difficult time studying it, and it is hard to
maintain, since people tend to fall asleep as soon as soon
as they begin generating large amounts of theta.
Delta.
Cycling at an extremely slow frequency (.5-4 Hz), delta
rhythms are produced when people are deeply asleep or
otherwise unconscious. Throughout the 1960s, experimenters
discovered that with the use of equipment that electrically
monitored selected physical functions, humans could learn to
generate those functions at will. While biofeedback
equipment could be made to monitor just about any physical
function, researchers often focused on the production of
alpha waves. Stress was a problem shared by almost everyone,
and an accepted antidote to stress was relaxation; since
alpha waves accompanied relaxation, and were relatively easy
to learn to produce at will, clinical biofeedback experts
assumed that if you learn to generate alpha waves, you would
automatically become relaxed. In the early 1970s, with the
advent of relatively inexpensive equipment came an explosion
of interest in biofeedback, and alpha became the catchword
seized on by the mass media and seekers of expanded
consciousness.
Research:
Almost unnoticed amidst the
hoopla surrounding alpha was an earlier study by Akira Kasamatsu and
Tomio Hirai which analyzed EEG tests of Zen monks going into deep
meditative states. The study showed that as the monks went into
meditation they passed through four stages: the appearance of alpha
waves, an increase of alpha amplitude, a decrease of alpha frequency,
and finally ( for those with the most skill at meditation), the
production of long trains of theta waves. Interestingly, the four
states "were parallel with the disciples' years spent in Zen
training." In other words, the more meditative experience a monk had,
the more theta he generated 9 i.e., those monks who had more than
twenty years of experience generated the greatest amounts of theta
waves). And, even in the depths of theta, the monks were not asleep
but mentally alert.
Elmer and Alyce Green,
biofeedback researchers at the Menninger Clinic, became interested in
the theta state (they'd been studying the brain waves of swami Rama
when he told them: "Alpha is nothing!") and began training subjects
to generate theta waves consciously. They found theta "to be
associated with a deeply internalized state and with a quieting of
the body, emotions, and thoughts, thus allowing unually 'unheard or
unseen things' to come to consciousness in the form of hypnagogic
imagery." As their theta training groups progressed, they were
surprised to find a "high frequency of subject reports indicating
integrative experiences leading to feelings of psychological
well-being." Many of the subjects began reporting spontaneous
improvements in personal relationships. Many vivid memories of
long-forgotten childhood events arose: "They were not like going
through a memory in one's mind but rather like an experience, a
reliving." Subjects reported both physical and psychological
wellbeing, and Greens discovered that people with the most hypnagogic
imagery were "psychologically healthier, had more social poise, were
less rigid and conforming, and were more self-accepting and creative"
than those who produce little or no hypnagogic imagery.
The Greens were surprised by
their findings, and concluded that the theta state caused people to
"experience a new kind of body consciousness very much related to
their total well-being." Physiologicically, the theta state seemed to
bring "physical healing, physical regeneration." In the emotional
domain, the theta state was "manifested in improved relationships
with other people as well as greater tolerance, understanding, and
love of oneself and of one's world." in the mental domain, theta
ability involves "new and valid ideas or syntheses of ideas, not
primarily by deduction, but springing by intuition from unconscious
sources."
Understanding excited by the
extraordinarily beneficial powers of the ability to generate theta
waves, the Greens undertook a research project they called Brain-wave
Training for Mental Health, to train psychotherapists to assist their
clients in learning the technique. The problem is that it is not easy
to learn to produce theta waves; first of all, theta usually leads to
sleep. And as the Greens point out, "In order to produce theta
consciously it is necessary to have a quiet body, tranquil emotions,
and quiet thoughts all at the same time." Some cynics might
retort that if one had a quiet body, tranquil emotions, and quiet
thoughts, one would have no need for any training. The fact is, few
people know how to achieve this happy simultaneity, and few have the
necessary discipline and patience to learn. After all, it seems to
take Zen monks some twenty years to be able to generate this state at
will.
But as anyone who has floated
is aware, the quiet body, the tranquil emotions, and quiet thoughts
formula is a perfect description of the floater's circumstances.
Could it be that floating increases and facilitates the production of
theta waves? Research indicates that this is indeed so. As early as
1956, John Lilly was noting that the state of mind in the float tank
was "hypnagogic," full of " reveries and fantasies," with much visual
imagery and many childhood memories, and mental events that were
"surprising to the ego"- all characteristics of theta activity. J.P.
Zubek, investigating "EEG changes in perceptual and sensory
deprivation," reported that theta waves became prominent. A recent
study by Gary S.Stern, associate professor of psychology at the
University of Colorado at Denver, found that" the significant effect
of floating...indicates that individuals who had floated in the
isolation tank for one hour significantly raised their theta
level."
A large controlled study by
Professor Thomas E. Taylor, of Texas A & M, analyzed the effects
of floating on several types of learning abilities, comparing
floaters with people in a relaxed state in a dark, quiet room. Both
the float and nonfloat groups measured with EEGs, and the study found
that floating leads to an increase in the generation of theta
waves.
Biofeedback expert Thomas
Budzynski, clinical director of the Biofeedback Institute of Denver
and professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado Medical
Center, is currently doing research involving the measurement by EEG
of the brain during hypnosis. He has concluded that float tanks
increase the production of theta waves, and believes that this has
great potential for opening the mind to learning: "We take advantage
of the fact that the hypnagogic state, the twilight state, between
waking and sleep, has these properties of uncritical acceptance of
verbal material, or almost any material it can process. What if you
could cause a person to sustain that state, and not fall asleep? I
believe floatation tanks are an ideal medium for doing
that."
Budzynski's observation that
the tank is ideal for maintaining wakefulness while in the theta is
supported by almost everyone who has done work in the area of sensory
deprivation. Jay Shurley and John Lilly were probably the first to
point out that the tank facilitates wakefulness in most users. Others
(A.M. Rossi and colleagues, for instance) have since indicated
various reasons for this, such as the body's natural homeostatic
mechanism to maintain alertness, the "sensoristat," which creates a
unique combination of high brain arousal and low muscular arousal.
It's important to emphasize this point: Usually when you enter the
theta state you fall asleep, but the tank causes the floater to
generate large amounts of theta, yet remain awake. This means that
the vivid hypnagogic imagery, the creative ideas, the eureka moments
and lightbulb thoughts, the "knowing" feeling, the "integrative
experiences" mentioned by Elmer and Alyce Green, with all the
resultant beneficial effects on body, emotions, and mind, are
available to the floater; in the tank these experiences come while
the floater remains awake, so they remain a part of the floater's
conscious mind even after he has emerged.
© Michael Hutchinson "The
Book Of Floating"
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