Your Brain is singing...But you can't hear it!

Good news is, you CAN sing along!

Every single second, millions of neurons in our brains are firing up to do all kinds of things. Electricity is zapping around the brain...telling your hand to deal with that immensely annoying nose itch.. to you sniffing that cake being baked in the kitchen...to you daydreaming about your plans on the weekend....and to you giving the computer a blank stare trying in vain to work or study.

These activities – analytical thinking, dreaming, bodily movements, sensory inputs, etc. – all engage a different streak of neurons.

This collective dance of electricity through neurons result in synchronised vibrational states being generated in the brain. These oscillatory vibrations are called Brainwaves.

This is literally "Music of the Brain". Of course we can't hear it because it is below the audible limit of human ears and inside our cranial cavity.

Depending on our mental state and ongoing mental processes at any given time, the relative proportion of these vibrations in our brain can vary significantly. These vibrations, or brainwaves, are a very fundamental consequence of neural function and denote the amount of brain activity happening at any given time. They are also what characterises us as alive.

The frequencies corresponding to different brainwaves lie in the long radio-waves range usually a few tens of hertz. This complete range is divided into 5 categories. Starting from the lowest frequency i.e. least brain activity, they are – delta, theta, alpha, beta and gamma.

So what are they exactly?

When we are having an interesting conversation with our friend or cooking dinner, skating in a park or giving a presentation in a meeting, all activities that require an alert and focussed mind, put our brain in the beta state. This is where we are most of the time.

This is the "doing" state.

However, when we are painting, playing intuitive music, daydreaming, we reach the alpha or borderline theta state. This is generally a calm and pleasant state of being.

The deep theta state is what is also called the meditative or the dream state. Most of us experience this when we dream at night. It is also the state we try to engage during meditation. All kinds of interesting phenomena associated with dreaming, for example lucid dreaming, out of body experiences (OBE) etc. can be accessed in the theta state and hence has garnered a lot of attention by people interested in spiritual matters.

Interestingly, when we are doing our daily chores; washing dishes, vacuuming the house, or even driving down the same old road, our brain activity can go down significantly and we could topple from beta right into the theta state. This is why we sometimes have creative insights, epiphanies and otherwise inconceivable ideas when engaging in repetitive everyday tasks. So go do those pending dishes if you want to be Einstein, eh! ;D

All in all, the theta state is truly a blissful and peaceful state of being.

Moving onto the delta state, this is an extremely crucial state as this is when we are in deep, no-dream sleep. This is when our brain finally gets time to do repair and healing work in our body and mind. All cellular, tissue and vascular repair and regeneration, detoxification, destressing, hormonal balancing, everything happens in the delta state. It also involves information processing, shifting data to permanent memory, healing emotional trauma, deleting unnecessary gibberish we pick up throughout the day, and much much more. Basically everything that is vital to a healthy body and mind occurs here. It is something that should ideally happen every day when we sleep, but is sometimes interrupted in part or fully due to bad sleeping routines.

Delta is a restful state of being; It is our natural reset button. It's importance cannot be overstated.

And now jumping from the lowest to the highest activity level of our brain - the gamma state. This state is one which may not necessarily be experienced by everybody. It is somewhat rare.

It is a state of hyper activity of the brain which can be seen in people with overactive imagination or also innovators, visionaries, child prodigies, and such. If controlled properly, in this state a person may experience things beyond the usual five senses, things such as visions, astral travel and highly developed psychic abilities.

It is also a state of heightened perception and expanded consciousness. It is a state where the surreal happens.

Certain forms of meditation can help one open up their mind to these states and experiences. These are often practiced by expert yogis. However, the gamma state can also be triggered chemically via psychedelics; something which MUST NOT be tried for recreation or without proper guidance.

The gamma state, although extremely powerful in the ways it expands the mind, can cause serious harm if pursued without proper knowledge or instruction.

But back to lighter shades of this topic,

Having read about this music of the brain, you may be wondering, why on Earth should I know all this anyway? Could I use this somehow?

Well yes, of course you could. As I said, even if you can't hear this music of your brain, you can sing along!

Our brain being the ultimate gizmo there is, this occurrence of neural oscillations or brainwaves goes both ways.

This means, if you are doing something, brainwaves originating from the neural activity required for that, will be produced in your brain. But, you can work with them the other way 'round too. You can cause the brain to go into a certain state or have synchronous accumulation of brainwaves corresponding to a certain state, as a result of which you can enhance and tap into the mental powers accessible in that state.

To give a rather trivial example, if you want to concentrate on studying and need focussed attention, you can make your brain accumulate more waves in the beta state, resulting in you having better focus and concentration needed to study.

Now look at the list of mental tools and powers above and imagine if you could tap into them in some way. Wouldn't that be just spectacular?

I have already mentioned and skimmed over one way of doing that in this article. But there are a couple more tricks you can practice to do this, one quite musical too! But more about that in the next article.

Also, although brainwaves have been known for quite some time in the academic community now, their specific working, use in mainstream medicine for healing and other nuances are still a topic of extensive research.

For now, let us just take a moment to marvel at this stupendous invention of evolution that is our brain. Let us acknowledge its phenomenal power and do our best to nourish and nurture it.

I have always been fascinated by the brain and am in awe of it's capabilities. Hence, my attempt at sharing this piece of information with you. Although I claim to be no expert by any means, I do hope that I could give you something of intrigue, something to think about, and take away.

Love & Light,

V