“Awaken” from the album Solfeggio Cycle by J.S. Epperson. The album is a collection of pieces based on the Solfeggio frequencies and incorporates multiband Theta binaural beats.
Stock footage courtesy of http://www.videvo.net and http://www.videos.pexels.com
What grabbed my attention was the title: Meet the biologist who says trees have their own songs! But when I listened to the interview, well, I felt a little duped. What David George Haskell, a biology professor at The Sewanee University in Tennessee, is really saying is that trees can be distinguished from one another by their sounds in the environment. Wind, rain, wildlife, are all factors that interact with the different sizes and shapes of leaves and branches make up what Haskell calls the “distinct voices” of trees.
Listen to the conversation now
In the last few years, research at The Monroe Institute has lead to the development of a new audio meditation technique that entrains the brain through a process through Spatial Angle Modulation™, or SAM™.
If you’re curious about this new technology that approaches brainwave entrainment differently than Hemi-Sync, you may want to try their free meditation Collective Guidance Meditation.
While I don’t feel that Collective Guidance Meditation hits the same high bar as Spindrift, an experience offered to attendees of the 2016 Professional Seminar at The Monroe Institute, I found Collective Guidance Meditation relaxing, positive, and even invigorating.
Here’s what The Monroe Institute has to say about Collective Guidance Meditation:
Use this meditation within a group or to connect with other like-minded individuals acting as one in all places and times to welcome and connect with guidance.
Download Collective Guidance Meditation
Photo by Margie Savage via Creative Commons Attribution License
Staying fit is everyone’s dream isn’t it? We all want to stay in shape no matter whatever is the purpose. A healthy body breeds a healthy mind and ultimately you get surrounded by positive vibes all around you. Such a beautiful feeling to accomplish, isn’t it? Well! Certainly it is!
Since our busy routines and hectic schedules have made us turn ourselves into machines; we rarely find time to look after our health and well-being. This is the reason that our new generation has turned into nothing less than a couch potato and we spend our leisure time in sleeping or sitting idle.
Exercise is the foundation of life. Your body demands for it. Therefore, you should not ignore the importance of adding a bit of exercise whether in any form to your daily lifestyle. If you are unable to hit the gym; you can opt for meditation and yoga.
Once your body gets used to it; you will be amazed at the beautiful results meditation will leave in the long run. Here are top 5 ways in which meditation can help to improve your life and give it a meaningful impact.
Probably the first useful change that you will feel in yourself after giving meditation a chance is the lessened amount of stress.
Meditation helps you to take control of your feelings and emotions; thus taking you into a state of nirvana and ultimately your body feels more at ease and empowered at the same time.
Meditation gives you a purposeful insight about yourself and your surroundings. You become more centric and concentrated.
Moreover, you tend to focus well on each and everything that is happening around you, including the changes that your body is endorsing. Such a calming experience in the long run, isn’t it? Well! You got to try it out to feel it yourself.
Meditation not only helps you to feel more vibrant from inside; it gradually transforms your entire lifestyle into a positive realm of well-being.
You tend to stay in a state of being more self-aware about yourself and you take care of your health more often than usual. With the passage of time; meditation will become the part and parcel of your everyday routine.
That’s right! Meditation and Yoga are the kind of exercises that can raise the dopamine levels in your brain, thus giving an overall sense of being happy and joyful.
Resultantly, you stay in a happy state of mind, thus, shunning off the negative energy around you and replacing it with positive vibes. In this way; the overall well-being of your mind and body is ensured.
Last but certainly not the least! Meditation reduces the process of aging, thus keeping you stay in shape and looking ever beautiful and young.
Who doesn’t want to age slowly and gracefully? Certainly! We all do! Here, meditation is your key towards a better, long and healthy life.
Odette Cecilia, originally from Venezuela, learned intuitively to meditate through creative visualization. Her depth of spirit led to her interest in and love of the healing arts, and most specifically, the use of sound frequencies and music to enhance spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical well-being in others.
As a Sound Healing Meditation Therapist and Reiki Master, Odette has worked in the US and globally providing sound healing meditations. Odette Cecilia uses the harp, crystal singing bowls, Tibetan bowls, tuning forks, and other instruments in conjunction with guided visualization and meditation in the sound therapy that she offers to both individuals and groups. You can learn more about Odette at her website AwakeningSacredSpace.com.
This full title of this is “DNA Merkaba Starseed Flower Of Life Ascension Activation Awakening To Love and Compassion Set #2”. Keyword stuff much?
Anyway, nearly half of this hour-long video was taken from my Meditation Music and Binaural Beats YouTube channel so just go the source and watch the original videos in HD with higher quality audio.
However, it *is* a pretty good selection of my work starting from 33 minutes and 15 seconds.
33m15 from Journey To Atlantis
38m45 from Ascension
47m40 from Illumination
Our relationship with music is deeper than you think: music changes your brain chemistry while your brainwaves and heart synchronize with the beat of the music. Here’s some ways music makes us feel good.
I’ve been asked a lot about the Gamma frequencies found in Gammadrone lately, so here is a nifty infographic. This image links to an ad for Neuro-Programmer which I neither use nor recommend.
Source: Gamma Brain Waves – An Infographic
Instagram user crystalsandchocolate said nice things about me and my album Solfeggio Suite, she even said that I completely changed her life, but of course that’s not how it works: by practicing meditation before going to bed she changed her own life. Meditation is a discipline and should be practiced regularly.
Also, she touches on a point I maybe don’t make very often: meditating before you go to bed while listening to binaural beats can dramatically change your dream experience. If you don’t believe me, check out Deltadream. 😉
Splendor is an experiment; another modality in which each track is tuned to a chakra in accordance to a 432Hz tuning system. Embedded within each track are four bands of deep meditation brainwave audio, also tuned in accordance to the same 432Hz tuning system. For best results use headphones.
Amazon | Apple Music | Google Play | iTunes | My Store (Powered by Bandcamp) | Spotify | Tidal
WARNING: This music contains audio brainwave entrainment technologies. People who are subject to seizures, auditory disorders, or adverse mental conditions should not listen to this music without first consulting a physician. DO NOT listen to this music while driving, operating heavy machinery, or performing any other activities that require focused attention. Although binaural beats entrainment audio may contribute to wellness, it is not intended as a replacement for medical or psychological treatment. No medical claims are intended express or implied. No statements made have been evaluated or approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. For best results, use stereo headphones or earbuds.
NPR is reporting that The Fraunhofer Institute, originators of the now ubiquitous MP3 format, have announced that its “licensing program for certain MP3 related patents and software of Technicolor and Fraunhofer IIS has been terminated”.
Bernhard Grill, director of that Fraunhofer division, said that another audio format, AAC, which the organization also helped to create, is replacing the MP3, such is the popularity of platforms such as iTunes, and is now the “standard for music download and videos on mobile phones,” adding that it is “more efficient than MP3 and offers a lot more functionality”. Streaming services, meanwhile, are turning to ‘Master Quality Authenticated’ files.
So is it the end of an era? We may still use MP3s, but when the people who spent the better part of a decade creating it say the jig is up, we should probably start paying attention. AAC is indeed much better — it’s the default setting for bringing CDs into iTunes now — and other formats are even better than it, though they also take up mountains of space on our hard drives.
And it’s not just that more efficient and complete ways of storing music have been developed. There was a deeper problem. The engineers who developed the MP3 were working with incomplete information about how our brains process sonic information, and so the MP3 itself was working on false assumptions about how holistically we hear. As psychoacoustic research has evolved, so has the technology that we use to listen. New audio formats and products, with richer information and that better address mobile music streaming, are arriving.
MP3 is dead, long live AAC
The MP3 Format Is Dead, Apparently
Regenerate is a regenerative healing field tuned to encourage the health and well being of the mind, body, and spirit. And it now has a video re-iterating the ingredients that make the Regenerate special sauce so tasty.
Amazon | Apple Music | Google Play | iTunes | My Store (Powered by Bandcamp) | Spotify | Tidal
WARNING: This music contains audio brainwave entrainment technologies. People who are subject to seizures, auditory disorders, or adverse mental conditions should not listen to this music without first consulting a physician. DO NOT listen to this music while driving, operating heavy machinery, or performing any other activities that require focused attention. Although binaural beats entrainment audio may contribute to wellness, it is not intended as a replacement for medical or psychological treatment. No medical claims are intended express or implied. No statements made have been evaluated or approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. For best results, use stereo headphones or earbuds.
Cover photo by DownTownApocalypse via Public Domain Dedication License
Health and well-being is about more than drugs and surgeries; it’s also about yoga, meditation, and other practices that involve conscious relaxation reduce stress.
I came across a this 2013 research showing that the relaxation response — a state of deep rest attained through breathing, meditation, yoga and other practices — triggers changes in gene expression that can affect the body’s immune function, energy metabolism and insulin secretion.
Subjects of these tests were guided through an practiced relaxation sequence, including diaphragmatic breathing, progressive relaxation technique called “body scanning”, mantra repetition, and mindfulness meditation, while passively ignoring intrusive thoughts. A 20-minute audio CD that guided listeners through this same sequence was given to the subjects to listen at home once a day.
Here are some of the results highlights:
RESOURCES: Relaxation Response Induces Temporal Transcriptome Changes in Energy Metabolism, Insulin Secretion and Inflammatory Pathways, Published: May 1, 2013 by Manoj K. Bhasin, Jeffery A. Dusek, Bei-Hung Chang, Marie G. Joseph, John W. Denninger, Gregory L. Fricchione, Herbert Benson, Towia A. Libermann
Photo by AJ Schroetlin via Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic
And argument in favor of Hemispheric-Synchronization?
tl;dr: wreck music, become distracted and fall out of synchronization…
…music synchronizes brain responses across listeners in bilateral auditory midbrain and thalamus, primary auditory and auditory association cortex, right-lateralized structures in frontal and parietal cortex, and motor planning regions of the brain.
…the great consistency of these patterns of activity across subjects, facilitated by ISS analysis, strongly suggests that these brain regions track aspects of musical structure across time that represent functionally important regions for the processing of naturalistic musical stimuli.
Our study provides new information regarding inter-subject brain synchronization in response to natural stimuli. Our results show that inter-subject synchronization occurs at multiple levels in the information processing hierarchy – from sub-cortical and cortical auditory structures to fronto-parietal attention network and motor planning areas. Importantly, we show for the first time that this diverse collection of auditory and supra-auditory brain structures tracks aspects of musical structure over extended periods of time. More generally, our findings demonstrate that music listening elicits consistent and reliable patterns of time-locked brain activity in response to naturalistic stimuli that extends well beyond primary sensory cortices (Hasson et al., 2004; Wilson et al., 2008), and that synchronization is not driven solely by low-level acoustical cues. These signatures of synchronized brain activity across individuals in multiple hierarchically structured systems may underlie shared neural representations that facilitate our collective social capacity for listening and attending to music.
Inter-subject synchronization of brain responses during natural music listening, 11 April 2013, DOI: 10.1111/ejn.12173, Daniel A. Abrams, Srikanth Ryali, Tianwen Chen, Parag Chordia, Amirah Khouzam, Daniel J. Levitin, Vinod Menon.
Photo by Roger Mommaerts via Public Domain Dedication License
Kabbalah is the ancient heart of Jewish mysticism; a deeply profound philosophy of life. Kabbalah is not a religion, it is rather a highly complex map of life, a key to this world and all the other worlds that are said to lie beyond our own. As I’ve said previously, I don’t know much about it — I haven’t invested the years required to fully grasp the complexities and nuances of Kabbalah — however my colleague Dr. Theresa Bullard has spent years immersing herself in the subject.
I watched her 2016 Kabbalastic forecast back in January 2016 and her emphasis on themes rather than predictions appeals to me. I also found that her interpretation of themes stayed with me throughout the year and, as it happens, her ideas about the culture at large were born out.
Dr. Bullard’s 2017 Kabbalistic Numerology Seminar was presented in January at the Mysterium Center.
To learn more about my work with Theresa, check out our guided meditations, each is more inspiring to me than the next: Connecting To The Gap, Into The Gap, Creative Alchemy and Quantum Insight.
What was up with 2016? What was it trying to teach us? How can we learn from it so that we can move forward in a better way for the coming years? Check out this video from Theresa Bullard’s Kabbalistic Numerology Seminar to find out.
This PART 2 video covers an introduction to the Tarot Tableau, the 231 Gates Kabbalistic Wheel, and Dr. Bullard’s own creative leap of linking these two things as a tool for gaining insight into global numerological cycles and the key archetypes that govern each year.
This PART 3 video covers a retrospective review of what happened in 2016 and how the events were aligned with the archetypal of the year, which was the Tower Key. What was 2016 trying to teach us? What should we reflect upon to learn its lessons, both in our own lives as well as in the world? How do the themes shift between 2016 to 2017? Watch to find out the answers to these questions.
This one covers the main archetype for 2017, its key lessons, gifts, pitfalls, and how to make the most of this energy. What should we be turning our focus towards? Where is the light to be found in these tumultuous times? Watch to find out the answers to these questions.
Tune-in for an informative seminar with kabbalist, scientist, author and international instructor for the Modern Mystery School, Theresa Bullard, Ph.D. Back by popular demand, this seminar reveals helpful guidelines from Kabbalistic Numerology on the cycles of change we have been in since the New Millennium, and what is in store for the new year.
Here is the final video in Theresa Bullard’s Kabbalistic Numerology Forecast for 2017. In Part 6 she pulls it all together and unveil the true shift and core messages of 2017
It seems that noise, even without binaural beats, is good for your brain. A recent study showed that adults over age sixty could listen to pink noise synced to 1Hz brain waves deepens sleep and boosts memory. These same low-frequency Delta patterns appear in all of my sleep music.
Gentle sound stimulation—such as the rush of a waterfall—synchronized to the rhythm of brain waves significantly enhanced deep sleep in older adults and improved their ability to recall words, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study.
Deep sleep is critical for memory consolidation. But beginning in middle age, deep sleep decreases substantially, which scientists believe contributes to memory loss in aging.
[…]
After the sound stimulation, the older participants’ slow waves increased during sleep.
Pink noise synced to brain waves deepens sleep and boosts memory in older adults
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 1.940 (2011)
Even though I’m not much of a Church guy, I’m glad that I was raised in one. I loved singing with my family in the big sanctuary and deciphering those little black dots in the hymnal: it stirred in me a life-long interest in music and for that, I am grateful.
As the world becomes increasingly musically illiterate, I read Tim Challies’ post What We Lost When We Lost Our Hymnals with a great deal of interest.
Anyway…
Photo credit: Hymnal by Paul Sableman
Psychedelic drugs are poised to be the next major breakthrough in mental health care. — Scientific American, August 2014
Dutch postdoctoral neuroscientist Mendel Kaelen is presenting his research in a talk called The Psychological and Neurophysiological Effects of Music in Combination with Psychedelics at Psychedelic Science 2017, a six-day international gathering in Oakland, California.
One of the most common artists on his playlists is British producer, composer and artist Brian Eno.
In an email, Eno said that when he started creating his ambient songs in the 1970s, he was “very consciously making a music which didn’t carry a ‘personality’ with it.”
“I wanted to make a kind of music which didn’t make you think of another human doing something—but instead made you think of something like a landscape or a climate or a place,” he said. “My thinking was that by leaving the human out of the music I would invite people to enjoy a freer ‘ramble’ through the musical space, because it comes without somebody else’s emotional baggage.”
Eno said he has “very little experience of psychedelic drugs,” but was fascinated to learn about Kaelen’s research. The two plan to work together on projects tracking the interactions between art, music and the brain, he said.
More information: Music helps hallucinogens heal minds, scientist finds By April M. Short, April 19, 2017, sfchronicle.com
Here is a great guided meditation to help you go to sleep by Renee Rotkopf of Soul & Being Meditation. She is a self described “explorer of the psyche, stars and everything in between” and in addition to finding her work on SoundCloud and the Insight Timer App, you can visit her homepage at soulandbrand.com
Renee Rotkopf’s background in Integrative Hypnosis and Spiritual Psychology is evident to me in every word she speaks. Renee creates a safe and nurturing space, allowing listeners to explore meditations rich in symbolism. Renee Rotkopf’s guided meditations are a gift to anyone who truly wishes to activate their intention.
Drift off to sleep with this deeply relaxing journey that speaks directly to your unconscious mind, as you float with the wisdom of the whales.
Also check out Renee’s Balloon Breath, a great meditation for children.
I first heard of the Solfeggio Frequencies about ten years ago when I read Forgotten In Time: The Ancient Solfeggio Frequencies, an article so strangely specific that I thought I would create some music based on these frequencies. And for the record, I’ve found the process to be rewarding and I appreciate the enduring (and strong!) response to the work.
As someone with a deeply skeptical world view, I’m leery of anecdotal evidence; but as an artist, I believe in mystery and I accept the that there are some experiences that cannot be quantified by data. Maintaining the balance between these two perspectives is sometimes tricky, especially in an era of fact checking, fake news, and truthiness.
And therein lies the fly in the ointment: there is no scientific evidence — none that I’m aware of, anyway — supporting the effectiveness of the Solfeggio Frequencies. Nevertheless, listeners relate to me the most inspiring stories of healing and transformation that I can only marvel at the apparent miracle of it. I don’t know what’s a work here: maybe soothing music facilitates healing, maybe binaural beats are helping relax, maybe it’s a placebo effect, or maybe all of these factors combine to reinforce the benefits of medical treatment. Whatever. One thing of which I’m certain is that the Solfeggio Frequencies defy credibility, even though listeners who engage with my music tell me of profound experiences they had while listening to them. I’m willing to have it both ways.
396 Hz – UT – Liberating Guilt and Fear
417 Hz – RE – Undoing Situations and Facilitating Change
528 Hz – MI – Transformation and Miracles (DNA Repair)
639 Hz – FA – Connecting/Relationships
741 Hz – SOL – Awakening Intuition
852 Hz – LA – Returning to Spiritual Order
Not only are the healing qualities listed above vague and unspecific, but the origin of the Solfeggio Frequencies is wrong: the syllables are ancient, yes, but the manner in which these frequencies were “revealed” to Horowitz is dubious. Mysticism aside, the tools required to accurately measure frequency are modern innovations: I am curious how “the ancients” identified and reproduced these frequencies so reliably. Anyway, if I were to guess where the revelation came from, I would guess that Kabbala was somehow involved, if only because Kabbala has a strong mathematical component. Also, Kabbala is something about which I know nothing.
None of my reservations prevents me from trying the Solfeggio Frequencies myself, of course. I’ve used Solfeggio Frequencies on a number of projects: Deltadream (396 Hz), Hibernation (417 Hz), Aurora (528 Hz) are each based on a single Solfeggio Frequency while Solfeggio Suite and Solfeggio Cycle feature all Solfeggio Frequencies.
It must be said that, as a scale, the Solfeggio Frequencies sound terrible. The notes cover more than an octave and are not harmonic and sound unpleasant. Here are the Solfeggio Frequencies as they relate to nearest musical notes:
396 Hz – G4
417 Hz – G#4
528 Hz – C5
639 Hz – Eb5 ~ E5
741 Hz – F#5
852 Hz – Ab5 ~ A5
As you can see, two of the frequencies — 639 Hz and 852 Hz — are so far from any note in the Western Temperament that I can’t even guess which note they most resemble: they’re almost in the middle, the notes between the notes.
So this guy Miguel sent me an email asking me if I could give him a few tips about listening to binaural beats music like Deltadream, Transformation and Surf Series so I posted Binaural Beats Meditation Tips. Later, I wondered if that’s the information that he was looking for. While I gave a few pointers about how to meditate with binaural beats, I did not give him an idea of when he should use certain binaural beats brainwaves. So…
Beta brain waves fall with the range of 12 to 40Hz and are associated with normal waking consciousness and a heightened state of alertness, logic and critical reasoning. Listen to Low frequency Beta binaural beats, usually in the range of 12 to 16Hz, when you are studying or seeking a focused, introverted type of concentration. High Beta, usually from 16Hz to about 40Hz, are associated with the fight-or-flight response and can translate into stress, anxiety and restlessness. High Beta can also be useful for working out, by the way: Why music boosts your exercise sessions
Here is a list of my Beta concentration music…
Alpha brain waves fall with the range of 8 to 12Hz and are present during deep relaxation, usually when the eyes are closed. You experience Alpha when you’re slipping into a daydream or shortly after closing your eyes. Listen to Alpha binaural beats is an optimal time to program the mind for success and it also heightens your imagination, visualization, memory, learning and concentration. It is the gateway to your subconscious mind and lies at the base of your conscious awareness. The voice of Alpha is your intuition, which becomes clearer and more profound the deeper you go into Alpha.
While a great deal of my work includes some degree of Alpha brainwaves, the only pieces to rely exclusively on Alpha is Alpha Surf from the Surf Series of binaural beats.
Theta brain waves are present during deep meditation and light sleep, including the all-important REM dream state. Theta brain waves fall with the range of 4-8Hz It is the realm of your subconsciousness and only experienced momentarily as you drift off to sleep from Alpha and wake from deep Delta sleep. It is said that a sense of deep spiritual connection and unity with the universe can be experienced at Theta. Your mind’s most deep-seated programs are at Theta and it is where you experience vivid visualizations, great inspiration, profound creativity and exceptional insight. Unlike your other brain waves, the elusive voice of Theta is a silent voice.
Here is a list of my Theta meditation music…
The Delta frequency range is from 0.5 to 4Hz and is the slowest of the brainwave frequencies. You experience Delta during deep, dreamless sleep. Delta is when your conscious mind is completely detached. Delta is also accessible in very deep, transcendental meditation where awareness is fully detached. Delta is the realm of your unconscious. Deep Delta sleep is a vital component of the the healing process — as it’s linked with deep healing and regeneration.
Here is a list of my Delta sleep music…
Learn more about Deltadream, Surf Series, and Transformation.
