Holosync

[Balder]

Since I've been working so much, my once-regular meditation practice has suffered for the past couple years.  So, I decided recently, after much resistance, to give Holosync a try.  I did my first session tonight, and do already feel an "effect" -- not necessarily good or bad, but certainly a difference.  I'll report on this experiment again after I'm a month or so in to it.

 

 

[Hertzschuch]

I tried it also, a couple of years back. I definitely felt a change in the quality of my meditation practice. At first I was kind of going for it. after three weeks of it, on a daily basis, I felt there was an artificial flavour that I didn't like and so I stopped. I didn't go into the reasons why I distanced myself from this tool. But I'm in full congruence with meditating "on my own" or not meditating. It feels way better. And I have even now kind of an aversion for it. Most people are so happy about it, that I feel like a weirdo, but I just can't do it, or won't touch this tool anymore. I'm looking forward for the reports on your experience on it.

P.

[Balder]

Yes, interesting, Patrick.  Even after just one experience, I can understand what you are saying.  I felt a difference, and I found this difference (at first) was kind of disturbing to me.  Not bad, just a bit odd.  However, this morning, I woke up feeling a kind of longing or desire to immerse myself back in that state.  So, we'll see where this goes over the next month.

[Edward theurj Berge]

Welcome to the machine.

[Steve Byrne]

Aloha! Where did this end up going, Bruce?

[Balder]

Aloha, Steve!  I used it for a couple months, and at first felt a fairly palpable effect from it, but then that diminished.  I guess my brain got used to it.  After that happened, I used it for a marathon writing session -- writing straight, without sleeping, for a couple days, with the CD playing for most of that time.  It did help me get into an open, creative, focused state, so I appreciated it for that.  But I haven't used it since. 

[Layman Pascal]

I have used a variety of brainwave audio since early childhood.

It is useful especially in the early phases of any particular set of tracks. It continues to be useful in altering brain activity even when we do not note the intriguing subjective effects. We must (and usefully!) let go of any notion that meditation should be defined by brainwave modification. They are different activities. Brainwave audio does not substitute for -- or fail to substitute for -- intentional attention work.

However, examining the standard mechanism used in brainwave audio can provide a clue to a whole set of interesting meditations. The prominent effect (the one which wears off) is believed to derive from the hemisphere's attempt to make a singular pattern out of two incoming frequencies that, while remaining distinct, are similar enough that the brain instinctively wants to combine them. This gets my "MOA" attention. The embedded tones are the same enough that their difference is suffered. They exhibit a unique degree of adjacency in which we automatically try to correct for their overlap by rendering them into a singularity. This effort is the adaptation which, as it succeeds, wears off. It is not meditation when it is done automatically, passively (though it can be good for us and accomplishes various degrees of subtle energy stimulation). What it shows us, though, is that by attempting to attend to the simultaneity of two slightly divergent phenomenon we can enter into a very productive meditation.

An example I have used is to watch a television program on the computer by opening two duplicate media players. Start one of them a second later than the other. The effort to keep the mind attentive to the simultaneous difference and sameness of the input makes the root-procedure of holosync and its kin into a meditation.