What Are Gamma Brain Waves? How to Produce More Gamma Waves With Meditation
Table of Contents
- What are Gamma Waves?
- Benefits of Gamma Waves
- How to increase Gamma brain wave activity
- Personal Experience
- Virtual Coffee
The brain consists of millions and millions of neurons. These neurons communicated with each other via electrical impulses. Depending on the task one is doing (active thinking, sleeping, dreaming, meditating and so on) not all neurons need to send off these electrical impulses. While there are many neurons sending electrical impulses to one another in a task like reading or calculating, less neurons are active in sleep, for example. This makes sense, since our brain is barely active in the sleeping phases. Some neurons still send off electrical impulses, but these are different in amplitude and frequency to the electrical impulses that involve an active thinking task. When one measures these impulses with a electroencephalogram (EEG) all these impulses result into a wave. These waves originate in the brain and are called brain waves, logically.
Let us say, in non-active thinking tasks like sleeping, these brain waves are rather slow and of a low amplitude. In an active thinking task, these brain waves are quite fast and in a higher amplitude.
There are many different brain waves. Gamma waves are one of them and it has to be said that they are even rather special waves!
What are Gamma Waves?
Gamma waves are typically of a high frequency and amplitude. Gamma brain waves are one of the fastest waves that reach all parts of the brain. Their frequency is normally 40 Hz and more. It has already been observed that people can produce gamma waves that have an amplitude of 100 Hz! These are called "Hypergamma brain waves" and are a subtype of gamma brain waves.
They occur when millions of neurons are active at the same time and "fire" these electrical impulses simultaneously.
Normally, people do not produce these brain waves under normal circumstances. These brain waves were mostly found in geniuses, for example, in a professor of physics. I like to call them "the genius brain waves". They were also observed in meditators who were practicing the loving kindness meditation. As it seems, gamma waves either occur in very intelligent people or in those people who experience unconditional love. It has been observed that Buddhist monks who started to practice the loving kindness meditation almost immeditately at will produced gamma brain waves.
So, in essence, gamma brain waves occur when there is an unusually high brain activity.
Increasing gamma waves with either binaural beats or specific meditations can lead to a number of marvellous benefits. Afterwards, I will give you some advice on how to increase gamma waves and what to do in order to experience them more often and spontaneously.
Virtual Coffee with Gamma waves
Benefits of Gamma Waves
Increased Focus on tasks
Better learning: Since the brain is so super-active, people are able to learn faster (information is processed at a much higher rate!).
A high amount of gamma waves works like an anti-depressant.
Studies have shown that a gamma brain wave therapy was successful against ADD
Bliss: People have feelings of extreme bliss.
Compassion: People tend to have a profound compassion towards other people.
Enhanced Senses: It seems that the senses work better and reality is perceived more vividly.
Works like coffee for some people.
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3 ways How to increase Gamma Waves
One way to increase gamma waves is to listen to binaural beats. I recommend you to have a glass of water next to you after you finish your session. Sometimes, it happens that you feel a bit dizzy. Other than in the lower binaural beats I recommend you to do something that involves active thinking like reading or learning. Normally, one would silent his mind and focus on the binaural beats (like in theta brainwave entrainmeint for example.), but in this case you should be doing something.
Another more natural way (in my opinion) is to meditate. Most meditations are good to increase gamma wave activity, but THE best meditation for this is the loving kindness meditation. This meditation will not be described in this article, since it would be far too long. If you are interested in learning more about this special meditation, please read the full how to do the loving kindness meditation article or see the links below.
The last way I can give you from personal experience is to "recognize" their occurrence. Sometimes, especially when you start meditating or listening to binaural beats, you will have sudden feelings of bliss (for example) in your everyday life. This can happen in school, while watching TV, in the gym or anywhere else. Recognize these sudden occurrences and "hold on to them" and your brain will automatically learn that you desire these states and that they are good. Consequently, it will happen more often in the future, which will also have positively affect your behaviour towards yourself and other people.
How long does it take to experience states of bliss?
This was a question from a user.
There is no definite answer to it, since these phenomena are quite individual. There are many factors that are important, such as meditation, food, physical activity and so on.
Long experienced meditators are very probable to experience these states of bliss during the gamma brainwave entrainment and for the next few hours after they stop listening to gamma binaural beats.
People, with no meditation background, do not experience these states of bliss right after the session (but some do!). In my case, as an unexperienced meditator, it took me 2 days until I started to experience these feelings of bliss. They occurred quite randomly. It is important that you listen on a daily basis to gamma binaural beats.
Some time ago, I started listening to gamma binaural beats. It happened that I felt a bit dizzy and had the need to drink something. Normally, I felt better afterwards. Also, after a 15 minutes session where I simply focused on the mere binaural beats I felt "overwhelmed". It feels as if my brain is not yet ready to "embrace" the entirely or to tune in into these frequencies. This didn't happen with other binaural beats (delta, theta etc.).
When I was reading a book (for example, Faust, Ulysses and other complicated books) I was able to focus on the text very good and my reading speed even increased slightly, while listening to gamma binaural beats.
Another phenomenon, I was able to observe on myself, was that I was able to stay awake the whole night without any coffee or black tea or whatsoever! Moreover, I was more awake and more focused on learning material than with coffein in my blood (I still recommend you to go the bed than staying awake all nights, though).
Ever since I started recognizing these sudden feelings of bliss it started to occur more often and as I realized I am a more happier person in general!
Really good to know, what gamma waves and some further tips can do to change your life to the better!
Book Reviews (regarding Brain Waves and Meditation):
- The High Performance Mind
- Awakening the Mind
© 2013 Slaven Cvijetic