Hey,
This is Ish,
And today I wanted to talk to you about meditation and your brainwaves.
So if you aren't familiar,
Brainwaves are electrical impulses in your brain,
And they move at different speeds,
And they can normally be measured in labs by EEG electrodes that are placed on your scalp.
And just to recap about the waves,
The slowest wave is the delta wave,
So this is something you'd experience during sleep,
Very slow moving waves.
The next wave up,
In terms of speed,
Would be the theta wave,
And that is more of a kind of a spacey but relaxed state of mind.
And the next would be alpha wave,
Which is slightly faster,
But it's also very relaxed.
So if a person is calm but also alert at the same time,
They would have a lot of alpha waves firing at the same time.
And then the next fastest wave would be a beta wave.
And beta waves is related to mental activity,
And to go even further,
You have low beta waves,
Which are slower moving beta waves,
And they correspond to focus,
Quiet,
Introverted concentration,
And you have high beta waves.
And these are very fast moving beta waves,
And they are correlated with stress,
Overwhelm,
And even anxiety.
So keep that in mind if you're feeling anxious,
You probably have a lot of high beta waves.
And then the fastest wave is the gamma wave,
Which I'm going to touch upon in just a bit,
And that's related to perception and consciousness.
So meditation studies have shown that more theta waves are activated in the frontal and mid parts of our brain,
And this causes us to feel just a deep sense of relaxation.
And for advanced meditators,
People who have been meditating for a while,
They have even more theta waves that are firing.
And you also have more alpha brain wave activation,
And this causes you to be alert and also relaxed at the same time.
And just a quick tip and also a hack,
You can actually boost your levels of alpha brain waves by drinking matcha green tea,
And I've talked about this before.
So matcha green tea has a high amount of L-theanine,
And this is a compound that makes you feel really alert and very calm,
But not sleepy,
Just very calm.
And studies have also shown that there's not much delta wave activity during meditation,
So this means that meditation is not sleepy,
So you shouldn't really feel very sleepy in your meditation,
And if so,
That probably means that you need to work on your posture or focus back on your breath and bring yourself back to a more alert state of being.
And just going back to the gamma waves that I was talking about earlier,
They have done studies where they have brought yogis and long-term meditators into a lab where they study their brain activity,
And they've shown that these meditators,
These long-term meditators,
Have had elevated gamma waves in their brain during just a resting period.
And just to recap,
Gamma waves are typically found in very high levels of meditation,
And you can also,
For normal people who don't really meditate,
You still get the gamma wave activation if you do certain things like solving a very hard puzzle.
The moment you solve a very hard puzzle,
For example,
Your brain kind of shoots off this signal,
Like an aha moment,
Where you kind of discover something,
And that's a very high state of being that shoots,
But that typically only lasts for maybe half a second or even a quarter of a second,
So this is not a feeling that lasts for a while,
But in this lab,
They study long-term meditators,
And they had high levels of gamma waves that are kind of just oscillating throughout their daily existence.
So this lasted more than just a second,
But actually it was part of their daily being and their daily life.
So that's actually kind of interesting,
Right?
How this very high state of being where things just kind of click to you is a permanent state of being for these long-term meditators.
And going further,
They found that these long-term meditators had 25 times the amount of gamma wave oscillations during their baseline,
Which means their just normal,
You know,
Daily resting state compared to the control group.
So that's 25 times the amount of gamma waves.
So this is a very high number,
And you can only imagine what this feels like,
And hopefully this inspires you to continue your meditation practice.
In this study,
They studied meditators that have been doing this for about 10,
000 hours,
So this is something that can be accomplished if you start to put your meditation hours in,
And the state of being of just pure gamma is pretty amazing.
So I hope this inspires you to practice more,
And I will be making more meditation videos on how the practice can really improve your life.
So thank you for listening.
