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The 3-lb. lump of wrinkled tissue--with no moving parts, no joints or valves--not only serves as the motherboard for all your body's other systems but also is the seat of your mind, your thoughts, your sense that you exist at all. You have a liver; you have your limbs. You are your brain. It defines you through and through. If you lose a limb, you are still you--but without your brain you are a husk, more a zombie out of a horror movie than human.
Finally, we are learning something about the brains essence, which is consciousness --the ghost in the neural machine that gives you the sense of being in the moment, peering out at the world from the control room behind your eyes. The main thing that separates you from beast, human society from the animal kingdom.
We haven't identified that cognitive kernel that gives us spirit and awareness-- but as 21st century science and technology opens the brain to us as never before, we're finding it is indeed a bordered organ, subdivided into zones and functions.
But how do these developments in brain understanding relate to you? Unless you are a brain surgeon you might not care what part of your brain allows you to see, smell or lift your right arm.
What you do care about is the mental componentry that accounts for your quality of life and how smart, creative, happy, fit and healthy you are.
With the goal being self-improvement, the first objective of this article is to foster within you a greater understanding of the ingredients that add-up to make you, you. It will be an interesting escape but also an essential lesson in self awareness, and this is the first step towards tapping into more of your potential.
If you were asked to describe yourself, you might begin by offering your name, and then descend into finer details of your identity like your age, where you live, what you do, what you enjoy, who comprises your family and finish with highlights of your life history.
While this biographical information is important, if you died tomorrow it could also be your obituary. It doesn't define who you are, at this moment, at all. It tells us what you've done and the type of life you lived, but it is really nothing more than a plot summary.
What we are interested in is a scientific discovery of what makes you unique, special and different from every other human on the planet.
This doesn't mean we want to know the weight of your limbic system and the dimensions of your cerebral cortex. We are talking about attributes such as your values, ideals, personality characteristics and dreams. Your energy levels, intelligence levels, creativity levels, talents and skill.
There are 3 major areas of your brain and consciousness that form the foundation upon which your composite identity forms. The first thing most people associate with their brain, is their thoughts.
What generally first comes to mind, when you think about about who you are, is your personality, character, knowledge and habits. When we talk about these things, what we are really talking about are your conscious and subconscious thoughts-- or your thought state. Your state of thought is the conductor that controls the way you approach the symphony of life.
Some think of thought state as your attitude, mind set, or personality. The quality of thought you harbor cannot be externally observed with modern day scientific instrumentation in any detail (only you know what it is you are thinking), but the quality of your thoughts penetrates virtually every part of your identity. It is the one thing about you that people are aware of immediately. It radiates from your facial expression, your tone of voice and body language. Those around you are immediately affected by it, and immediately react to it (positive thoughts affect others differently than negative thoughts). It has virtually unlimited control over your performance and effectiveness. Think of it as a mental gear shifter that you have full control over twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The problem is, most of us elect to slip their shifter into automatic-- for good or bad.
Why is your state of thought such a window into what type of person you are inside? Just think about the aftermath brought on by a head full of self destructive, pessimistic thoughts. If your thoughts are negative and glum, your expectations will be sabotaged and your entire physical vessel will appear shipwrecked. Your shoulders will slump, your pace of walk will slow down, and you’ll even talk at a quieter, slower and more fragmented pace. You will appear less capable, less confident and less intelligent. Your performance, image and rating by others will suffer.
If you think you are a victim and that the world is out to get you, this concentration of negativity will impact how you carry yourself and how you broadcast your personal brand out into the world. When people meet you, they will sense the anger and frustration within you and it will taint your appeal.
Conversely, if you want others to regard you as a funny, nice and competent person, you need to have your thoughts in check with this goal. Positive, inspired thinking reinforces thoughts that promote a peak emotional, mental and physical state. When your thinking is positive, happy and confident, your posture becomes powerful and your stride grows long and smooth. Your face lights up with smiles and laughter. You speak with a more musical tone and pace, engaging others with greater clarity and volume. Your emotions are lifted and balanced by simply acting the part of a positive person.
A powerful gauge of your state of thought is how you react and behave when pressure mounts. The smartest people know that circumstance and situations do not make a person; rather, circumstance reveals themselves unto you. It’s times of challenge that reveal the true inner person we are.
This is not to say that the most successful and powerful people are glowing examples of positive thinking at all times (just as any organism of nature, the state of your thoughts is in a constant flux—they can be tripped up at times), but they do hold an optimized thought state on a more consistent basis. A person that lives in the upper stratosphere of thought quality doesn't let downbeats in thought state disrupt them for long. While their thought state is like a thermometer—the red line dips and rises each moment, of every day-- in the temperate zones of paradise, the weather is always beautiful and the red line doesn't dip too far below an ideal level for long.
You have probably heard a metaphor about how "thoughts are our keepers with the power to lock us in an invisible jail cell or free us from any tangible restriction."
How can your thought state restrict you?
What you tell yourself, and your programmed, conscious reaction to given circumstances, can keep you stuck in a negative, habitual thought pattern that that will cause you to form very disruptive expectations and views without even realizing it. For example, holding a negative view of school—seeing it as a place of frustration and anxiety—will limit your performance and constrain your academic growth in that environment. This pessimistic view of school will pose a great barrier to your personal success, unless you force your mind to change by slipping your gear shift out of automatic and reclaiming control. We use the example of school because this is something that all of us can relate to. Replace this example with work, and the net effect is still the same.
Our perceptions are filtered through a complex weave of self image, self esteem, beliefs, expectations, attitude-- everything that comprises your thought state. This is why Einstein said, “whomever undertakes to set himself up as a judge in the field of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods,”-- it is your thought state that determines how you perceive situations, and as your thoughts change, so do the truths and absolutes that you once believed in so fiercely.
Do you see an academic course as a challenge to assail, an opportunity to flex your brilliance, or just another obstacle foisted upon you? Do you view your weekends as free time you can use to work towards your goals or time to do nothing because you view the absence of action as a source of greater pleasure? Do you see life as an open-ended opportunity or a close ended obligation? Do you approach a potential positive with aggressive energy, or dulled-down skepticism? The manner in which you perceive situations dictates how you act upon those situations, and thus your ability or inability to succeed.
Nobodies life, circumstances, and environment are perfect. But what is your thought state as you encounter these less than perfect circumstances? Oftentimes, it’s easy to fix blame on others. Consider, however, that your feelings are not caused by your cranky boss, the construction on the street, or the inconsiderate friend; rather your feelings are caused by what you tell yourself about your circumstances, and how you fuel your thought state, and in turn, how your thought state fuels you.
Imagine that a friend is late to meet you for dinner. Depending on what you think; "oh, maybe he's in an accident,"; "wow, he’s rude,"; or "something unexpected must have held them up," you might be worried, annoyed or relieved when they show up. These feelings, activated by your thoughts, will then dictate how you react such as calling the police to see if any accidents have been reported, having angry words for him, or simply being glad they showed up as soon as they could.
This is a simple example, but you can use this same method of common sense to understand almost any other situation.
In the words of great Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
Virtually everything that you strive for in life helps create a certain thought state that you believe will bring you satisfaction. We strive to be loved and have others in our life to love. What is love but a feeling and a thought state.
We strive to feel confident, feel admired for our talents, feel appreciated for that which we do, and feel important. Again, these are states of thought. What about other things we strive to attain, like money? It isn’t collecting colorful pieces of paper, or circular metal trinkets, but rather the feeling of power, freedom, and respect that money brings-- the thought state that money creates. An important part of attaining all that you want in life, is learning what the thought states are that will make you happiest, and then setting out to create these special states of mind.
Can you improve your thought state?
You have complete control over your thoughts, so the answer is of course YES!
Studies and a vast history of experiential results suggest that you can control your mind and how you think, giving you the ability to experience supremely joyful states with increasing frequency.
Millions of people from around the world have benefited from the "Self Help Revolution" that is responsible for various methods of thought refinement like NLP (neuro linguistic programming), Self Talk, Hypnosis and Autogenic Conditioning. All of those books, CDs, gurus and seminars are full of these methods -- all of them are focused on changing how you think, and they are selling better than ever.
The bad news is, while we know that it is better for your life and success levels if you think more positively, controlling and enhancing your thoughts is in no way a precise science, nor is it easy. Very few people have the focus, energy and discipline to read, study and use what they learned to change their thoughts and life.
A recent study conducted at the University of Waterloo in Canada suggests that positive affirmations work for people with high self esteems, but not for those that need positive affirmation to work the most-- those with low self esteems. (Wood, J., Elaine Perunovic, W., & Lee, J. (2009). Positive Self-Statements: Power for Some, Peril for Others. Psychological Science)
Another study has found that augmenting the wording of self affirmations in a manner that provokes challenge ("Can I achieve it" VS "I can achieve it") serves to stimulate better results.
We're simply not quite sure why certain methods of thought refinement work and others don't-- the kernel of thought control remains secret... the mystery remains.
For most people, thought enhancement (learning, study, motivation, goals, positive affirmations, etc.) is the sole aim of their self development efforts (Fitness and diet plans that primarily focus on the body, not brain enhancement, excluded).
But what about the other 2 elements that make you, you-- what are they and how can they be activated to improve your quality of life?
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Part 1:
Part 2:
Brainwaves that create Peak Performance
Part 3: Activating your Brainwave State
Part 4:
BrainIgnite Enhances Key Performance Factors
Brainwave Entrainment Solution Comparison
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The second element of this life-guiding three part formula is your mental prowess, your raw cognitive capability... or what we call your brain fitness.
It is your capacity to meet the various cognitive demands of everyday life. It is also your capacity to perform in school and the work place.
What is behind the fitness of your brain?
Brain fitness is dependent on your brain structure and your genes that shape brain development -- or your nature.
The basic biological elements that make-up your brain fitness include the volume and location of gray matter tissue in your brain, your number of neurons, your rate of neurogenesis (the creation of new neurons), your number of functional synapses and dendrites between neurons, and your biochemical, neurotransmitter and hormone levels (all brain controlled).
Brain fitness is also partly dependent on your nurture, although it is not know what has the larger impact. The timeless debate of nature VS nurture continues.
Environmental factors such as your family, your habits, your job, your hobbies and your fitness levels all impact your brain fitness-- things that are very controllable. Brain fitness can be developed by formal education, being actively mentally engaged in life, continuing to learn, and exercises designed to challenge cognitive skills. Healthy lifestyle habits including mental stimulation, physical exercise, good nutrition, stress management, and sleep can improve brain fitness. On the other hand, chronic stress, anxiety, depression, aging, decreasing estrogen, excess oxytocin, and prolonged cortisol can decrease brain fitness as well as general health.
How can you measure your brain fitness?
While your experiences in life are a good indication of your brain fitness levels -- your performance at school, games like chess and all mental pursuits tell you how you generally stack up against the rest-- your brain fitness can be quantitatively evaluated by testing your brains rate of neurogenesis with medical equipment.
Behavioral performance assessments like IQ tests that measure cognitive reserve, memory, attention, concentration, executive functions, decision-making, mental flexibility, and other core capabilities are also very common.
What impact does brain fitness have on your life?
Your levels of intelligence (abstract thought, understanding, communication, reasoning, learning, learning from experience, planning, and problem solving); knowledge (expertise, and skills acquired through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject); lack of prejudice; morality; creativity; & your levels of happiness, emotional balance & joy, are reliant on your brain fitness.
When you buy something, does your brain have the functional synapses necessary to quickly count out the correct amount of money to provide? How easy is it to remember where you parked your car? How quickly can you write a well worded birthday card? Does your brain trigger the release of the right levels of endorphins and serotonin to make you feel good, not depressed.
If your level of brain fitness is low you may have Alzheimers or be developmentally handicapped. If it is high you might be a genius.
These Key Performance Factors (KPFs) are determined by your Brain Fitness:
What are people doing to improve and manage their brain fitness?
Like physical fitness, brain fitness can be improved by various challenging activities involving learning, games, research, complex tasks and novel stimulating experiences, and this is supported by a wealth of scientific research. Use it or lose it, is what they say.
Young people can feel their brain fitness levels ebb and flow as they transition from times of heavy academic load to summer vacation and back to regular schooling. Those who engage in more intense academic tasks develop greater brain fitness-- Doctors don't become doctor-smart over night, they develop their intelligence through years of schooling and mental tasks.
Adults affect their brain fitness based on their job and how they spend their free time. The more mentally challenging their role, the more they activate their brain out of the workplace, the higher their brain fitness.
Unfortunately, most people (especially young people) don't understand how brain fitness works, how their brain naturally starts degrading as soon as they reach maturity-- and don't plan their day to day activities and lives with their brain fitness in mind. In fact, the american dream of long-work hours, vacations and early retirement has an overall negative impact on it.
Seniors are feeling the effects of this mental resource mismanagement more than ever. They traditionally attempt to reverse the loss once they notice it creep in by looking to activities such as playing chess or bridge, dancing regularly or practicing yoga and tai chi to engage their brain and boost their brain fitness. Research by Joe Verghese, M.D. shows that brain stimulation can help prevent age-related cognitive decline, help protect the brain from dementia and Alzheimer’s-- but most importantly, that it can also improve normally functioning minds.
The reality is, people of all ages should regularly integrate brain fitness friendly activities, hobbies and exercises into their day and week, and with a little understanding, this can be a manageable task.
Any activity that involves planning ahead (chess, crosswords, sudoku, poker) stimulates the frontal lobe of the brain. Activities such as ballroom dancing or basketball train short range spatial skills. Physical exercise promotes Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF). Activities like learning a new language or painting require the coordinating of multiple regions of the brain, improving mental performance.
Research has proven beyond a doubt that consistent mental challenge by novel stimuli increases production and interconnectivity of neurons and nerve growth factor, as well as prevents loss of connections and cell death. In one of the largest studies to date, the Journal of the American Medical Association showed significant percentages of the 2,802 participants who trained for five weeks for about 2½ hours per week improved their memory, reasoning and information-processing speed.
Over the last 10 years, a cottage industry of brain training software offering more structured computer based workouts has popped up. Nintendo has plenty of games, and companies dedicating to serving software to seniors are having success in the market. In experiments, comparing some computer based brain boosting exercises to other computer based activities, brain exercises were found to improve attention and memory in people over age 60. Other studies have evaluated other brain boosting exercises and not found improvements. A study of 67 school children aged 10 compared 7 week Nintendo brain training to engaging in pen and paper puzzles. The study found that the brain training group suffered a 17 per cent decrease in memory tests after the seven week course, while the pen and paper group saw an increase of 33 per cent.
Some experts are skeptical with regard to the real value of particular commercial brain boosting products. For example, a panel of experts gathered by Which? Magazine have concluded that ‘Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training’ for the Nintendo DS will not enhance brainpower at all. However, other researchers underline the growing amount of studies indicating that some commercial brain training products have shown measurable results in improving various cognitive skills.
The findings show that their is no widely known magic bullet or product that can effectively manage brain fitness.
However, a more recent emerging technology provides a promising way of boosting your brain fitness that is both easy and highly enjoyable (we will explore this in the next section)-- but to understand why this innovation may be a promising stimulant to your levels of achievement and happiness, you should first understand the third part of your mental framework -- your brainwave state.
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The Undiscovered Country of Potential
Your ability to generate energy, concentration, awareness & clarity to aim your thoughts, to select intelligent goals & direct your actions towards pursuits that further you down a proficient path are entirely dependent on your brainwave state. It is a remarkable indicator of your effectiveness--- a true tell tale of your performance powers. On a day to day basis, your mechanical potential to perform remains consistent, but your brainwave state changes and shifts through out the day, and thus, so does your level of access to your potential.
From week to week, your levels of brute intelligence and ability (brain fitness) remain the same, but your brainwave state is in a constant state of flux -- either working for you, or against you. Most people are off their game far more than on it, but those fleeting moments when we are at our best often leave quite an impression.
We’ve all experienced a moment when we seemed to be at our peak; a moment when our mind and body functioned together with the precision of a perfectly calibrated machine, churning out an exceptional effort: A truly peak experience event. What happens in the brains of people who encounter a peak performance event and experience illumination, extreme clarity, enlightenment, flow and ingenuity?
Finally, science has allowed us to fully explore these distinctive states of peak performance.
These observations have been integrated with clinical studies, anecdotal and empirical research by psychiatrists, psychologists, educators, therapists, physicians, sports trainers, counselors, researchers and clinicians, leading to this universally accepted and unified conclusion: heightened states of mental functioning are consistently linked to specific and clearly defined patterns of activity and events in the brain and more specifically, changes in the brain’s electrical activity and brainwave state.
Have you ever plunged your mind into such a deep state of focus, that you felt like you understood even the most complex things with ease; that you were aware of everything; that you could do anything?
Can you recall a time when you could do no wrong-- everything just seemed fluid as you effortlessly breezed through the movements? Whether you were socializing, functioning in sport, working or learning, things just flat out clicked and you felt like you were at your sharpest?
Have you ever been in that special zone where you were executing and finishing with smooth precision, anticipating the moves of your opponent in almost an extrasensory manner? Have you ever felt like you could see the field with an almost clairvoyant capacity, and every challenge or obstacle seemed easy to surmount?
We can guarantee, that whether you are 15 or 75, you have spent enough time in your own skin
Never chalk these moments of awesome performance to luck, or a fluke—they are
If you’ve done it once, you can surely do it again, by simply achieving a duplicate state of mind.
Our research has shown us, that if you’ve ever come into contact with a truly peak performance moment, all it takes to replicate it again, is to replicate the same brainwave state that you were previously exemplifying.
Athletic mastermind Wayne Gretzky changed the history books of hockey as he practically lived in an adroit state of hyper awareness whenever his blades hit the ice—without breaking much of a sweat, he could stick handle and shoot with surgical accuracy far beyond that of any competitor. Michael Jordan fed off his brainwave state when he was legs up, wrist back and tongue out, to make that 17-foot jumper with fifteen seconds left to give the Tar Heels the NCAA championship. This state became second nature for Jordan; he could flick it on and off like a sitcom re-run, elevating himself to weapon-like status. Polo great Cecil Smith was in the state every time he saddled up his horse and entered the field. Super bowl quarterback Joe Montana entered the state whenever he called pike at the line of scrimmage. Investment genius and oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffet uses the state to make gut level crunch decisions on who will be the next future corporate giant VS who will sink into a state of unprofitable disarray. And just the same, the top 1% of individuals in every industry wield the state to their advantage, knowingly or unknowingly, on a daily basis.
The science is pretty simple: when you are in an optimized brainwave state-- you are able to harness a greater amount of your abilities.
The flip side of the coin: living and acting in a regular, unrefined brainwave state limits you from accessing your full cognitive faculties.
Days when you are performing and executing in a diminished capacity is the resulting underachievement associated with living in a faded and dull brainwave state; it isn’t a true reflection of what you are capable of. These low performance valleys are far more easily encountered than peaks, and unfortunately, the valleys lower our self worth and confidence levels.
Now is the time for you to realize that all of your past experiences that formed the basis for your own self evaluations, have caused your levels of self esteem, self image and self concept to be remarkably skewed to the negative. Judging yourself based on your efforts while in a low performance brainwave state is like judging your performance in a race car fuelled with syrup, not gasoline. It simply doesn't make sense.
The real determining factor between those who fail more and those who win more is essentially the percentage of their day that is spent in a brainwave state supportive of success. The more time you spend in a high performance brainwave state, the more time you will spend winning. Based on this supposition, then to be victorious or to fail simply becomes a matter of your brainwave state ratio. Peak:Low.
The following Key Performance Factors (KPFs) that govern your life are largely determined by your Brainwave State:
• Concentration
Because certain brainwaves create energy, focus and intelligence, we depend on them to accomplish our goals each day. We all know how easy it is to feel overcome with fatigue and lethargy -- and this always leads to a low performance day.
When you have the brainwaves that create optimal levels of focus, energy and clarity in high supply, you are able to put your brain to use with proficiency, whether you want to work, read, play cards, solve a problem or just hold a conversation in a high performance way.
Now you know that brainwaves are important, but you may be wondering about what they really are.
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[a neuron and a synapse]
Every one of us is alive because of tiny electrical explosive events which occur in our brain.
When a neuron is fired (often called a synaptic event) in the brain it emits a charge of electricity for about a millisecond. While it sounds like a fairly simple thing, this amazing chemical reaction is responsible for your very existence.
In 1920, an innovative piece of sensitive medical equipment called the Electroencephalography (EEG) was invented by Hans Berger to detect and observe this phenomenon. The EEG measures the electricity levels over areas of the scalp-- much the way an anemometer records the currents and gale forces of the wind, giving us a better understanding of what is really happening.
[an EEG]
Billions of neurons are constantly firing on and off in the brain at certain rates and intensities, and this tends to produce a "wave" effect that has been popularly referred to as brainwaves.
With the discovery of brainwaves came the discovery of various bands and subcategories of brainwaves, measured in Hertz or "frequencies" ranging from .3 to 40 and higher. Depending on what is going on in a person's head, the brain emits a large variety of brainwaves. For instance, the brainwaves of a sleeping person are vastly different than the brainwaves of someone wide awake.
[EEG data being recorded]
As briefly discussed earlier in this article, it is this new found ability to observe brainwaves so closely, that accounts for the "technological fire power" that neuro scientists at the Volition Neuro Research Institute needed to discover that certain brainwaves are associated with high performance, intelligence and mastery.
We know the exact brainwaves that are present when geniuses such as Einstein and Edison conceive amazing new ideas, when artists such as Da Vinci and Picasso paint brilliant art and when grandmasters such as Bobby Fischer mentally play out a chess game 8 moves ahead.
Lets now explore the many different peak performance brainwave states that have been discovered.
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Brainwaves that Create Peak Performance 
Now you may be asking yourself, what exactly are these brainwave states that create peak performance, and is their just one special brainwave state, or are their many?
Their are dozens upon dozens of different brainwave states, for every different activity or initiative you undertake calls upon a different brainwave state. Normally, your brain doesn't know how to trigger these peak performance brainwave states, and it grinds along in a low performance state through most of your life -- luckily, some special people, through either nurture or nature, are capable of entering them and have lit the way to the promise land of high level mental functioning.
Through clinical EEG research at the Volition Neuro Research Institute we've gained access to hundreds of top performing people, and closely studied some of the most advanced cognitive performers and achievers of our time-- closely monitoring their peak performance brainwave states as they did many different tasks.
Thousands of hours have been spent in the laboratory observing the peak performance brainwave states of people doing many different tasks.
We've observed the cognitive processes of geniuses, wealthy millionaires, lauded authors and members of the intellectual elite. We've witnessed synaptic fiery, extreme levels of focus, "in the zone" cerebral states and perfectly dialed-in thought experiments.
We've also studied thousands of brains out of the lab. Using our various assessment tools and performance indexes with thousands of individuals (executives, professionals, students) in many different organizations has given us a comprehensive understanding of the different brainwave states at work.
Up until when our work began over 8 years, there wasn't an effective nor clear way of benchmarking and rating brainwave states.
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Here, we present a sophisticated and yet easy to understand formula for understanding your brainwave state, called the Brainwave Signature System, developed by the Volition Neuro Research Institute.
To identify your brainwave state in a meaningful way with proper context, you need to define 3 key characteristics.
Defining these 3 parameters gives you a detailed look at what is going on inside your head. Once you know what someone is doing (M), what they are trying to achieve (S), and how they are performing (PI), you have their Brainwave Signature.
Brainwave Signature = M + S + PI
Lets look at each of these 3 parts of a brainwave signature more closely.
Brainwave Modes
With Brainwave Modes, what we've done is essentially qualitatively define the human experience and compartmentalized it into 5 categories.
No matter what it is that you are doing, you are in one of these modes at any given time. To give you a brief overview:
1. Morning Transition: When you are waking up, and starting your day.
2. Active: When you are busy doing activities such as organizing, driving, exercising, multi-tasking, cleaning, shopping or even browsing the web.
4. Family & Social: When friends, family and loved ones are in your midst, you are usually in this mode, which involves conversation, laughing, connecting and emoting.
5. Rest & Relaxation: This mode is the opposite of active. Whether you are reading, watching TV, meditating, stretching, engaging in pillow talk with your partner before bed, napping or sleeping, you are in this mode.
Brainwave Sessions
While in a certain brainwave mode, you might be doing any one of a dozen different tasks or activities, and trying to achieve a number of different results. In short, your agenda and behaviour will widely vary within any given mode.
We've gone to great lengths to identify the different actions and agendas that people often find themselves engaging, and we call them brainwave sessions.
For example, while in work mode, you might be writing an email, analyzing a pie chart, learning a new language, brain storming a new business idea, practicing the alphabet or spell checking your essay. There are brainwave sessions for activities such as:
This is why there isn't simply one brainwave session for work mode or R&R mode.
When you're brain storming, you require a different combination of Key Performance Factors to come into play, compared to when you are analyzing a pie chart or solving a calculus problem.
One task requires more creativity and imagination, while the other requires more analysis and methodical thought.
When you are in Rest & Relaxation mode and sleeping, your brain needs to be releasing different biochemicals and operating in a different brainwave state, than when you are meditating.
As you transition from writing an email, to budgeting your expenses, to interviewing a new hire, to selling a prospect on the phone, you are moving from one session to another-- because you require a different balance of Key Performance Factors.
We identify the different tasks, activities, initiatives and actions that you may be undertaking as "sessions" and not "actions", because they take into consideration not just the activity, but also the experience and result that you are looking to achieve. It's a more versatile word.
Using a clinical EEG device, we place electrodes on the scalp to observe a brainwave session in action, and determine the exact frequency and amplitude that the individuals neurons are firing at. It's like peeling back the skull and taking a Polaroid of the electrical activity that is occurring.
The EEG tells us:
After doing this for hundreds of special, high performance people, we've benchmarked numerous brainwave sessions that create high performance for everything from running to writing.
For example, here's an EEG snap shot of a high performance brain when it is in a state of extreme focus, awareness and acuity while doing office work. You can see the spike in brainwave activity at around 12 Hz.
Here's an EEG snap shot of a fitness enthusiast with amazingly high energy levels just before exercising. You can see the additional brainwave activity at around 18 Hz.
Performance Index Scale
If the brainwave mode tells you what someone is doing and the brainwave session tells you what someone is trying to achieve, the Performance Index Rating tells you how well they are doing.
The Performance Indexes we've developed for each brainwave mode are highly effective assessment scales that give us a rating system to grade an individuals performance level during a brainwave session.
The different Performance Index scales score a persons performance between 1 and 10.
A performance rating of 5 is the best score that can be achieved, while a 1 and a 10 are the low performance extremes.
This method of performance assessment is crucial when it comes to validating an individuals performance in a given brainwave session, and bench marking peak performance brainwave signature.
What the Volition Neuro Research Institute has concluded in their clinical studies is that a peak performance brainwave signature is uniform across different genders and demographics.
What does this mean?
When person X is peak performing while they memorize a definition for a test, the brainwave signature that they exhibit will create peak performance in person Y as well, no matter their age, gender or background. Their is a universal template that the brain needs to fit into for peak performance to occur.
We've also identified the brainwave signatures for over 50 vital tasks and activities.
This is a truly exciting finding that eliminates much of the mystery behind success and high achievement. It tells us that those amazing people we admire and want to emulate, are in many ways, simply a brainwave signature shift different then us.
Of course, thought state and brain fitness play an important role in what we can accomplish-- but if we isolate those elements and hold them fixed, the improvement we can experience by finding a way to achieve a peak performance brainwave signature is extremely life changing.
In the next part, we will examine an innovative method that allows us to take control of our brainwave state and activate peak performance brainwaves on demand.
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Part 3: Activating Your Brainwave State
The more research and study the Volition Neuro Research Institute performed, the more we understood how essential brainwave state is to success, well-being and peak performance aspirations.
It's the lynch pin of action-taking-- if your brainwaves are off kilter then you procrastinate and make low-performance efforts. It is the key stone of your joy levels, fueling you with feelings of depression, unhappiness and low energy when left unmanaged. It is a major factor of influence on your intelligence -- you can perform at genius levels, or way below your potential, depending on your brainwave state.
With this understanding, the next question is obvious.
How can brainwaves be honed and harnessed, how can these peak performance brainwave signatures be activated in a consistent and dependable way?
This is a question that we at Volition also asked almost 8 years ago, and we began our search for answers by looking into the past.
History is full of varying methods of brainwave state alteration... chants; breathing techniques; rituals; drugs; fasting; sex; food; alcohol; hypnosis; we could go on and on.
Of course, people of the past weren't aware of the impact these activities and mediums had on their brainwaves, nor did they know what brainwaves were, all they knew is that they liked the feeling. It felt smooth, relaxing and flowing so they continued to do it.
We started some experimentation of our own, spending thousands of hours evaluating different promising methods such as autogenic conditioning, meditation, neurofeedback, and even pharmaceutical drugs like caffeine and sulfates in an attempt to optimize those special biochemicals like dopamine, norepinephrine, endorphins and serotonin that are often behind peak performance-- but none of these techniques were sure-fire, easy to utilize, manageable and without negative side-effects.
When we came across some rather interesting research involving an undeveloped and very simple method of using audible tones and beats to create change in brainwaves, we had a feeling that we had found something of promise, and so we started digging.
Our research pointed to a simple, natural principle called "entrainment", a natural law that is fairly simple to describe.
"The Law of Entrainment", or as it is technically called, 'mutual phase locking of two oscillators', was first described by a Danish physicist amed Christian Huygens. In 1656, he patented the first pendulum clock, greatly increasing the accuracy of time measurement. About 10 years later, Huygens discovered that mounting two of his pendulum clocks (like a grand father clock) side by side created a strange effect. The pendulums would slowly synchronize with one another and form a mutual rhythm (entraining);a shared beat and concurrent cadence that was so precise, not even mechanical intervention could more accurately calibrate them synchronously. According to George Leonard, this occurs due to nature seeking the most "efficient energy state and it takes less energy to pulse in cooperation that in opposition".
Solar systems spin and twirl in accord, dust flies through the air at the same speed as the wind blows and a stick floats down river at the speed of the current because it's more efficient, so says the law of entrainment.
When researches applied this natural law of physics to the brain in 1934, by directing people to look at lights that were set to flicker at a precise frequency, they found that it had an impact on brainwaves. If they set the light to flicker at a frequency of 12 Hz, more neurons fired at 12 Hz and the brainwaves at that frequency increased.
Called Photic Stimulation, this was the earliest breakthrough in a brand new sphere of science called "brainwave entrainment".
In 1942 Dempsey and Morison discovered that repetitive tactile stimulation could also produce brainwave entrainment and in 1959, Dr. Chatrian observed auditory entrainment in response to clicks at a frequency of 15 per second.
By the 1960s brainwave entrainment started to become a tool rather than a phenomenon of the brain. Anesthesiologist M.S. Sadove, MD, used photic stimulation to reduce the amount of anesthesia needed for surgery. Bernard Margolis published an article on brainwave entrainment used during dental procedures, noting less anesthesia required, less gagging, less bleeding and a general reduction in anxiety.
In a 1973 issue of Scientific American, Dr. Gerald Oster examined how combining 2 pure tones resulted in a rhythmic beat which he called Binaural and Monaural Beats. In comparing Binaural beats against Monaural beats, Oster noted that Monaural beats were shown to elicit extremely strong cortical responses, which is the electrical activity responsible for entrainment. Oster concluded that while Binaural Beats produced very little neural response (because the depth of a Binaural Beat is only 3db or 1/10 the volume of a whisper), they could be useful in diagnosing certain neurological disorders.
In the 1980's studies continued with Dr. Norman Shealy, Dr. Glen Solomon and others researching entrainment for headache relief, Serotonin and HGH release, as well as general relaxation. Michael Hutchison wrote his landmark book MegaBrain in 1981, outlining the many possible uses of entrainment from meditation to super-learning. In 1980, Tsuyoshi Inouye and associates at the Department of Neuropsychiatry at Osaka University Medical School in Japan found that photic stimulation produced "cerebral synchronization". Dr. Norman Shealy later confirmed the effect, finding that photic stimulation produced synchronization in more than 5,000 patients. In 1984, Dr. Brockopp analyzed audio-visual brain stimulation and in particular hemispheric synchronization during EEG monitoring. He said "By inducing hemispheric coherence the machine can contribute to improved intellectual functioning of the brain."
In 1981, Arturo Manns published a study which indicated the amazingly strong entrainment value of Isochronic Tones, as opposed to Monaural or Binaural beats. This was later confirmed by others such as David Siever.
Studies continued into the 90's with researchers such as Dr. Russell, Dr. Carter and others who explored the vast potential of using entrainment with ADD and learning disorders. Research has also been conducted into PMS, Chronic Fatigue, Chronic Pain, Depression, Hypertension and a number of other disorders. Steady research continues today with the work of Dr. Thomas Budzynski, David Siever, psychologist Michael Joyce and many others.
What all this research told us, is that brainwave entrainment was real, and that virtually any repeating stimulus that is applied to our brain or body, whether it be sound, lights, visual images, vibrations or electrical sensations, causes the electrical activity in our brain to change.
If you watch the intense pyrotechnics of a rock concert or the strobe light in a night club, your brain will respond in a different way and produce different types and frequencies of brainwaves, than if you are watching a ceiling fan. You've probably experienced this without ever realizing it, if you've ever stared at a camp fire, felt the physical rush and natural mental high from night club dance music, or felt relaxed by the vibrations felt while sitting in a car.
The principle of brainwave entrainment has been applied, knowingly or not, among civilizations of the past and super achievers of the present. Even politicians and statesmen benefit from it.
How? The most basic and well understood way many of us benefit from this principle is to focus our mind and attune our body by taking slow, steady and deep breathes that bring us into a more relaxed and centered state, readying our physiology before doing anything important such as a public address. We've witnessed this phenomenon at work as professional sports teams gather together and chant fast paced team mantras to charge their minds and tune their brains into a high energy state, in preparation for intense physical action.
You are probably thinking... With over 70 years of solid, promising research behind brainwave entrainment, why hasn't it become more well known?
One school of thought: Our western cultures dependency on drugs has made non-pharmaceutically based methods of treatment and therapy an unpopular investment for research and development, due to their potential for eroding profits. Audio brainwave entrainment has proven to be an excellent treatment and prevention method that could eliminate the need for many pharmaceuticals that make the big drug manufacturers billions each year. Sometimes it just comes down to dollars and cents.
Another school of thought: The methods of brainwave entrainment, involving staring at flickering lights or listening to odd blips and beeps, were too strange and untraditional, and the level of brainwave entrainment that these methods activated was perhaps too subtle. Audio brainwave entrainment is
We felt that there was promise, but clearly innovation needed to take place-- and we had an idea about the direction we felt should be taken.
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Interestingly, the type and quality of music that reached the highest levels of adoption in virtually every era we looked at, had certain frequencies and sound characteristics. The strong similarities between the new age rave, dance and hip hop music and the most popular music from the entire history of humanity was striking, telling is that music that affected our brainwaves in certain ways was what we, no matter what era or time that we lived in, craved.
When you hear a new song, you can tell almost instantly whether you like it or not-- this skill is as instinctual and natural as breathing. Songs and music that have ascended to "anthem" like status all have discernible traits of frequency that might very well account for their mass appeal.
Music has a powerful influence on our thoughts, mood, state of mind and even attitude. Amid the vast variety of consumptive activities and pop-culture experiences that vary from delightful to euphoric rapture, few modern day experiences can match listening to music in pure evocative power. It can soothe the most savage of beasts, captivate the soul, promote order within the mind, stir our emotions, incite energy in our loins and cause a broad range of intense emotions from cloud 9 level euphoria to abysmal sadness.
As Confucius said; "Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without."
Music has a scientifically documented ability to diminish the electrical resistance of our skin, cause the pupil of our eye to dilate, quicken or slow down our respiratory system, increase our heart rate and blood pressure and increase our muscular tone. Music is amazing proof of just how powerful an impact the aural pathways have over the human experience.
With this understanding, we concluded, that if we can invent a method of adding brainwave entrainment properties to popular, highly regarded, enjoyable music -- and give people the ability to replicate the peak performance brainwave signatures that we have identified using music and sounds they love-- the results would be world changing.
We had a strong belief that the glimmers of promise we saw in other methods of audio brainwave entrainment could be fully realized if we could satisfy the fickle nature of human taste and opinion, and make brainwave entrainment not a bitter pill, but something anyone would surely want to swallow.
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Part 4: BrainIgnite Neuro Technology
The science of sound and the principles of the brain have been united to create a zenith of understanding; a powerful foundation upon which striking innovation has taken place.
Our team of doctors, brain experts, performance consultants, audiophiles and programmers at the Volition Neuro Research institute have created a state-of-the-art audio brainwave entrainment application called BrainIgnite Neuro Technology that activates peak performance brainwave signatures on demand.
For the first time ever it requires zero training, commitment, discipline nor a special combination of genetics to access the ful range of peak performance brainwave signatures and reach higher achievement levels.
The sophisticated engine of the BrainIgnite application allows music or sound to be re-mastered and infused with formulaic additives, digital modulations, soundscape modifications and brain piquing characteristics, giving the sound robust brainwave guidance capabilities.
Adding this technology to music transforms it into iMusic (sound becomes iSound). These high tech soundscapes cause distinct imprints, by sending modulations and pulses through your ear drums (the super highway to your mind) into your brain creating subtle vibrations that echo into the sensory cortex; inducing what is called a cortical evoked response. This physiological response manifests in a wave of neural ignition and firing: or what you know as brainwave entrainment
We've engineered iMusic to be almost indistingushable from regular music at normal intensity levels, as the powerful mind activating characteristics have been engineered to be as subtle as possible.
[ image shows how a pulse of sound in iMusic causes a cortical evoked response in the brain]
With BrainIgnite, something as universally enjoyed as music can be endowed with brain regulating and performance enhancing properties, giving you the ability to dial into the perfect mental state for any task or action, with virtually no situational constraints.
Through our clinical EEG trials and comprehensive studies, we've proven that BrainIgnited can optimize and tune brainwaves with extreme effectiveness, creating peak performance brainwave signatures within about 6 minutes of pushing play-- giving you the cognitive energy to understand, comprehend, think, remember and problem solve like you’ve never done before, on-demand.
But our neuro technology isn’t just for performing, it’s also for deeper relaxation, meditation, better sleep, combatting depression, losing weight, fighting fatigue and staying mentally young.
No matter your age, intelligence, cultural background or system of beliefs, the physiological phenomenon of brainwave entrainment is a hardwired and natural behavior that we all share. Whether we're learning, thinking, relaxing, working, training or playing, with BrainIgnite NT, the experience can become richer, more powerful, higher in intensity and produce better quality results.
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Exploring The Benefits of BrainIgnite
The 5 Practical Parts of Life that Define Your Existence
The quality of "you", the intelligence you wield, the heights you will reach, the people that will surround you... all of this is determined by your thought state, brain fitness and brainwave state.
Success in life comes from taking action to develop and enhance these 3 areas of your brain.
How you spend each 24 hour slice of your life makes a great impact on your gray matter, and making sure the impact is positive is quite easy with a little help and guidance.
All of our expertise and experience in the field of human performance has shown us that their are 5 practical parts of life that need to be strategically managed on a day-to-day basis, if peak levels of happiness and success are what you aspire for. Like brushing your teeth, they are an essential part of your “life hygiene” that is without substitute.
Research has shown that BrainIgnite Neuro Technology and iMusic make managing these 5 areas a goal that is more closely within reach. Astoundingly, living a designer life that breeds success and happiness is extremely easy when you take control of your brainwave state with this exceptional technology, and get into the groove of success.
Part 1: Eating healthy
Eating and drinking is of course a necessary element of survival, but exactly what you choose to put in your body has an integral impact on your physical and mental health. If you think about the individuals that you’ve encountered over the course of your life that seem tragically unhappy, you may realize that their first mistake may have been what they drank, inhaled and injected into their first person.
So what if you don’t drink too much, smoke or do drugs. Does this mean your margin of error is smaller?
Yes, but you still need to manage your diet.
You may not think that their is much a difference between a cheeseburger and a breast of chicken, when it comes to your happiness and success, but the reality is that one of the options gives you the energy, protein and nourishment to take action and live with a clear, healthy mind, while the other leaves you feeling a little more tired, a little more prone to obesity and a little more biochemically off balance. Sure, a cheeseburger here and there won’t hurt you, but if your decision making happens to lead you toward the “cheeseburgers” of life more than the “chicken breasts”, you can bet that in the long-term, your body will be less like a temple and more like a run down hotel. Poor eaters and over-drinkers are also more prone to not just obesity, but stress, health problems and psychological disorders.
You may have noticed that people with more success tend to manage what they put into their body better than average-- they treat this part of their life with respect and importance. Of course, some people have great genetics, allowing them to pollute their body with less consequences, creating many examples that contradict this general rule, but we have found that no matter how fortunate you are, your luck eventually runs out and the reality of living a life full of poor habits eventually set in.
When it comes to what you put into your body, the most sound and universal advice is moderation. Everything in moderation.
Using BrainIgnite and iMusic is a simple way to improve this vital area of your life. By living your life in the peak performance brainwave signatures that we've benchmarked, you can increase frontal cortex activity and enhance executive functions/self control, which decreases your propensity towards addictive behaviour-- making over-eating, smoking and over-drinking easier to avoid.
Part 2: Sleep & Rest
Everyone needs to eat and of course, everyone needs to sleep. Getting enough sleep and in high quality is so important that your survival depends on it. The trick to doing well in this area is sticking to a sleep schedule that is in sync with your body’s natural circadian rhythms, properly managing what you eat and drink and getting enough exercise If you get these three areas right, you will rarely have a problem.
BrainIgnite gives you sessions that will train your brain for better sleep and rest, as well as sessions that will guide your brain into the sleep gateway, making deep sleep easily activated.
In addition, shifting your mind into the brainwave states we've identified for decreasing stress, heightening relaxation, enhancing biochemical balance and improving whole-brain functions will actually lead to remarkable improvements in your brains ability to properly shut down at the end of the day.
Part 3: Exercise
While everyone knows that sleep and nutrition are important, many people tend to think that fitness is more optional than mandatory, when it comes to success.
We are here to tell you that you couldn’t be more wrong.
Without exercise, your body will slowly become fatter, less muscular, your joints will give you pain and your body will exist in a state of lower energy. Disease will set in, at first not the life threatening type, but in time you will be afflicted with higher risk health problems.
Eating well simply isn’t enough.
When it comes to physical health, the real trick to staying fit & physically youthful is having the motivation & mentallity that is supportive of your goals. Making the decision to fitness train is never easy, there are always obstacles. BrainIgnited people burn with more mental intensity and stamina than the rest, putting fitness goals within reach.
BrainIgnite gives you sessions that increase your energy, motivation, stamina and action taking abilities, stopping you from feeling too lazy or tired to get to the gym or go for a run.
BrainIgnite primes your mind into a peak performance brainwave state that instills confidence and a higher self evaluation, which improves your thought state. You will love yourself more than ever, and this will drive you to take better care of your physical self.
Part 4: Learning & Trials
Using your brain is a quintessential corner stone to a high performance existence, and is integral for maintaining and building your brain fitness.
School and study are a great way to flex your cortex, but when you leave school, there are many ways to continue your mental growth and maintenance.
Unfortunately, most jobs are not designed with our mental health in mind. After no more than a few years in a certain role, the learning and challenges in the job plateau. Even mentally demanding careers will cause our mind to grow weak in the areas that the job doesn’t actively call upon or utilize.
We need to constantly use our brains by challenging them with the right combination of games, tasks, learning intiaitives and endeavours that keep all parts of our brain intact.
BrainIgnite gives you access to peak brainwave states for many types of cognitive challenges, making success in this area more attainable. You’ll be surprised how easy games like chess, scrabble or sudoku become when you use the right session. Returning to school or independent academic study involves less friction when you use the perfect focus boosting, memory sharpening session. Following self-help programs, meditation regimes, hypnosis programs and self study courses that improve your thought state is easier and leads to better results.
BrainIgnite also activates specific brainwave signatures that improve brain fitness, especially IQ, creativity and biochemical balance.
When you enter the amazing brainwave states we've benchmarked, you will find many of the reasons that stopped you from taking positive action for yourself melt away-- all the friction and barriers are gone when you are in the zone.
Part 5: BrainIgnite
As you’ve read, maintaining and enhancing your thought state, brain fitness and brainwave state levels is critical in life.
Using BrainIgnite Neuro Technology to guide your brain into special peak performance brainwave states trains and conditions your brain into a healthier, sharper and more efficient instrument-- and this needs to be a part of your life strategy.
Their exists no substitute or alternative way to achieve the level of mental health and performance that BrainIgnite has been proven to deliver.
If there existed a worthy alternative, we'd be the first to know-- so the bottom line is simply.
You have to make BrainIgnite and iMusic a part of your life.
At this point, we hope you have come to understand that just listening to ignited music through the BrainIgnite program is not enough to build and maintain a well oiled mental muscle. While adding BrainIgnite to your life, without changing anything else, will bring you great improvement and miraculous life change, we urge you to manage these other 4 areas of your life with greater diligence-- as all of us have room for improvement.
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BrainIgnite Enhances the following Key Performance Factors
| Thought State KPFs | |||||
 Self concept |
Self image |
Self efficacy |
Self esteem |
Positivity |
Confidence |
| Subconcious |
Executive control |
Thought Stability |
Expectations |
Expectations |
Self direction |
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Thought clarity
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| Brain Fitness KPFs | |||||
| IQ |
Creativity |
Brain synchronization |
Memory |
Cognitive ability |
Brain Power |
| Dopamine optimization |
Cortisol optimization |
Articulation |
Sleep ability |
Mental stamina |
Emotional Intelligence |
| Analysis |
Learning ability |
Endorphin optimization |
Serotonin optimization |
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| Brainwave State KPFs | |||||
| Focus |
Self Awareness |
Acuity |
Energy |
Intuitive sense |
Charisma |
| Muscle tissue building |
Patience |
Inventiveness |
Communication |
Comprehension |
Task completion |
| Stress management |
Poise |
Anxiety |
Flash focus skill |
Quick thinking |
Mood control |
Brainwave Entrainment Solutions Comparison Guide
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| Further Points of Comparison | BrainIgnite & iMusic (Volition) | BrainEV | Centerpointe | Hemi-sync | Binaural-beats.com |
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Further Research
Evaluate the followng peer reviewed, controlled studies on brainwave entrainment. Volition did not fund or manage these studies, and this research was conducted using brainwave entrainment methods that Volition did not develop-- they are considered to be less effective and inferior due to our comparative testing (they are also decades old). See our report on binaural beats here.
We have categorized them by the type of control used.
PLEASE NOTE: Due to copyright restrictions, we cannot offer download links for any of the below studies. Contact the individual journals for more information on obtaining them.
Studies that compared different experimental conditions
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