Tag Archives: HoloSync

Dentist day again

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di090318

Extremely important!  Hmm, then why did I not expect it?

Totally slice of life today. Well, I am glad to have a life to slice. Let’s hope it continues that way.

The big event of the day was going to the dentist again. If not, the big event would have been the visit from our supreme boss – I believe he is the boss of the boss of my boss’ boss, but I am not really a hierarchical person at heart so I may have missed someone. Probably not though. I believe over this guy there is just one more, at most two, before the King. Yes, we have a King here in Norway, although he is mostly for show. Anyway, synchronicity strikes again! The guy was slated to appear in our department at the same time I already had my dentist appointment. Since I had nothing unspoken with Big Boss, I went to the dentist instead.

It was a minor thing, as I saw it. Remember how I lose a tooth each time I buy a laptop? The last time I went to the dentist, he put in a temporary tooth (or “crown”, as the root is still there and (surprisingly) still alive. Still alive…

As for me, I am also still alive as of writing this (not ghost writer!) but my tooth hurts. This was not expected. I mean, all the preparations were done last time. All he did was pull out the temporary tooth, clean out the place where it had stood (it smelled death, it is kind of hard to clean UNDER a tooth after all), try the new on for size, drill off a tiny bit of the corresponding tooth in the upper jaw because it hurt biting, pull out the tooth, rinse again and dry, add some kind of glue, and press the new tooth down in the glue for a few minutes. That’s it. So why does it hurt almost as much six hours later?

Needleprick pain is one of our most precise senses, but inflammation pain is not. I can feel that the broken tooth is in pain, but I cannot say whether it is the gums (which were once again harshly treated) or the root canal (which is perforated by a needle, but hasn’t reacted to it for the last couple weeks). If it is just an inflammation caused by mechanical stress (kind of like your skin turns red if you scratch it hard) I am not worried. Moderate pain does not stop me from living my life as normal (although agony does – I just have a high pain tolerance, I am still human, despite my prior aspirations to the contrary). But an infection is an actual health risk. So much more so since these days, we are almost back to a century ago before penicillin was discovered. A big “NO-thanks” to all who use antibiotics against virus (where it has no effect) or “just to be sure”, allowing a wide range of bacteria to become immune to a wide range of antibiotics. Way to go to send us back to the dark ages guys!

So if this is my last entry ever, I was probably eaten by flesh-eating bacteria. Or perhaps I stumbled in the stairs and broke my neck. There is no way you’ll ever know. But you will know that using antibiotics as candy is bad, and that’s something.

***

But it would be a small day if it only had room for a dentist appointment and the consequent pain, right? So how about more HoloSync stuff, it being my current fad and all. (I have a meta entry about my fads lying around in case I should end up without a fresh entry one day, but it won’t be today.)

This morning I continued the tradition from the last two mornings to wake up earlier (or rather less late) and spend half an hour listening to the Dive, the basic soundtrack of the HoloSync Awakening Prologue. I had slept around 6 hours this time, in other words almost enough. (Not considering any sleep debt.) According to not only Centerpointe but relatively independent users, an hour of HoloSync in the morning is better than an extra hour of sleep. This is not to say you can completely replace sleep with HoloSync. I am not sure why not, but I haven’t heard of anyone doing it. The same goes for meditation. You can substitute one for another up to a certain point, but gradually the value of one will shrink and the value of the other will grow.

Anyway, this morning was the first time I stayed pretty much awake all the way through, even through the last minutes which are supposed to be delta waves. And I realized that sleeping through HoloSync is the easy part. Staying with it when you’re not sleeping and with the world’s best computer games only inches away from your hand is going to be the hard part.

I had another micro-dream this time. I almost opened my eyes, enough that I sensed brightness, and in the brightness I saw the street where I walk from work to the commute bus. It was an ordinary day and I was walking down the street as usual, but I was aware that I was actually sitting in my chair with my eyes just barely closed and seeing all this. Woo. It did not last long though. Not as much fun as Sims 2 or City of Heroes, but hey, take what you can get.

You’d think that would be enough HoloSync for one day, but then you would have counted out Bill Harris too early. (Founder and director of Centerpointe Research Institute, but I feel I have said this so often that I should abbreviate it or something.) I may have misjudged the man. He cannot be as greedy as I estimated from his slick salesman verbiage and the exaggerated claims for his product. If he was greedy – or even had a strong economic sense – he would not send me a bunch more CDs with NEXT DAY PRIORITY EXPRESS mail from across the Atlantic Ocean. That set him back $8.65, not counting the content, for stuff I had not ordered and would never have missed if he hadn’t sent it. And the price of the whole thing was pretty squeezed from the start. He really can’t be making much money from me. Although there is a chance that he thinks this will make me more likely to buy other stuff from Centerpointe, perhaps. Or perhaps he is more philanthropic than I thought.

So yeah, I came home from work and there was this thick envelope with CDs and a couple letters from Centerpointe. And an even thicker envelope with socks. I subscribe to socks by mail, and have done so for many, many years. It may end now, however.

Over the last couple weeks, I have had this crazy itch at random times on my feet. It usually starts on the ankle of one foot, and spreads to all of the sock-covered area except the soles of my feet. This happens several times a day, and I have taken to spending my time at home without socks because of it. The skin is now full of red dots and some larger cracks. Rashes? Something like that. I suspect the socks. I mean, it matches almost exactly with where the socks touch my skin. I don’t know if they have added something to the socks recently, or if there is a change in my skin instead. But I think it is time to try another brand of socks. That’s a shame, because they have served me very well for a couple decades now at least.

***

My gums are not the only thing hurting after going to the dentist. (Actually feeling a bit better now, thank you.) There is also the pain in my wallet. I paid my bills yesterday, and the dentist bill was the size of my new netbook and neural impulse actuator put together! This time was only about half that. Still, it is a remarkable place to live, where medical bills are merely symbolic, but where dental insurance does not exist at all (or perhaps it does for movie stars).

This month’s bill was overall remarkable for being more than my monthly income after tax. That is a rare thing these days, thank the Light. Of course, it is not every month I buy a computer, although it may seem so to the casual reader. Or break a tooth. Actually there was so much money in my account that I had to go back and check that there were no erroneous incoming payments, and that I had remembered paying my rent lately. No, there is not even remotely enough to begin thinking of buying a house; it is more the size of a decent used car. But given my socioeconomic status by Norwegian standards, and my attitude to money in general, that is still baffling.

Oh, and since this is all slice of life anyway, let me tell you about Symantec Norton 360, the antivirus and overall computer security program I use on my main computer. This is the computer that is connected to the Internet through a direct connection to the router (although the router itself uses a firewall that has only a few holes in it for basic services). Every some months there will be worms trying to get in through the ports, and Norton will catch them before they can hurt anything. It is kind of expensive for being useful so rarely, but money is not exactly a big concern in Norway. Also, it is very unobtrusive, unlike Norman, which I could get for free but which constantly whines and nags and boasts and interferes with normal computer use.

My 1 year license expired yesterday. For all of that day and all of today, the Symantec renewal service have tried in vain to connect to their server. Perhaps there is no such renewal, perhaps you have to buy it again, I don’t know. Neither does Symantec, evidently. It is kind of sad to see it strive so earnestly to call home, and nobody answers, for two days now.

It does not really inspire confidence in them, though, at least not enough for me to go out of my way to buy them again. I really only need the direct connection for BitTorrent, where I exchange Japanese TV programs that are not available outside Japan in any other way. I guess I should use Linux for that. I wish I had not lost the power supply for the old, old HP laptop. It is plenty good enough to run a BT client under Linux.

OK, that was slice of life, but not life as you know it. Very nerdy life. I guess this is a good place to stop. I’ve been reading about the causal body too, but I think this is verging on geek overload already. But if you think you could do it better, it takes 5 minutes tops to get an online blog. Come on, I’m all (movable) ears.

HoloSync vs. sleep

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di090317

There are several reasons for lack of sleep… although in my case, our supergroup’s weekly gaming night isn’t until Wednesday. And even then I’ve usually had to skip it. Perhaps HoloSync can fix that too?

There is still some vegetation in my sinuses, although it mostly only blossoms up over the workday. Perhaps my workplace is cursed, there certainly are plenty of people who have felt the reason to curse us. Or perhaps work just sucks. There was some poll here in Norway a few years ago among the people on disability pension, and the vast majority of them reported good or very good health. This upset some people, who thought these folks were just relaxing with a drinking straw in our tax money, and not even sick at all. But the thing is, they were almost certainly ill, and many of them gravely ill, back when they had to work. Conversely, if we had the year off, we would be practically bursting with vitality. Work sucks. Even the Bible says so. But it has to be done. Even if that means my sinuses run full of stuff you don’t discuss during meals.

So on the night to yesterday, I went to sleep at a decent time, but told myself that if I woke up early, I would just get up and do a Dive (the entry-level HoloSync session) instead of trying to sleep more and get my bronchia full of goo. This also came to pass, although I should probably not have gotten up after only four and a half hours of sleep. In retrospect. Hindsight. 20/20 and all that.

The reason why I got up was actually also that I had just finished a rather dramatic dream, by my standards. It was certainly more exciting to me than I am able to describe it, but every bit as exhausting. I will write it later in the entry if it looks too short.

Anyway, I did the extra sync (I also do one after I come home, sometimes right after and sometimes later in the evening, but well before bedtime so I don’t go to bed too rested). I fell asleep, as usual, but I guess it helped. I did not fall asleep at work, or at least not for long. (I have written repeatedly about the value of naps at work. I don’t have as many of them as I used to, but often a short one, which restores my energy greatly in only a few minutes. Naps are good. People should do those instead of smoking and drinking coffee, and the world would be a better place.)

Fast forward to this morning. I had gone to bed too late, for reasons that fall outside this entry. So I only had 5:30 hours to sleep, while the optimum for me is 6:30 to 7, depending on my energy level. I decided against adding an extra hour to the timer, knowing that this will likely incur a cost when I try to get back. My body does not “go back” when it comes to wake-up time. Add that to the intestinal routines of my morning (again outside the scope of this entry) and I would soon end up at work after lunch. So once again I put my trust in HoloSync.

You may already know that yogis, gurus and Zen monks get by on much less sleep than most people. Because they meditate hours a day, and have done so for decades, something has changed inside them so that some of the meditation time counts as sleep time. Should I explain the biology of that? Normal sleep consists of several phases, which follow each other in a 90-minute cycle. The two supposedly essential phases are delta (deep dreamless sleep) and REM (vivid dream), but there is also time spent in vague, non-vivid dream sleep. People who wake from that “filler” sleep often believe that they have been thinking rather than dreaming, more so the older they are. (This type of sleep becomes more and more lifelike over time, in other words. It also makes up more of the total sleep time.) It is also worth noting that in the beginning of the night, delta sleep makes up more of the 90 minutes, while toward the morning REM takes up more time and delta sleep dwindles.

People who meditate very deeply enter into brain/mind states that are similar to some of the sleep states, but with the difference that they are passively aware during them, conscious instead of unconscious. In extreme cases they are also passively aware (“witnessing”) during actual sleep. I don’t know if there is any benefit to that except that it is cool. But making do with less sleep certainly sounds like a benefit to me!

Now HoloSync (and its competitors in the binaural technology) induce these altered brain waves through technology. The Dive starts with alpha waves, which are common in deep relaxation and just before falling asleep. It then moves on to theta waves, which plays some role during REM and possible also during filler sleep (I need to check that again) and which is slower than alpha. Finally it moves down into delta waves for the last part of the 30 minutes it lasts.

There is a second track on the CD, which you can set to play right after the Dive once you have gotten used to it, and it keeps you in delta for another half hour. That is substantially longer than you normally stay in deep sleep in one go, unless you are badly exhausted. I only use the Dive yet, however.

This time I stayed awake during most of the Dive, and minimally aware even during the last part. Although I lost volition fairly early, so that I could not have looked at my watch even if I wanted to (which I might be tempted to, since I did not have much more than the half hour before I had to go to work). I was surprised at staying aware so much for so long, since during all my earlier listens I have fallen asleep fairly quickly. (It still has some effect as long as your headphones stay on though, so no big loss.) This time I even had a very brief lucid dream scene, nothing interesting really (I was running toward our mailboxes and saw them coming closer and closer) but it was kind of cool to watch this and know that it came from my brain entering theta waves. (I can not normally visualize, the way most humans can, when awake. It just does not work.)

I was a bit tired at work, but I am pretty sure it helped at least somewhat. Normally I would have needed a 7 hour sleep at least since I was already in sleep debt from the previous day.

I think only the last 10 minutes or so of the Dive is actual delta, and perhaps 10 minutes theta, so it hardly makes up for a whole lost sleep cycle. But it does seem to mitigate lack of sleep somewhat. If I ever move on to add the 30 minutes of delta in Immersion, I ought to report any changes in my sleep habits here.

It strikes me that there are two groups of people who could benefit from this side effect. The most obvious is those who suffer from insomnia. If you don’t fall asleep when listening to the HoloSync tracks, that is considered a Good Thing. It is more effective if you are conscious at the time and can listen to it. If you fall asleep after all, well, sleep is what you don’t get enough of, right?

The other group is those who suffer from alpha intrusion in their delta sleep. There is a meme going around in the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome camp that this alpha intrusion is found in most people with the illness, and I have seen some who think it may be a cause of the chronic fatigue itself. Delta sleep is important for regenerating the body. There needs to be more study of whether delta without sleep has all the same benefits, but the few tests that have been done show hormone levels changing as if the test persons got lots of delta sleep. So theoretically binaural beat technology might restore function to ME/CFS patients, although they might need to use it for a couple hours a day for the rest of their lives. Also, they would lose their disability pensions, but if they are anything like me, they would probably rather work than be sick. Even though work sucks, being sick sucks more.

OK, this got pretty long. The dream was about getting off the train by mistake and chasing it. Not very exciting, I’m afraid. Then again it wasn’t a lucid dream at all. Lucid people rarely get off the train hours before their station. Although I am sure it happens and is more interesting to hear about than my dreams.

Change, awareness, colors!

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di090316

Or, as I call it, experienced reality vs measurable reality.

I am still riding the wave of vaguely New-Age self-improvement stuff. Today I think I’ll just round up some odds and ends. There is no end to the oddities in this world and especially the New Age world.

For instance, I found this blog by a guy who had bought HoloSync and decided to journal his journey of self-improvement. “Changing myself” is its name, and it consists of 7 entries an February and March 2007. Then it suddenly ends, contrary to the stated plans of the author. What happened? Did HoloSync wake the demons in the dark corner of his heart and they made him end his life in a gruesome way? Did he leave everything to join a cult? Did his premonitions about a car crash finally come true? Or did he just get bored of writing a blog, like almost everyone else? In any case, we will never know the truth about HoloSync, or at least not from him.

Speaking of HoloSync, their constantly active founder and director Bill Harris is constantly trying to make the world a better place and sell HoloSync at the same time. For instance in “The Blog That Ate Mind Chatter”, he has an entry named “It’s all about awareness…”, a statement that sounds pretty close to what I’ve been talking about lately. Of course it leads to a glowing recommendation of his own product, but then again would he bother selling it if he did not believe in it? Well, perhaps if he was some kind of snake oil salesman. There is anyway a lot in this article that will be of interest even if you don’t hack your brainwaves. His revelation is eerily similar to the one I received around the age of 15 while reading a small tract by the Norwegian mystic Elias Aslaksen. At that time I suddenly realized that what happened to me was less important than my own reaction to it. And that’s the message Harris brings here too, except his is more about feeling good than doing good. There is a “hidden step” between what happens to us and how we feel. That step is our own inner constructs.

Harris also explains by example of small children how awareness grows from almost nothing in the beginning of our life and becomes stronger and stronger, giving us more and more choice. He claims that this process can continue as long as we live. Is this so, or does the increase in awareness simply follow from the maturing nervous system? Seriously, there is a great difference in the brain of a newborn baby and an older child. Not only in size, but in how connected the different parts are. In adults, new connections don’t happen automatically. I am not even sure (as Harris seems to be) that new connections will happen automatically if you listen to binaural beats every day. At some point, I think the connections that take place in “software” become more important than those that happen in “hardware”. You can’t listen yourself to Enlightenment.

The disciples of Ken Wilber agree. (Wilber himself has only overseen the writing of Integral Life Practice, not actually written any of the chapters. Still, I think we can say it is written in his spirit, more or less.) On the topic of “mind machines” and such, ILP only mentions these technological solutions briefly and in the same breath as mind-altering drugs. These are fine to use if you can do so legally and harmlessly, but they must be used in addition to and not instead of a traditional practice such as meditation.

Of course, ILP has its own weirdness. I’ve made my way through the various thoughts about physical training and nutrition, and come to the part where the Subtle Body is described in more detail. Chakras and meridians and auras oh my! I know this may be unfair coming from someone who lets an invisible friend tell him when the pasta is cooked, but I keep translating “subtle body” as “fantasy body”. Chakras and auras are great for ninja anime, but I would not entrust my health to them. That is not to put down the exercises that are supposed to strengthen the Subtle Body, such as yoga or Tai Chi. I am sure both the breathing, the postures and the focused intentions are good for the health. I just think they work by a slightly different mechanism than the ancient traditions believe.

For instance, I recently read of a study showing that patients with headache responded equally well to acupuncture that was genuine but had nothing to do with headache. Now, I am sure there are numerous studies that show the exact opposite. Why? Because unlike drugs, you cannot easily do “double-blind” tests with acupuncture. You have to either use an acupuncturist or a traditional doctor, for the simple reason that stabbing people wildly with needles is dangerous, illegal and unethical. And despite their best intentions, the acupuncturists and the doctors would send unconscious messages to the patients through their posture, their tone of voice, their expression of confidence (or not) and any number of other subtle clues. Subtle bodies indeed! So depending on who did the study, the outcome would confirm what they already knew to be true.

All this underscores the difference between measurable reality and experienced reality. Science is traditionally all about measurable reality, but if you want a truly encompassing system of knowledge (as the Integral movement strives for), you have to make room for experience. We do this in daily life: As I seem to say every few days, we still speak and act as if the sun really rises in the morning, even though we know it is the earth that rotates. To take another example that you may not know so well, the colors “brown” and “orange” are actually the same, except for context. If you get to look at any one of them through a cylinder that shows only the painted area and nothing else, brown looks like orange. Seriously, I have tried (with the roll in the center of household paper towels). And in Japan, green and blue are the same color. People can tell the difference when seeing them side by side, of course, but not from memory. This is not a biological difference but a linguistic one, but it affects memory in most people.

Well, that should be enough for one day! And in any case, the day is over.

Still good to be me

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di090311

The lawn, since evidently melting snow is interesting.  ^_^

The news from the world are mostly unpleasant: Banks collapse, millions lose their jobs, bacteria become resistant, capitalism is dead, Mugabe lives and continues dictatorierating, and Barnes & Noble have bought Fictionwise. Oppression in Tibet goes from worse to even worse, and the world doesn’t much care because it is weeping over its lost wallet.

But here in my cozy rented little house, there is nothing of all that. As a Norwegian song from my much younger days put it:

“Bare jeg får kose meg i bingen min
kan de andre gjøre hva de vil
ja bare jeg får kose meg i bingen min
er det ikke noe mere som skal til”

(As long as I can enjoy myself in my pigsty,
The others can do what they want.
Yes, as long as I can enjoy myself in my pigsty,
There is nothing more that is needed.)

OK, I would feel better if my sinuses dropped the low-key infection that keeps sending great gobs of green gelatinous goo down my throat, there to choke me at random times of day and night. Hacking like crazy to get the stuff up before I drown in it is rather scary and unpleasant. But apart from that, I really enjoy myself in my pigsty.

The package from Amazon.com arrived yesterday, about a fortnight earlier than expected. (A book, strangely enough in these electronic times. “Integral Life Practice.” I have not read it, but it is by Ken Wilber and friends, so it is probably interesting for the abnormally intelligent, less so for anyone else. I’m somewhere in between there, so I plan to read it someday. So far I have not opened it though.)

I have moved on to the industrial strength HoloSync that I wrote about when it arrived two days ago. I am supposed to do only the first track (“the Dive”) for the first two weeks. The only problem with this is that I fall asleep fairly early during that first track, and when I wake up it is already a ways into the second. This is probably not a problem at all, especially given that I am asleep, but I should probably set up some kind of beeper to go off after half an hour just to be sure I get it right. If it is like the demo, I will be able to stay awake gradually longer through it. Whether it takes as little as two weeks, however, remains to be seen. Perhaps if I actually sleep enough at night… Fat chance!

There are just too many fun things to do if I shouldn’t sleep too. The beta testing does not get as much attention as it deserves, and my sims run with only half an eye of attention. (I have a second Prosperity Challenge, for those who are into the terminology, and it runs on the other computer here in my home office. At least I am not blogging it, the way I do Micropolis.) I have been thinking about starting a game of Civilization IV again – it has been a year or two since last time – but I just can’t find time for it. (I mistyped this a “O just can’t find time for it” which is probably at least as accurate, although it will only make sense to readers of One Cosmos or at least of Bion.)

Have I mentioned that I got another of the new rye breads made with sourdough (leavening) and plenty of sunflower seeds? Just today I read someone complain about the spreading practice of putting sunflower seeds in the dark breads. But the truth is that I like it almost too much. Now that I can only eat a few grams of fat every six hours, I have a constant low-key craving for fat. After I regained much of my lost weight, the desire no longer manifests as pangs of need, but virtually anything fat still tastes delicious. And sunflower seeds are full of oil, delicious yummy oil! It is supposedly fairly healthy too, as fats go. But it is still fat, which means that I need to be aware of it and eat that much less of other fats. It is still worth it though. Mmm, yummy bird seeds! I hope this itching is not my wings trying to grow out…

The snow is melting quickly, although it could come back any day. Today it was hot in the living room when I came home, like a greenhouse. I think that is the first time this spring, although it was pleasantly warm another day or two before. It was a totally sunny, shiny day, although the sun went down around the time I came home. It is still Norway, after all. But then again Norway is the best place to live, so I’m not complaining. Or at least not today.

HoloSynchronicity

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di090309

Actually, I suspect an “Exercise for Mermaids” DVD would be less alien to the average reader than what I actually got.  But at least it is surreal.

Earlier this month, I wrote about the HoloSync technology from Centerpointe Research Institute. Since hacking my brainwaves is the kind of thing I would do, I had ordered a demo CD and then the real thing. Well, the first of the real things. I also have Gnaural so I can make my own brainwave hacks once I get competent enough.

This is not an all-out endorsement. As I said on the 5th, their claims seem exaggerated and misleading, but the underlying science is real enough – it just cannot possibly do all the things they want you to believe. Of course, when it comes to the human mind, believing is seeing: If people are gullible enough, they will benefit quite a bit more from it than we skeptics do. The placebo effect should not be written off easily – there are documented cases where people actually react to salt water as if it were growth hormone, once they had experienced the real thing first. So let’s hope that I’m more gullible than I believe, this time!

But even if not, the ability to alter my brainwaves for half an hour at a time is bound to have some effect, or at the very least be interesting. I’ve been using the demo CD since I got it. It is not “industrial strength” as Harris admits in his lengthy sales pitch, but evidently it was strong enough that today was the first time I consciously heard him say that. The earlier days I fell asleep before I got that far. This is a normal side effect of slowing down one’s brain waves, of course. While not the ideal outcome, it is expected and not really a reason to worry. For each passing day, I noticed that I got further into the CD before nodding off. Today was the first time I stayed awake through all of the speech.

(Quoting the FAQ:“Does it matter if I fall asleep while listening? It is a very common in the beginning to nod out while listening. The main program tracks take you into theta and delta brainwave patterns, those of sleep, and your brain is also making a lot of very relaxing neurochemicals, including endorphins. The combination can make you drift off. As you use the program and the brain begins to reorganize itself, you will gain the ability to remain alert throughout. Falling asleep is really one of the many signs that the brain is really being pushed.” Exaggerated as usual, no doubt, but with a kernel of truth: If it were just boredom that made me fall asleep, it would happen the fifth time rather than the first four.)

Now comes the fun part. Normally I would have been at work at this time, but we have a meeting today in some other town, two provinces east of here, and my guts did not allow me to travel that far. So I was at home during work hours, and one of the things I did was to take my daily trip through the binaural beat demo, as described above. I was coming to the second part, after the sound pattern stopped and where a string of satisfied customers were panegyrizing, when the doorbell rang.

Remember that this was around lunchtime. I was not supposed to be here. (I am not officially disabled yet – in fact, apart from the day trips, I have less sick days than when I was young, thank the Light.) Why would anyone except the most brazen of burglars ring my doorbell at 11:15 on a workday? Cautious, I looked out the kitchen window and saw a mail car. I hurried and opened the door. There was a FedEx international priority package. Yes, it was from Centerpointe.

“Priority” may be a bit of overkill, you guys, not that I don’t appreciate it. I think I would have opted for waiting a month and paying very little freight, if that were an option, but the esteemed researcher turned guru turned merchant thinks changing my life for the better must necessarily be a priority. What can I say? It is still easily affordable for a Norwegian, even one who earns only half of what is normal here.

(In contrast, the book I ordered from Amazon is expected to arrive at the end of the month, even though I ordered it weeks earlier. (Integral Life Practices, February 10th.))

Be that as it may, I now have my “industrial strength” binaural beat brain entrainment CD, yay.

(Incidentally, I believe “entrainment” looks identical to “entertainment” to American readers, is that right? During my adventures with Google trying to find about more about this technology, I come across these places where random strangers comment on some article, and am mildly amused by seeing them mistake entrainment for entertainment. I read some article purporting to prove that we actually recognize words by the first and last letters and approximate length. Anyway, I guess my Neural Impulse Actuator may qualify as brainwave entertainment, but that’s another story…)

Anyway, given that I spend only half an hour a day on this, what is the chance that the package would arrive while I was still listening to the demo? Clearly this is a case of synchronicity, of meaningful coincidences, of the universe pitching in or at least the mind interpreting it that way. And not only the same time, but the first time I stayed awake during the demo. And not only that, but at a time I should not even have been at home, as far as the world knows.

But compared to the universe being fit for life in the first place, it is a pretty small coincidence. Of course, if the universe weren’t fit for life we wouldn’t be here to discuss it, and if I hadn’t gotten the package today I wouldn’t be writing about it. And if you hadn’t been alive, you wouldn’t be reading this, but it is still nice to be alive, don’t you think? Hopefully it will be even better after I’ve meddled with my brain waves. Uhm, presumably. Keep watching this space.

HoloSync pseudoscience

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di090305

I may have too much time on my hands, but it could also be that I don’t understand because it makes no sense.

I think Bill Harris and the Centerpointe Research Institute are doing a commendable job in some ways, making binaural beat technology attractive to the non-scientist public. (The same goes for the original Monroe Institute, with their Hemi-Sync, but let us take one sync at a time here.) What I don’t think is commendable is the faux science. In all fairness, it is not all just taken out of thin air, but some of it is exaggerated, speculative or interpreted in a less than likely way.

For instance, a central claim for HoloSync is that the unusual stimulus is “overloading” the brain, forcing it to “reorganize on a higher level” by growing new neurons connecting the two hemispheres. This is classical pseudoscience. It is almost certainly true that you grow new neurons while listening to HoloSync, but you grow new neurons while listening to Beethoven or a crying baby, or watching porn, or feeding your dog. Almost all neuron growth in adults (and then some) takes place in the hippocampus (the “file allocation table” of the brain, the index that lets us recall memories). Any conscious experience is stored in the brain and connected through the hippocampus. Few other places see actual new neurons, but don’t worry: Existing neurons can grow and establish new connections, even thousands of them in extreme cases. Existing connections can become faster and more reliable.

Since the binaural beat is in fact created by cooperation between the two hemispheres, it seems likely to increase adaptation in the brain to synchronize the two sides more easily. People who have used this for a while will almost certainly find it easier to establish a standing brain wave in both hemispheres at once. But this is no more a “reorganization on a higher level” than people who read kanji will find it easier to read kanji. That is how brains work. Whatever you do, your brain will endeavor to make you do it better.

So it is not that binaural beats don’t work. They certainly do, and there is pretty solid research on that. They just work differently, do something else than what Centerpointe claims. Or at least something else than what you would believe Centerpointe claims, if you read their materials as a non-scientist.

Again, HoloSync (and competitors) train you in creating, maintaining and recognizing standing waves across both hemispheres of the brain, waves of a lower frequency than usually experienced while we are conscious. This may come in handy during meditation, where you set aside the distractions of ordinary thought so as to focus your mind on the eternal and immaterial. (“All that has form is subject to decay; Strive diligently” to quote the Buddha’s last words.) And regardless of any spiritual practice, defragmenting the mind is bound to be a good thing for most people in our stressed time. (Although breaking the boundaries of the ordinary life may be bad for a minority – if you have a history or family history of psychosis, you should talk with a professional before starting to hack your brain waves. Centerpointe fails to mention this as well, or at least I never noticed.)

Obviously some simplification is acceptable. We have the expression “lies to children” to describe that. For instance, we portray the electrons like balls orbiting around the atomic nucleus, but that’s not what they really are. They are more like fields, not easily defined in space. (Uncertainty principle and all that.) I probably did not take any harm from being deceived about the nature of atoms when I was a kid – I simply could not have understood the real thing. Actually I still don’t, I just understand it a bit better, mostly understanding more of how little I understand.

But I think HoloSync (and HemiSync) are not so much simplifying it, for the real thing is fairly simple, only a bit different. By training our brain to maintain standing waves, we raise our consciousness of how our brain works in a hands-on way. Surely that is just as impressive. And we become better at fending off distractions, since we can regulate our brains in more ways. That’s something to write home about, don’t you think?

Another speculation – as far as I can see at least – is the notion that the brain is producing Human Growth Hormone and other “beneficial neurochemicals” during delta waves. The brain does indeed do this during deep, dreamless sleep, where synchronized delta waves are the dominant pattern. But this does not mean that the delta waves cause all the effects of deep sleep. It could easily be that the waves are another effect rather than a cause. You have to specifically measure increased levels of growth hormone during artificially induced delta waves in conscious subjects, and I have seen nothing of that so far. Then again the research section of the website is somewhat chaotic and reads like a cross between a scientific report and a sales pitch, which is probably intentional.

The one invention that sets HoloSync apart from the other Syncs is the discovery that you can increase the effect of binaural beats by lowering the frequency of the carrying waves. As I’ve mentioned, you get binaural beats by giving two slightly different frequencies to each ear. For instance if one signal has an average frequency of 500 Hz and the other has the same modulations but average on 508 Hz, you get a standing wave of 8 Hz in the brain. That’s the secret of binaural beat technology. But according to Harris, the same resulting wave is more “powerful” if the carrying frequency is lower. To the best of my reading so far, nobody else has ever noticed this, and the thousands of happy customers of the competing Syncs seem not to miss it at all.

I won’t say out of hand that Harris just made this up in order to fleece the disciples, by selling them new “higher steps” every half year or so. The effect may well be observable, but it does not seem to have neither neurological nor spiritual origin. More likely it stems from the all too human tendency to want to measure our progress, to “level up” as we gamers say.

But I’ll hopefully find out more about this after I have joined the ranks of happy HoloSync customers. As with other my recent purchases (the Linux netbook and the Neural Impulse Actuator), I try to support those technologies I wish to see in the future, even if they are far from perfect yet – as long as they are marginally useful. And from my few days of experiments with HoloSync, it seems to fall in that category, warts and all.

Do other people change?

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di090304 I am sure a sore throat can improve after three days, and perhaps some simple skills, but what about personality? How many days, years or decades does that take?  Is it even possible?

I was home sick Monday. It is merely a severe cold, I think. Not enough fever to be the flu, though I have been uncomfortable the whole weekend and coughed up green goo. It was therefore well deserved to get a day off from work. To further console me, I got a thick envelope in the mailbox. It was the demo CD and promotional brochures from Centerpointe, creators of HoloSync.

I wrote about HoloSync last month, and my opinion has not changed much. It has not changed much even after listening to their demo CD. It contains soft soothing background sounds that also carry a binaural beat, a difference in frequency between the left and right ear. (Earphones strongly recommended – in fact, they claim it won’t work without them, while the Monroe Institute believe that you may also use one loudspeaker on each side of you and still get some effect.) The binaural beat will gradually – over a period of minutes – create a standing wave in your brain. In this demo, the wave slowly deepens over the course of the demo, taking your brain into frequencies usually only seen during sleep or very deep meditation. In fact, most people would fall asleep if not for the voice.

The voice belongs to Bill Harris, founder and leader of Centerpointe Research Institute. While the scientifically proven sound effects gradually slow down your critical mind to a crawl, he will tell you what an amazing thing HoloSync is. This is so blatant, I cannot even call it swindling. He is all up front about the effects, unless you have been reading the website very superficially and start the CD without having read the thick scientific-looking paper enclosed. And who would do that? Just locate the CD, pop it in and close their eyes? Even then he tells you at the outset that you would probably fall asleep if he wasn’t talking. (In the end, I fell asleep anyway, but then again my clogged bronchial tubes have made it hard to get enough sleep this weekend. I would almost certainly have fallen asleep anyway if I closed my eyes for 20 minutes, even if the King of Norway himself had been speaking.)

I woke up when the sound stopped, feeling calm and clear-headed and with a deep need to buy HoloSync… OK, just kidding about the last part. I am mildly surprised that it did not seem to influence my feeling on the matter, but then again I was fairly positive already. And just in case I was still undecided, the sound came back on. The next quarter of an hour or so was filled with testimonials from satisfied users, some of them with European accents not unlike my own. (Being international is a big bonus point for them in my book. I hate having to pretend to be American to check out some new technology.)

Now we are homing in on today’s headline. You see, these people had experienced so many wonderful changes in their lives. And some of them even claimed that their family and coworkers had noticed. Now that made my ears perk up. (And I can literally move my ears, by the way, to an amazing degree for a human. Why didn’t I procreate when I still could? What a loss to the human gene pool!)

Change. You see, a lot of people believe in change. While most prefer to try to change the world instead of themselves, there are still a goodly number of people who earnestly set out to change their lives to the better. Midlife crises often have this effect, I think. I have previously described my journal as “like a midlife crisis without the crisis”, and this is a big part of it. I have seen so much new over these last few years, I wish I could share it with others. But the more I see, the more removed I become from ordinary human experience, and the harder it becomes to share it. So you get entries like this instead.

Saying “I have changed for the better” is one thing. Mildly interesting, even that. But what really makes me sit up with a start is when someone says “My husband has changed for the better” or “My brother has become a better person.” You see, we tend to very easily place good things on ourselves, things like improvement. If we feel more goodwill to other people, we are happy. But until THEY feel our goodwill, I am still only moderately impressed.

Unfortunately none of the testimonials were from people telling me that their family members had become better people thanks to HoloSync. Rather, this were the people who supposedly had become better people, telling me that their family also thought so. This is a step in the right direction, but not a very big step.

You see, I have known people who changed for the better. In the Christian Church, this was not exactly unfamiliar. It was more or less expected. Some of the changes were pretty drastic, such as alcoholics or drug abusers who completely left their old life behind and became radically self-sacrificing people. And they did not need to meditate for 10-15 years to experience this change either. Then again, their new life needed a lot of “after care”, so it wasn’t exactly a hobby for them.

You could ask their family and friends and they would tell you in no uncertain terms that these people had changed. They had not just improved, they had become new, they had been transformed. But there were never all that many, to be honest. Most of my friends in the Christian Church had always been fairly nice, so it was more of an in-depth work that others could not see. I am not out to belittle that. And anyway the Christian Church at the time was quite small and not growing fast at all. There was rejoicing for every soul who was added to the Church, and for everyone who stayed despite the relentless pull of the World.

It may seem unfair to compare a living Church to a $127 techno-meditation course. Scratch that, it is blatantly unfair. I wouldn’t do it if they weren’t this close to doing it themselves, with the fervent testimonials and comparison to “saints and mystics of the last 10 000 years”. I’ve known a very few of those, you see. And it is hard to not be a little bit changed just by that. But that is another story, not for today.

Be that as it may, I started thinking. I have mentioned that the western world is flooded by self-help books and videos and retreats, so that you would expect to walk among demigods and heroes. But the opposite seems more true. One must be grateful that some of one’s coworkers actually wash their hands after a heavy-duty session on the toilet. (A prior medical condition has given me the opportunity to spend more time in the lavatory than average, so I am starting to notice trends. I can’t see who they are though, and they can’t see me. Though they can probably hear me scrubbing my hands for as long as it takes to sing two verses of “Happy Birthday To You”, although I don’t actually sing that out loud.)

So dear reader: Have you known someone whose life was changed, radically improved, transformed or at least much better in any way through any physical or spiritual practice? Let us exclude life phases, like college and marriage and parenthood. Antidepressants are probably not quite newsworthy either. But anything from the Atkins Diet to the Torah, as long as there are noticeable and long-lasting changes in people’s lives. People who are not you. Tell me, tell me. I am all (movable) ears.