Using a Light & Sound Mind Machine to Access Visions

I was using the Voyager Galaxy with a client who reported suffering from depression. I was adjusting the frequency of the lights when the client suddenly yelled out to me to stop at a certain frequency. The client was “seeing” recognizable imagery! What’s more, when I placed the glasses on myself, I saw clear recognizable imagery, too! All I could figure was that the frequency matched some physical brain structure that opened imagery to me (and my client).

visionsWhat I saw was clear and distinct as though I was looking out the window at an actual scene. The colors were as clear as broad daylight. What’s more, the scene changed in a logical order; that is, it proceeded like I was watching a movie. My client, too, saw a moving imagery that was spontaneous. I suspect that the frequency triggered spontaneous imagery related to deeper issues that were metaphorically represented.

Since then, I’ve experimented with the Galaxy on a number of clients and several have reported spontaneous imagery at frequencies of 12.3 to 12.8 hz. More imagery was reported at 12.7 hz unison (both lights flashing in unison) than at other frequencies in that range. In one instance, a person reported imagery that evoked strong emotion that we could work with using RET. Most other clients merely received insight or, in some cases, “gee whiz” information. As a hypnotherapist versed in metaphor, I could use their “gee whiz” imagery to draw useful information for the client’s sessions.

Not everyone who tries this process sees visions. Of the 25 clients with whom I’ve done this, 14 saw visions, 2 saw “something interesting”, and the rest saw lights flashing or unrecognizable patterns.

Mind Machine Madness

A light and sound mind machine can be WAY fun!

A light and sound mind machine can be WAY fun!

Have you ever tried a mind machine? You know, those cool hand-held computers that present you with flashing lights and brain wave tones? Basically, you put on headsets and special glasses that have LEDs in them, close your eyes, hit the start button and WOW! Yeah – those are the mind machines I’m talking about.

I own several models – Voyager Mind’s Eye (used to be Voyager XL), Voyager Galaxy, Proteus, and Sirius (Used to be Orion). My favorite is the Voyager Mind’s Eye. Here is my personal evaluation of each:
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Emotion and Judgment

\"When subjects posed expressions of fear, they had a subjectively larger visual field, faster eye movements during target localization and an increase in nasal volume and air velocity during inspiration.\"

“When subjects posed expressions of fear, they had a subjectively larger visual field, faster eye movements during target localization and an increase in nasal volume and air velocity during inspiration.”

“When subjects posed expressions of fear, they had a subjectively larger visual field, faster eye movements during target localization and an increase in nasal volume and air velocity during inspiration,” observed researcher Dr Joshua M Susskind and colleagues from the Department of Psychology, University of Toronto in Canada. The opposite pattern was found for disgust. The study was supported by a Canada Research Chairs program and a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council grant and published in the peer-reviewed science journal Nature Neuroscience.

Using computer-generated graphics, the researchers trained a group of undergraduate students to model a set of facial expressions and then tested their vision and the airflow through their nose. During the training, the participants were presented with facial examples from one of eight different individuals, four men and four women, displaying six different emotional expressions. They used pictures of faces showing anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise. After the participants rated these faces to identify which type of expression was shown, they were then asked to perform the face themselves. For fear, they were asked to furrow the brow by contracting the muscles, widen the eyes and flare the nostrils. For neutral expressions, they were asked to relax their muscles. Continue reading

Seeing Includes Emotion and Stimulus

Feeling and seeing belong together. I've said so for years.

Feeling and seeing belong together. I’ve said so for years.

From Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B – abstract (my clarifying additions):

People see with feeling (something I’ve been saying for 20 years). We ‘gaze’, ‘behold’, ‘stare’, ‘gape’ and ‘glare’. In this paper, we develop the hypothesis that the brain’s ability to see in the present incorporates a representation of the affective (emotional) impact of those visual sensations in the past (meaning you don’t actually “see” – you FEEL + SEE). This representation makes up part of the brain’s prediction of what the visual sensations stand for (meaning = emotion+visual stimulus) in the present, including how to act on them in the near future (based on how we feel about what we see, we act accordingly). The affective prediction (emotional interpretation) hypothesis implies that responses signalling an object’s salience, relevance or value do not occur as a separate step after the object is identified (seeing = FEELING + SENSUAL INPUT). Instead, affective (emotional) responses support vision from the very moment that visual stimulation begins.

You see AND feel – never see alone. Your visual signals pass through and interact with the emotional parts of your brain – so OF COURSE you’d attach feeling to visual stimulus. I’ve said it for many years and every Rapid Eye Technician knows it from experience. Nice to see that someone is considering doing some solid science about our hypothesis and experience.

Sleep Right, Live Longer

A light and sound mind machine can be WAY fun! And therapeutic as well.

A light and sound mind machine can be WAY fun! And therapeutic as well.

For many years we’ve known about the benefits of getting a good night’s sleep – from better mental health to weight management. Now we know certain types of sleep can stave off high blood pressure in older men. That’s right, we older guys need a goodly amount of Slow Wave Sleep (SWS) every night. It’s as important as diet and regular exercise.

Susan Redline, M.D. and Professor Peter C. Farrell of Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA, said:

“Our study shows for the first time that poor quality sleep, reflected by reduced slow wave sleep, puts individuals at significantly increased risk of developing high blood pressure, and that this effect appears to be independent of the influence of breathing pauses during sleep.”

Slow wave sleep is stage 3 and 4 of non-rapid eye movement sleep and is characterized by brain wave frequencies of less than 4 Hz. It is one of the deeper stages of sleep. According to Redline: Continue reading

Make Cause and Effect Work for You

cause Throughout your life you’ve been conditioned and conditioned yourself to believe in certain cause and effect relationships. Some of your cause-effect relationships may be faulty, however, because you formed in your mind some of those cause-effect relationships at times when you were too young, too ignorant, too traumatized, and/or too inexperienced to adequately evaluate the evidence at hand.

With practice, you’ve perfected your cause and effect relationships to such an extent that they have become automatic – so much so that you simply accept them as truth without question. Further, you tend to apply the “rules” of those relationships to later similar events. For example, the rule that “men cannot be trusted” because (cause-effect) one molested me as a child – taints all future encounters – setting up romantic interludes for failure before they even start. And there’s the first rub – your faulty cause-effect relationships have become so automatic you no longer question them – in fact, you may indeed be completely unaware of many of them.

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When to Pay Attention

Beta and delta brain waves were always present to some degree during wakefulness.

Beta and delta brain waves were always present to some degree during wakefulness.

A study published in Neuron, helps us understand the value of delta and beta brain waves in a new way. Basically, the study showed that beta brain waves denote attention and attentiveness while the much slower delta brain waves tell us when to pay attention. It makes sense that we don’t pay attention to everything all the time – we’d be overwhelmed. Some mechanism within us figures out the patterns of attention we need to employ in order to better utilize our attentive powers. Timing is everything…

Through a series of experiments utilizing a brain-computer interface, the study authors discovered that beta and delta brain waves were always present to some degree during wakefulness. The frequency and intensity of the delta wave helped the authors predict when attention would be paid while the frequency and intensity of the beta wave helped them predict how attentive the subject would be at any given time. Fundamentally, this demonstrates that our brains are always bathed in delta AND beta waves during times of outward attention such as when noticing something important or just paying attention to something. The study did not investigate sleep states.

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Resolving Issues Using Light & Sound Technology

A light and sound mind machine can be WAY fun! And therapeutic as well.

A light and sound mind machine can be WAY fun! And therapeutic as well.

Years ago I discovered that I could use a Light & Sound mind machine while my client described their issue symptoms. At frequencies of 8.5 – 10 hz alternating, I found that clients tended to more quickly solve their own problems. One woman I worked with said she felt she could do anything in that state of mind.

For RET Technicians, try using a mind machine while doing RET Life Skills Coaching.

What seemed to work for me was to slowly adjust the mind machine’s frequency up, little by little, until the client showed a distinct relaxing of the facial muscles. Then I’d leave the frequency there for a while before inviting the client to discuss their issue with me. My job was to help them elicit further aspects of their issue or problem. “What ELSE…” “…And then…” etc. Mostly I focused on behavior, belief, and physical sensation, rather than on emotion.

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Another Use of Music as Therapy?

Connecting her to this special device allows her to create music – really.

Connecting her to this special device allows her to create music – really.

Researchers at the University of Plymouth (UK) have developed a device that allows a woman to create music from within her brain-locked-in body. You see, she can’t move – the result of a stroke – but her mind is completely there. She’s “locked in” – she can see, hear, feel, etc., just as you and I can – but she can’t move a muscle (except an eyelash).

Connecting her to this special device allows her to create music – really – using only her mind. No one knows how she represents this insider her mind – maybe she imagines herself playing instruments or writing a score – we’ll maybe never know. But she is able to communicate that she feels a sense of personal control for a change – something she’s not felt for some time.

I so very much applaud the work Eduardo Miranda and his companions are doing in this area of research and technology. I can’t imaging the horror it must be to be locked inside your body with nearly no means of communication to the “outside”. The level of terror and frustration must be beyond my comprehension. Still, thousands of folks around the world cope every day with this and other debilitating mind/body afflictions.

I want to send Mr. Miranda et al a check today! This is research worth pursuing, I think. May they find adequate funding. I’m sure they’ll find plenty of test subjects.

Source: “Brain-Computer Music Interfacing (BCMI): From Basic Research to the Real World of Special Needs Music and Medicine .” Eduardo R. Miranda, Wendy L. Magee, John J. Wilson, Joel Eaton, and Ramaswamy Palaniappan. Published in Music and Medicine, article first published on March 7, 2011 as doi:10.1177/1943862111399290.