If you aren’t willing to give up your phone, laptop, tablet and any other digital distraction in your life, then you need to find a way to switch off. Get the best out of you. And here’s how.

Your brain waves are responsible for the electrical activity in your brain. This activity is what allows you to think, feel, and move. If you know how to use this activity, you can manipulate the different waves to improve your life.

What are brain waves?

There are four types of brain waves that function well for specific purposes. Learn how to get the best out of them and live your best life.

1. Beta waves are associated with alertness and concentration.
2. Alpha waves are associated with relaxation and daydreaming.
3. Theta waves are associated with sleepiness and drowsiness.
4. Delta waves are associated with deep sleep.

Use meditation, breathing exercises, and yoga to influence your brain wave patterns by helping you reach different states of consciousness to impact your ability to perform well in any given area of your life.

Each type of brain wave has a different frequency range that induces various states of consciousness.

Train Your Brain

Brain wave training is a method that uses audio or visual stimuli to guide your brainwaves into specific frequencies to improve mental performance, induce relaxation or sleep, and even promote healing. There is evidence to suggest that certain types of brainwave entrainment can help to improve memory, concentration, creativity, problem-solving ability, self-awareness, and stress management.

Brain waves are not always static. They can change based on the state of consciousness of the individual. For example, someone meditating may have a higher proportion of alpha waves, while someone who is sleep-deprived may have a higher proportion of beta waves.

Influencing your brain wave patterns is a form of meditation and improves the following:

• Focus
• Concentration
• Memory
• Mood
• Well-being

If meditation boosts all of the above, it makes perfect sense that performance in a chosen area can benefit from meditation.

What are the Different Types of Meditation?

Mindfulness Meditation

The focus is on the breath while being aware of thoughts and sensations without judgment.

Spiritual Meditation

An experience that takes you to the depths of who you are as your authentic self, stripped of previous perceptions about yourself up to meditation.

Focused Meditation

Often referred to as focused attention meditation FAM

Allowing you to focus your attention on an object, sound, or sensation rather than trying to achieve a clear mind without a specific focal point.

Movement Meditation

The practise or exercise that energises your body and mind through calm and purposeful breathing or movement allows you to experience the body’s sensations.

Mantra Meditation

Silent repetition of a word or phrase to slow down mental activity, though the objective is not to put a stop to your thoughts altogether.

Transcendental Meditation

Involves silently repeating a mantra for 15-20 minutes a day, often with closed eyes but without concentration, control, or training.

Progressive Relaxation

Often referred to as Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR), to tense and relax muscles one by one to allow you to notice the tension dissolving in each.

Loving-kindness Meditation

To send goodwill, kindness, and warmth to others by silently repeating a series of mantras to achieve loving energy toward yourself and others.

There are two types of methods that meditation falls within;

• Focused-attention meditation – focus your attention on a single object, thought, sound, or visualisation, to rid your mind of distractions. Meditations include breathing, repeating a mantra, or listening to a calming sound.
• Open-monitoring meditation – encourages a broadened awareness of all aspects of your environment, train of thought, and sense of self. It may include becoming aware of suppressed thoughts, feelings, or impulses.

Focused-attention meditation is ideal for activating brain waves and reaching successful visualisation.

Similarly, Performance Meditation begins with calming sounds to bring your brain waves into theta, making you more receptive to visualisation.

A personalised and guided meditation takes you through the process of visualising the performance you want to achieve. The objective is to make this visualisation an actualisation.

Decrease high blood pressure

Meditation can relax the nerve signals that coordinate heart function, blood vessel tension, and the “fight-or-flight” response that increases alertness in stressful situations.

Reduce age-related memory loss

A paper written by Dharma Singh Khalsa reviews lifestyle and stress as possible factors causing  Alzheimer’s disease. Just 12 minutes per day of practising meditation that combines repetitive mantras or chanting can improve memory in those with subjective cognitive decline, mild cognitive impairment, and highly stressed caregivers, all at high risk for subsequent AD development.

Improve attention span

One study found that people who listened to a meditation tape experienced improved attention and accuracy while completing a task compared with those in a control group. The study concludes that –

‘even brief meditation improves the allocation of attentional resources in some novices.’

Encourage self-awareness

Meditation can help you recognise that thoughts may be harmful or self-defeating. You can better understand your thoughts and habits and steer them toward more constructive patterns.

One study shows that experience in meditation may cultivate more creative problem-solving skills.

Promote emotional health

Some types of meditation have been recognised as helping to improve self-image and encouraging a more positive outlook on life.

One study found that people who completed a meditation exercise had fewer negative thoughts in response to viewing negative images compared to those people that did not experience meditation before viewing negative images.

Reduce stress and anxiety

Regular meditation can reduce stress levels, which means less anxiety.

Analysis of around 1,300 adults highlights that meditation may decrease anxiety. This was most noticeable among those with the highest levels of anxiety.

Promote kindness

Metta (loving-kindness meditation) begins with developing kind thoughts and feelings toward yourself with a view to achieving similar thoughts for others, including enemies.

A meta-analysis of 22 studies on this form of meditation demonstrated increased compassion for the self and others.

Another study based on loving-kindness meditation showed that the more time people spent in weekly metta meditation practice, the more positive feelings they experienced

Modern-day technologies with their so-called conveniences are usually to the detriment of our focus!

If you’re not willing to give up your smartphone, laptop, and/or tablet you need to find ways to block them out.

Allocating physical time to practice the performance you want to achieve is all well and good but sometimes there just aren’t enough hours in the day. What if meditation could boost that productivity to make those physical hours count?

Mediation can boost productivity. If you can channel your brain waves to visualise the desired result, this can boost all your other efforts.

Meditation is not a magic solution, but it can be life-changing when combined with other healthy and productive habits.

Experience a personal guided meditation and see how this can boost performance in your chosen area.

Who wouldn’t want to enhance their physical and emotional well-being? In a world where both are challenged daily, we need something – a daily task that brings us into focus and away from the many distractions responsible for us not finishing that project. To feel accomplished is to feel free to control one’s mind.

The only way to control your mind is to understand how the brain waves work and how to get them to do what you need to envision your ideal outcome. How many times have you considered what you want to happen? Start there.

Take a few minutes to think about your goals and decide which is the most important to your happiness. Do you know what you need to do to achieve it?

Take a look at the four-step process that will provide your personalised, guided meditation.