What I Learned Tracking My Brainwaves for 6 Months
One biohacker’s quest to change her brain through meditation
We live in an era of big data. We track what we buy, what we eat, the quality of our sleep, how much we exercise, and on and on. So it’s no wonder the data-driven world has found its way into a tradition that goes back thousands of years to yogis in caves searching for enlightenment. That’s right, we now have the means to track our meditation patterns too.
In early 2019, as a scientist and self-professed biohacker, I found myself searching for ways to hack my brain, stop endless recursive mind chatter, improve my overall sense of happiness and contentment, and ultimately support my own path to awakening.
This search led to a year of discovering ways to rewire my brain through the magical, mind-altering benefits of meditation.
The plastic mind
Cutting-edge research has revealed the brain’s phenomenal ability to positively change (in the form of a denser cerebral cortex, thicker prefrontal cortex, and a shrunken amygdala, the brain’s fight-or-flight center) as a result of meditation.
The amygdala was useful in an era when tigers once chased us, but it’s become a detriment in modern life, causing us to overreact to simple situations such as someone cutting in line at the grocery store.
Neuroscientist Lara Boyd describes how our behavior triggers chemical, structural, and functional changes in the brain. The brain’s ability to change happens through neuroplasticity and the way that brain cells — neurons — communicate and form patterns. Scientists call communication between neurons in the brain neural oscillations. They have categorized these neural oscillations, or brain waves, into five categories based on cycles per second: the fastest are gamma waves, then beta, alpha, theta, and then the slowest — delta.
The brain produces all of these brain waves in different amounts. A thinking analytical brain, for example, produces mostly beta and deep sleep produces predominantly delta waves.
The effects of meditation on the mind
I love collecting and analyzing data. So when I discovered that people were using inexpensive electroencephalography (EEG) devices at home to track their brain waves, I promptly ordered one such device, the Muse, and learned to record my brain waves during meditation.
As we compared and discussed results from our meditations, conversations like “you got a big gamma rise during that section”… became common.
Shortly thereafter, I was invited to join a meditation group called Raising Our Vibration and to practice with other like-minded people interested in learning meditation while also studying brain wave patterns. The course teaches meditation and breathwork techniques from a number of ancient practices such as Himalayan yoga, Chinese qi gong, and Christian compassion disciplines.
As we compared and discussed results from our meditations, conversations like “you got a big gamma rise during that section” or “theta really seems to be dominating over delta” or “look at that beautiful alpha umbrella” became common and led to insights into how our brains were responding to different felt states.
We found that emotions like gratitude and love produced more delta brain waves and that deep absorption and focus produced gamma waves. Most importantly, through tracking our brain waves, we were learning to identify specific inner felt states and reproduce these states in meditation.
The trend graphs of my daily meditation sessions (60–90 minutes per day) reveal fascinating changes in my brain waves over six months — including steady increases in alpha, theta, and gamma waves.
Alpha and theta increases are consistent with published literature on the effects of meditation and indicate a calm, alert, awake brain with an activated vagal nerve and parasympathetic nervous system. Scientists are also looking at these brain waves as markers for health. One study linked lower alpha/theta ratio with Alzheimer’s disease patients, and my own graph showed an improving alpha/theta ratio.
I was most excited and intrigued to see increases in gamma. Gamma is the marker for a deeply relaxed, but highly alert, hyperconscious flow state and has been associated with profound feelings of compassion and happiness. In advanced meditators, gamma has been found to be a marker for increased brain coherence and accessing flow and higher levels of consciousness.
The awakened mind
The pioneering work of Max Cade and his protégé Anna Wise led them to describe what they called the “awakened mind” state, in which brain waves are produced in the “right relationship and proportion.” Someone in this state has access to desirable traits such as empathy, intuition, creativity, and mental clarity through seamless information flow between the conscious, subconscious, and unconscious mind.
By measuring my brain waves in meditation, I was able to track progress and see when my own meditations were moving closer to producing the luminous awakened mind state.
When I leave meditation and join the waking world, I now live in a high performing, elevated state where the turbulence of the external world cannot penetrate and dissolve a clear, calm mind.
Six months ago, I started a new routine: meditating each morning and evening with the assistance of a neurofeedback device. This device allowed me to become more intimate with my own brain and more familiar with the subtle differences within each meditation. This familiarity enabled me to predict and identify certain felt sensations and thus deepen my meditative experiences.
I learned that when meditating, I am training my prefrontal cortex to be a better conductor of the symphony of brain waves in my head. When I leave meditation and join the waking world, I now live in a high performing, elevated state where the turbulence of the external world cannot penetrate and dissolve a clear, calm mind.
The takeaway
I believe we are on the cusp of a future where it will be common to have mind coaches helping people learn to focus attention through meditation, similar to today’s workout trainers that help people improve physical fitness.
William James, noted Harvard psychologist, wrote in 1890: “The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention over and over again is the very root of judgment, character, and will… An education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence.” We need to embrace mind training as the next frontier in education and health.
I’ve learned that what we focus on matters. Just as in life, we either reinforce existing pathways or carve new ones in the brain. The choice lies within. As Buddha said, “The mind is everything. What we think, we become.”
For most of us, the hidden world of the mind remains largely a mystery. So entangled in the external world, we pay little attention to the inner life and remain at the mercy of our wild, untrained minds.
Ultimately, this work is really about that elusive path to inner peace, health and wellness — how to live persistently in a state of clarity and calm, gratitude, compassion, empathy, and joy — and help others do the same.
