Tag: meditation music

Binaural bliss. Go deeper with your meditation and mindfulness.

Why the hell would I go to the trouble of creating my own binaural beats recording when there’s plenty of free stuff out there on YouTube?

Answer: because I can and it’s fun to create your own stuff!

Binaural beats? What’s that all about? Binaural beats, for those of you unfamiliar with it are frequencies of sound (measured in hertz, or hz) which induce a state of calm by inducing your brain waves from a high alert beta state, through to alpha or theta – which is where you need to be for relaxation, meditation – and ultimately a good night’s sleep.

Very briefly (don’t blind me with science) but how do they work? Well – since you ask – you hear a tone in one ear at one frequency and a tone in the other ear at another frequency, very close to the original. The brain cannot decide which frequency it’s hearing so it gives up and instead artificially creates a third tone in the middle which resonates at a frequency which equates to the difference between the other two tones. This resonance, or beat, is the frequency which equates to an altered brain wave state. These tones can be played on their own, or can sit with a piece of music – so long as the music does not obliterate the effect of the binaural beats. So for example, the left ear is hearing 432hz, the right ear is hearing 424hz. The brain hears a pulsating tone between the two which resonates at a frequency of 8hz – the difference between 432 and 424. 8hz is a frequency which helps to induce a theta brainwave state – leading to the doorway to the subconscious – the perfect state for very deep meditation, self hypnosis or trance-like state through repeated affirmations.

This is something I have great interest in – the effect of sound – in particular, musical sound -on a human being. Nothing is more important in my opinion than taking care of your health – mental and physical. And since I’m a musician, sound is my thing. It’s what I work with.

In doing this myself it was important for me to use my own music to work with rather than using library stock or royalty-free music. I wanted to combine my love of composing and production with an opportunity to create something with sound that might help others. So I took a piece of music I’d originally composed and produced as a meditative piece a few years back – “Shimmering Ocean Song” – and dropped the pitch of it slightly to align with 432hz – (which many consider to be a more natural frequency for music to be aligned to than 440hz as with most recorded music) and then applied binaural beats to it – using 432hz and 424hz with an 8hz difference – conducive to theta state.

In addition, I added some positive subliminal affirmations which are pitched at a very high frequency – more likely to bypass the outer ear but be picked up by the subconscious and the inner ear, and created the finished track.

I share it here for you to sample and enjoy.

Would be interested to hear what you think and would welcome any feedback as it is my intention to create a piece that will really help people in their efforts with meditation, mindfulness and well being and the relieving of stress. Stress is a killer and is a chronic disease due to the way we live in western societies – and increasingly in the East wherever they adopt western practices. So this is a first go at this and I’m putting it out there for you to tell me what you think.

Feel free to comment below, message me on twitter @paulmabzi, or email soundkonstrukta@gmail.com.

Thanks for stopping by.

Paul.

This State of Dysfunction and a 2,500 Year Old Truth

How can it not be ok? The answer was there all the time. We just had to look for it..

Strange days we’re living in. Wouldn’t you agree? Turmoil, uncertainty, anxiety and fear – it’s easy for us to become overwhelmed. We are assailed on all sides with messages, information, news, instructions, censorship, commands, controls, obstructions and diversions. Too many of us are at the mercy of a tide that’s sweeping us along to somewhere we don’t want to be. For some it may be a temporary diversion and they can pull it back and steer their own course. For others – it is too powerful to fight against. Battling upstream against a raging torrent.

And some of us watch this drama of others unfolding from afar – thinking we are free of the rampaging waters. And yet we too are in shackles of our own making – and we don’t even know it.

I wonder – how many of us will get to the end of our lives and suddenly realise that we’d been on the wrong road, that we’d been living somebody else’s life – instead of our own – following someone else’s vision instead of our own personal dream. Dimming our own light so that others may shine. Too many, I believe.

How many of us are truly ourselves – really, truly authentic? And how many of us are instead at the mercy and whim of others – whether that be an individual or a group or an organisation, or a set of values or cultural beliefs driven deep into our subconscious?

True authenticity – where the gap between our private self and our public self is as narrow as it can be – this is key. This is the nuts and bolts of it all. This is where the magic is. The further we are away from our true selves and our true nature the more alienated we become from ourselves and each other – with disastrous consequences for us as individuals and for society. We have leaders who are noisy on the outside but utterly empty inside, who don’t know themselves – attempting to lead people who don’t know themselves. The blind leading the blind, who are too blind to see that they are blind.

So much of human unhappiness stems from the misguided and misunderstood need to conform to a generic, uniform, homogeneous, average, dull stereotype. We are forced to become a label, a number, a category, a biometric ID. By conforming – saying yes when we mean no, or no when we mean yes – or by remaining silent when every nerve in our body is crying out to speak up – or by doing or saying things only to please others, settling for mediocrity – we die to our true selves and the world is a poorer place without what would have been our unique contribution.

For our own perceived failings we can blame society, the government, schools, church, work, your boss, parents – anyone. But none of that matters. If we’re lost – we’re lost.

The only one who can find you again is you. No-one can do it for you. How can they – when they don’t even know themselves.

I am reminded of some very profound lyrics to the Beatles song – The Inner Light – by George Harrison. These words were themselves inspired by the writing of the ancient Chinese philosopher, Lao-Tzu who lived around 2,500 years ago. Their profoundness is made more so, given the current restrictions on our physical freedoms:

Without going out of your door
You can know all things on earth
Without looking out of your window
You could know the ways of heaven
The farther one travels
The less one knows

This was the B-side (remember B-sides?!) to Paul McCartney’s Lady Madonna and was undoubtedly out of the spotlight when the single was released in 1968- and yet the words – even from the original ancient Lao-Tzu text – convey a deep truth still today:

We have to first look inwards to then see what truly lies without.

Sound of Mind?

As a musician I instinctively express my thoughts and ideas through music first. I guess it’s what I feel most comfortable with. Writing is a follow-on from that. The piece of instrumental music on the link below – Sound of Mind – is something that I wrote to articulate the ideas which I have expressed in this article. I wrote this music several years ago, however – long before I wrote these words – and when I was recording it and arranging the different sections, I found it naturally fell into three parts based on the instrumentation and intensity of the whole piece –

  1. Future Promise – the time when we are charting our course and we dream of our future lives and what promise the future might hold for us. It’s about hope, mystery, wonder, excitement, ambition.
  2. State of Dysfunction. The start of this section is slightly darker in tone. Now the state has its claws in you. The government has you. Society has you. The illusion of physical freedom is lifted. This is pretty much how it is for the majority. Especially today. Welcome to the treadmill. Or in the words of Pink Floyd – Welcome to the Machine.
  3. Rediscovery. When we stop searching for answers and validation outside of ourselves and instead we look inwards and realise that the answer was there all the time. The piano motif from the start is repeated here to signify a return journey. This life was never meant to be an intellectual journey, but an experiential one – and we are the ones doing the experiencing. The experience is the journey. And the experience can only happen in the eternal present moment. There is no past. There is no future. There is no time. There is only now. Every second spent thinking about yesterday or tomorrow is energy taken from your existence today and thus diminishing your life experience. This moment is the only place where you can exist.

The music in this last section builds up to a crescendo of guitars, strings, synths and percussion to a big finish before dying away to a soft piano chord as the music resolves itself. As life resolves itself.

We should not take life so seriously. It’s just a cosmic game. That’s the big joke. It can never be solved. Because if it did, we would cease to exist. The game would be over.

So you see, there really is nothing to worry about. It was always meant to be this way. So how can it not be ok?

Enjoy the game. Enjoy the ride. And don’t die with your music still in you.

Some last thoughts before I sleep..

As I close my eyes I let the day pass away – but not before I let some final thoughts sink into my subconscious. These are precious thoughts – the most important thoughts of the day. For as I sleep, as my brain waves slow down to theta and delta, this is the moment when the door to my unconscious slips open. This is the moment when thoughts slip through unchecked and my subconscious can work on it all night. So I make sure my final thoughts are special thoughts – of gratitude for something special that has happened that day, and affirmations – reminding myself of who I truly am. This is pushing the reset button before I sleep. For I know that the last 5 minutes before I sleep are the most important 5 minutes. This is when mind programming takes place  – for better or worse – depending on the thoughts. And the program your subconscious runs affects your whole life.

I first encountered this idea – of the last 5 minutes before sleep – when reading the work of Dr Wayne Dyer, and it has stayed with me ever since.

So before I sleep tonight, allow me to share something with you – the key to it all is awareness – not effort or strain – simply, awareness. It takes practice but with enough time you can get there.

We already talked about meditation. But it doesn’t stop there. It starts there.

Make the last 5 minutes before you sleep count and you will be rewarded.

Remember – this is for you and you alone. Don’t sabotage your efforts by trying to explain or justify to someone else. They will never understand until they come to it of their own accord – if it’s their wish. Your life journey is your own business and no one else’s.

I found this incredible music on YouTube and I wanted to share it with you. See the link below. As a musician myself it resonated so much with me. I like to have something like this in my head before I sleep and just let the world drift away.

There is another life you know, without all this madness. You don’t need to travel far to find it. It’s all right within your grasp. You just got to look for it..

Simply Hypnotic