Relaxation Product Review - Balance Stress Effects on Body with Insight Meditation CD
Stress is a funny thing. You think you're in control of your life and then "Wham!" something happens that just tips the balance.
When it happens to me, other people seem to notice it before I do, by which time it's too late. That's why I was so interested in "Insight" a CD produced by the Immrama Institute.
They claim that listening to this CD for half an hour every day will significantly reduce your stress and anxiety. In addition it will improve your quality of sleep, increase your self-awareness and profoundly improve your creativity and motivation.
These claims seem a little inflated for a simple CD, so I delved into the technique they use and my curiosity was raised by a mention of binaural recordings. I've come across research before that proves that your brain can be synchronized or rebalanced using "binaural beats", so I decided it was worth a try.
Binaural recordings are made by using stereo microphones positioned as if they were in the same place as your ears. Often recordings are made using a dummy head with a microphone located in each ear. When you play back the recordings through stereo headphones, the effect is true 3D sound. The listener gets a powerful impression of movement.
Researchers discovered that different brainwaves (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Theta waves) regulate deep sleep, dreaming, intuition and wide-awake states like stress and anxiety too. Binaural beats are used to bring these brainwaves under control. Stress and sleeplessness are generally caused when the associated brainwaves are pulsing too quickly or too slowly.
By playing "harmonically layered binaural frequencies" beneath a soothing white noise, the Immrama Institute has discovered that they have a great antidote to modern maladies. The CD "Insight" uses a variety of recordings of rainfall as white noise and the underlying binaural beats are actually enhanced rather than being swamped.
Although you are cautioned not to expect rapid results, because this is a training program for your brain, I started noticing results pretty rapidly. My sleep quality was the first thing to improve and after a couple of months I could sense a real change in my stress triggers. It was like I was watching myself not getting stressed.
The Immrama Institute also claims that "Insight" will improve your mental and emotional well-being. It's really difficult to tell whether this is just a by-product of better sleep or whether taking a half-hour meditation every day would achieve this anyway. The upshot is that I do feel better and more energized since I started using the CD on a regular basis. If it works, it doesn't matter whether you believe the claims or not.
For me it is unfortunate that the binaural beats don't really work when I convert the tracks to play on my MP3 player. Apparently the compression algorithm affects the frequencies used. I've had the best results using closed headphones with the CD player on my mini-stack deck.
Using the sound of rain on the CDs as the "white noise" is a really clever strategy. If the Immrama Institute used a music track it would restrict their audience purely out of music taste. The sound of rain suits me fine and, by the way, it's not the same rain throughout. They've gone to some trouble to give each track its own trade-mark rain noise.
The Immrama Institute goes to great lengths to claim that binaural sounds are safe and effective for use with most people, including children. They also insist that they do not use subliminal messages to achieve a hypnotic effect. However if you suffer from epilepsy or seizures you should not listen to the CDs. Like Prozac, it's probably not a good idea to drive while using this remedy either!
The Immrama Institute has been developing their harmonic layering technology for several years and they thoroughly test each product to prove its effectiveness. Formerly known as Awakening Minds Inc. they are expanding their activities to include workshops in meditation, relaxation and stress reduction.
I'm the sort of person who finds meditation and hypnosis really difficult because I am resistive to "letting go". "Insight" is advertised as being a shortcut to heightened states. They say you can achieve the same results that Zen monks achieve through years of meditative training except you will do it in days or weeks. The very first session I had convinced me that their claims are not far from the mark. I was "letting go" more easily than I had ever experienced before.
My own response to "Insight" is that I don't think I ever believed a single CD could make such a difference. I've watched stress take its toll on friends and colleagues and a remedy like this is long overdue.
Product Review by Mike Kay
Balance Stress Affect On Your Overall Health, Review > Insight Meditation CD's
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