There is a lot of construction going on in my neighborhood, some of it right next door. It gets loud! Since they like to start early in the morning, it can introduce a new challenge to daily meditation practice. Binaural beats and isochronic tones have helped me overcome that challenge.
Binaural Beats
While it seems that there is no evidence that binaural beats create lasting effects in the brain, they do provide a stable soundscape that I find to be conducive to entering altered states of consciousness. Note that for binaural beats to really create the illusion of a beat, you must use good headphones. I use Sound Intone CX-05 headphones, which are affordable and effective.
To generate binaural beats, I use Brain Waves for Android. It has all of the features I need with very few frills. One thing I love about it is the timer feature. There are similar apps for iPhone. You can also generate your own binaural beats MP3s or audio files pretty easily. Check out this tutorial for generating binaural beats with Audacity to get started.
Isochronic Tones
I haven’t experimented as much with isochronic tones. Unlike binaural beats, they are monaural, and usually consist of a short pulsing sound. I use waveen~ for Android for isochronic tones. It offers a broad variety of tones, most of which are played over a soothing soundscape of music or nature sounds.
Perhaps my favorite use of isochronic tones is as an alternate focus for simple breath meditation. With the background noise caused by the construction I mentioned earlier, this is a welcome aid to my daily meditation practice. It’s probably easy to generate isochronic tones with Audacity, too.
How Do You Boost Meditation?
What other technological techniques can be used to boost meditation? I would love to hear your ideas and tips, so please share them in the comments section.
The featured image for this post is “Pythagoreans celebrate sunrise” by Fyodor Bronnikov (1869). Check out the original on Wikipedia.
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