Binaural Beats

Binaural beats can greatly improve your ability to enter self-hypnosis and deep relaxation and I highly recommend them. While they are not essential for your HypnoBirthing practice, they are amazingly useful if you find it hard to 'switch off' your mind in order to deeply relax and go into your birthing body to practice your HypnoBirthing exercises and visualisations. If you find that you are no good at natural meditation, then listening to brainwave entrainment MP3s can really help.

Often, people looking for meditation CDs or self-hypnosis MP3s online don't realize the difference between standard music for hypnosis and brainwave altering audios. The significance is that brainwave altering audios can guarantee the altered states of consciousness that you need to deeply relax your body and yet keep your mind alert so that you remain in control.

So, What Are They?

Discovered in 1839 by Heinrich Wilhelm Dove, binaural beats safely adjust your brainwave frequencies (this is called "Brainwave Entrainment"). They have been used effectively in hospitals in the United States, and much research has been done on the effect of changing your brainwave frequencies for stress reduction and personal improvement.

If you find that the music we use during our HypnoBirthing sessions is not for you (and music is often a deeply personal choice!), then I recommend that you investigate binaural beats to help get you into the deep state of physical relaxation with mental alertness required for optimal HypnoBirthing. Read on for my recommendations for suppliers of binaural beats MP3s.

So How Do They Work?

Our brains goes through many frequency cycles during every day depending upon what we are doing and our level of alertness. Each cycle that the brain goes through has a different effect on your state of consciousness and how you process information. So meditation CDs that contain binaural beats allow you to enter altered states on demand by gently guiding your internal brainwave frequencies.

The desired brainwave frequency for self-hypnosis and relaxation is called "Theta". You can access the theta brainwave frequency during states of still alertness, and also in dreaming. (This is why many HypnoBirthing mums claim that they were "asleep" throughout their labour).

It's quite hard to lower your brainwave frequencies to Theta without falling asleep so how can we induce the theta frequency to best serve you for HypnoBirthing?

Binaural beats work by playing two separate frequencies into each ear (e.g., 130Hz in the left ear, and 136Hz in the right). Your brain can't really process this difference very well so it automatically adjusts what it hears to 6Hz, which is the right frequency for theta brainwaves and you don't have to fall asleep to do it! Since there are different frequencies played into each ear, stereo earphones are essential to get the full effect of these different frequencies.

- all while you still have the ability to direct your thoughts (i.e. you are not unconscious).

Brainwave entrainment is completely safe because we naturally touch upon these lower brainwave frequencies every single day as we fall asleep, or day dream - or even become mesmerized by a crackling fire or a good book. However, because of the deeply relaxing effect of these meditation music files, you must never listen to them while operating machinery or driving a car.

Below are my top CD and MP3 recommendations. I own self-hypnosis and meditation MP3s from all of these companies and they are all highly effective. If you take my HypnoBirthing classes I sometimes play some of them in the background for you to listen to, although they're not so effective if they're played in a CD player - you need to put headphones on so that each ear is hearing different frequencies. Mostly, they are not musical. They just sound like white noise and you play them at a low volume that allows you to drift away.

Most of these suppliers also offer a free MP3 download when you visit their website so you can choose which sound is most relaxing for you.

Unexplainable Store

Unexplainable Store has a huge range of downloads for different purposes, including a self-hypnosis, meditation and lucid dreaming instant MP3s. They are deeply relaxing and guarantee to put you in altered states of conscious awareness every time.

Each MP3 costs roughly A$19.95 to download although there are some special offers and every order comes with $75 worth of free bonuses.

Mind Sync

Mind Sync is a no-nonsense brainwave entrainment product without music. It has a huge range of binaural beats downloads for different requirements. There are also some fascinating meditation MP3s like manifestation and speed learning.

The two Mind Sync products I recommend are:
Hypnotic Induction MP3 and
Endorphin Release to help counter the catecholamines which may be present if you are stressed and anxious about your birthing.

From Binaural Beats to Recommendations Home.

Compensation Disclosure: Compensation is received for referred sales of these products.

Canberra Natural Birth
HypnoBirthing in Canberra ACT and Queanbeyan NSW