Meditation has a long history of being beneficial for health and well being. While meditation is frequently related to spiritual practices it's benefits are available to all regardless of your religious or spiritual beliefs. And today its benefits are more accessible than ever.

Over the last thirty to forty years a lot of research has gone into studying the effects of states of mind and various meditation practices. Indian yoga masters were able to exert control over body functions that are not consciously under our control like heart rate or blood pressure. Others were able to alter mood or improve learning states. As the studies progressed one of the common threads that began to appear was the consistency of certain brainwave patterns with different mental states.

Studies done using an electroencephalograph (EEG), a machine that monitors brainwave-activity, have revealed four main brainwave patterns:-BETA, ALPHA, THETA and DELTA. Each pattern shows a relative increase of certain electrical frequencies in the brain and is a characteristic blueprint producing a distinctive state of consciousness.

BETA waves (14 cycles per-second and above) dominate the normal waking state of consciousness when-attention is directed towards the outside world.

ALPHA waves (8-13 cycles-per second) are present during dreaming and light meditation when the eyes-are closed.

THETA waves (4-7 cycles per second) occur in sleep and are-dominate in the highest state of mediation. In deep meditation and deep-sleep,

DELTA waves (.5 to 3 cycles per second) are found in deep inner focused meditation associated with profound feelings-of peace.

Meditation has been found to produce a range of health benefits including: deep relaxation, reduced anxiety, improved blood flow and lower heart rate, improved self-confidence, increased exercise tolerance in heart patients, improved blood pressure regulation and relief of muscle tension (any pain due to tension) and headaches. Some of the deeper states have been seen to influence hormonal and immune system functions helping to combat depression, insomnia, chronic infections and cancer.

More recent studies have revealed a possible fifth wave GAMMA waves at (26 - 70 cycles per second), these appear to be related to Tibetan monks in the state of happiness during meditation. The studies were done by researchers at the University of Wisconsin working with Tibetan monks. And they illustrate one of the challenges to using meditation for your health - the time it takes to learn.

They found that longtime practitioners showed brain activation on a scale never seen before. The research was done with Buddhist practitioners who had undergone training in the Tibetan Nyingmapa and Kagyupa traditions of meditation for an estimated 10,000 to 50,000 hours, over time periods of 15 to 40 years. As a control, 10 student volunteers with no previous meditation experience were also tested after one week of training.

The results unambiguously showed that meditation activated the trained minds of the monks in significantly different ways from those of the volunteers. Most important, the electrodes picked up much greater activation of fast-moving and unusually powerful gamma waves in the monks, and found that the movement of the waves through the brain was far better organised and coordinated than in the students.

So is it possible to gain the benefits without spending the time learning? It may well be. The early studies into brainwave states also hit on the idea of trying to syncronise the brain to the required patterns by external bio-feedback stimulus. Many systems of stimulation have been tried including visual, touch and auditory. From these comes a simple system called Binaural Beat technology. This involves listening to a sound in each ear with the frequency of the sound slightly different in the left and right ear. This difference in frequency is perceived by the brain and creates a beat frequency equivalent to the difference. Hence if you set the beat at 10 cycles per second you tend to induce ALPHA waves and the listener enters a light meditation, use a lower frequency and you enter into a deeper meditation.

Some research indicates that DELTA induction states cause beneficial releases of natural growth hormone and seem to provide the benefits reported by very experienced mediators. Further more the University of Wisconsin research demonstrates, that the brain is capable of being trained and physically modified in ways few people can imagine.

Scientists used to believe the opposite -- that connections among brain nerve cells were fixed early in life and did not change in adulthood. But that assumption was disproved over the past decade with the help of advances in brain imaging and other techniques, and in its place, scientists have embraced the concept of ongoing brain development and "neuroplasticity." And it appears that meditation not only changes the workings of the brain in the short term, but also quite possibly produces permanent changes.

These changes are reported by users as better health but for many, even more important is the improved mental and emotional function they experience which results in a happier and more satisfying life.

There are many companies that provide binaural recordings that you can try, to see if you get the same results, or if inclined you can make your own, free software is available from http://www.bwgen.com/ which will allow you to record your own sounds. One warning the beat frequencies rely on accurate rendition to produce the effects. The use of lossy compressed audio formats like mp3 should be avoided as they drop sounds that are not usually perceived as music. These losses are very likely to effect the ability of the binaural beats to function as expected.