Introduction

After starting a meditation practice and keeping with it for a year, I wanted to learn more about any physiological changes that might have occurred. In particular, if I had — or if I could change my practice to unlock — any brain improvements. It seems that the scientific tool to make an objective measurement, would be the Electroencephalograph (EEG). I scoured the internet for clinicians able to do make this measurement, only to discover that nobody’s really setup to study that. Sure, a handful of university labs remain interested, but clinics with EEG equipment set themselves up for neurofeedback training — with claims of curing deficits in attention.

As I scoured the internet, I came across this fantastic testimony, a Tale of Self-Discovery by James Hardt, that describes a wild subjective experience after being left alone to play with neurofeedback equipment for a few hours. This experience compelled him to focus a career on enhancing alpha brain waves and led to the founding of the BioCybernaut Institute. Hardt’s life work aims at increasing alpha waves — those associated with openness and creativity — in others, so that they may also bask in the pleasant feelings of high alpha. As a source of revenue, the institute advertises the potential to increase your IQ by 10pts, increase your creativity by 50%, improve your relationships through more patience and understanding, all of which can boost your career.

Clearly, I had to do some more research before I set myself to trying one of the alpha wave trainings. I knew going in, based on Leon Hendrix’s video, How I Did 40 Years Of Meditation In 5 Days that the EEG neurofeedback technology produces personal improvement — in work and life — as a side-effect. Yes, that you read correctly. The training aims to increase alpha waves, but the advertisement highlights the resulting side-effects.

It turns out — I can tell without really knowing you — that you hold yourself back. So the trick to better performance, more happiness, more fullfilment, etc requires investigating your negative thought patterns. For example, you might have an inner tantrum-throwing drill sergeant — see the mental health chapter of Peter Attia’s book Outlive — consuming all your energy and turning it into self-hatred that leads to self-loathing. Alternatively, you might place too high of a priority on safety thus foregoing many opportunities. I would even bet that the reason you can’t get what you want is that you are wrong about what you want, due to the various distortions created by your thought patterns and attitude toward life.

If you didn’t spend so much mental energy berating yourself or employing avoidance strategies, then you’d have more mental resources freed up to improve your life or engage in activity comfortably. Buddhists employ similar reasoning when they advocate moral behavior as a prerequisite for training concentration.

One more great thing about the first training [morality] is that it really helps with the next training: concentration. So here’s a tip: if you are finding it hard to concentrate because your mind is filled with guilt, judgment, envy or some other hard and difficult thought pattern, also work on the first training, kindness. It will be time well spent.

BOOK REVIEW: MASTERING THE CORE TEACHINGS OF THE BUDDHA

Establishing new patterns intertwines with breaking up old patterns. Some of these patterns you installed as a child. Some of them you developed to deal with various traumas, large and small. The longer you have lived, the more the un- and sub-conscious have stored. Only a small portion of that material makes in into the conscious mind. Consequently you find your conscious self as a small boat floating on an ocean of the unconscious, subject to its weather and currents. You cannot overcome this situation with willpower.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a machine that could probe those depths and offer you information about your unacknowledged parts? Contrary to the advertisements about improving my career, I simply wanted to have a transformative experience for its own sake. With an expectation that I could walk out being in a stronger connection with myself — less confused about what I wanted and with an improved ability to listen internally. Hardt claims to have developed just such a technology. So I signed up.

Preparation

Prior to my appointment I had six months to learn even more about the technology, and about Hardt’s viewpoints. I read his book, The Art of Smart Thinking. I noticed that half of it sounded quite well grounded, based on clinical research that I presume would replicate. Descriptions of the alpha brain wave as associated with “relaxed wakefulness”, its incompatibility with the Ego, an observation that counselors must often work obliquely by gathering momentum in small areas to build up confidence and tools before attacking the worst symptoms of an issue, observations about moods with an emotional hierarchy. The brain science corroborates with psychological therapy.

The other half of the book sounds much more “out there”. An experiment commissioned by the Army demonstrated communication of specific Top Secret classified information between subjects. One’s own alpha wave state can strongly influence those around you, which sounds like emotional sub-conscious sympathetic “vibes”. The ability to get guidance in major life decisions based on how your alpha waves respond to imagining different scenarios. Talk of accessing the Akashic Records. An equivocation of The Ego with Satan, the Great Deceiver of the left hemisphere. etc.

Sadly, Hardt was not in the office during my scheduled training. So I was not able to interact with him about these other topics.

The Dry Experience

Over the years, and since the book has been published, they have streamlined the protocol. I still feel they perform a bait and switch. Advertising career improvement, but delivering a psychological therapy. I prepared myself for that, by reading Hardt’s book. But most other folks definitely will not have done that extra effort.

The institute has trained technicians that apply a conductive gel to your scalp and place the EEG electrodes. It really messes up your hair and takes some time to work out in the shower every night. The machine itself reads each channel of the EEG, filters for the alpha wave band, and directs it to an audio note of an organ. With volume determined by the power of your alpha wave at that spot on the scalp.

The chamber is a small little room, equipped with a simple keyboard and monitor and surround-sound speakers. Once connected up, your alpha waves — which you do not consciously control — each control the volume of a note on the speakers. Because an uncoordinated brain is doing many things, each note blares independently. Rather a cacophony than a symphony. However, I did notice that as the week progressed, the notes began to synchronize their blaring more often. Every couple minutes you can read out on the computer screen a panel of scores that show the average signal power over the previous two minutes. This serves as a visual guide for noticing trends on a longer time horizon with some color coding (white = down, blue = up, green = new max) also helping to highlight the trend direction.

On the first day we get familiar with the technology. That morning’s briefing focuses on explaining alpha waves and their benefits. I felt the briefing was really light on technical details. But I understand that most of the public is bamboozled and any reference to the equipment serves to boost the advertisements with a veneer of scientific credibility. The first and last days permitted time to free play in the chamber. The first day to get used to the experience of sitting also listened to a cacophony and the last day to run any protocol we wish, including just basking in high alpha to end on a positive note. The first couple of days had alpha suppression exercises in addition to alpha enhancement, so that we could get used to going both directions. The latter half of the week was devoted solely to alpha enhancement exercises.

Each subsequent day begins with a review of the previous day, followed a briefing to give us new instructions to try out or a new thought protocol to execute. Then we get some time in the chamber, lunch, more time in the chamber, and a debriefing where we talk in a group about our experience. Most days take about 9hrs, but can extend to 12hrs. There are no clocks in the facility, because they focus on the present moment. Every chair has a tissue box next to it, because therapy gets emotional.

In the review of the previous day, we not only look at the EEG — which I found to be really interesting and am profoundly disappointed (especially given the cost) that I could not take home a copy — but we also examine some Mood Scales. Each epoch in the chamber began with some calibration (looking at a dot, counting beeps among white noise) and a mood quiz. The computer will display a word on the screen associated with an emotional state (anger, sorrow, regret, ecstatic, etc) and you’ll score it from 1-5 on how much you resonate with that word. Then again, but without a 3, so you can’t equivocate. Then again, but with only Y/N, so that you must commit. The computer captures your EEG during this task and reports on whether or not you’re feeling it (commission), or lying to yourself (omission). In the review the next day, we categorized these reports for any words that stood out.

Also, you implied correctly, that the EEG waves act as a truth-detector. Useful not just in revealing unacknowledged emotional undercurrents, but also as a decision helper. If you imagine alternative futures, you can read out the alpha scores a guide for feeling through major life decisions.

The Wet Experience

Imagine the warehouse that hides The Ark of The Covenant, but every box belonged to Pandora.

That is your trauma, the big, the small, the plentiful. Open a box, wrestle with the demon inside, acquire a page from your personal Enchiridion! Go exhume enough to make a book of You

— DeepThoth 𓁟 (@DeepThoth) December 7, 2024

Because alpha wave increase requires the removal of alpha inhibition — that is ruminating and negative thought patterns — most of the training time gets allocated to forgiveness therapy. I can tell you my mood scores were unemotionally flat the first day, and a wild roiling jumbling of everything all subsequent days. As the week progressed, I was able, ever so slowly, to admit to this fact (migrating omissions to commissions on the mood scales).

Over the course of the week we get a couple of forgiveness protocols to execute. Roughly, you imagine a wrong, feel the associated emotional pain, and then move to forgive and let it go. This sequence follows an emotional rollercoaster — it hits an emotional low and follows with an emotional high. The more you engage, the greater those extremes. Hence the tissue boxes. Normally, a therapist might work through or merely scratch on one issue with your talk therapy session that week. But here, we have the machine to read out our alpha scores, so we get direct confirmation of the emotional connection. This means we can work through 2 or 4 sore points per day.

I predict that I would not be alone to find that re-living though traumas was emotionally exhausting. I was told that folks typically rebel (and the training is prepared for this!) on the 3rd day by finding all manner of excused to avoid the protocol — my back hurts, the chair is uncomfortable, the dark gives me a migraine, etc. I had my ego tantrum on the last day.

I sat there, knowing that I felt frustrated. Remember how I mentioned the EEG can act as a truth detector? I thought to myself, if this is the pain of self improvement, maybe “I just don’t want to improve”. Immediately, the machine-driven orchestra of my alpha waves blares a sonorous and startling confirmation! A week of working through personal issues had exhausted me. I was tired and wanted to go home.

Take Aways

Was the alpha training worth it? Honestly, I dunno. For the price I paid ($23k), I have doubts. For half that price? Yes, definitely.

Alpha Suppression You can suppress alpha in a handful of ways. Inventory your fridge and cupboards. Do some arithmetic, like multiplying 3-digit numbers. Or visualizations, like naming everything on your work commute. I found that imagining a Rubic’s Cube, painting the sides, tabulating which cubelets got 3-sides painted, 2 painted, 1, and no sides painted on a chalkboard. Subtotaling those figure and then adding it all up again to check I get 3x3x3, worked beautifully. The frustration of losing track also suppresses alpha.

Alpha Enhancement. You can enhance alpha by avoiding visuals, but feelings, touch and smell are all fine. The warm fuzzies of lovingkindness, a gentle breeze against the skin, the smell of a library, the sound of a babbling brook. You can compose these to form your own imaginary space, your personal key to peak-alpha. Openness and growth also work. Imagine ever expanding, growing taller, overflowing with good, floating out in space, adrift on the vast ocean, etc.

Meditation Practice. My meditation practice of intense focus on the breath is alpha suppressing! I believe that the focus is shutting down other parts of my experience. I should instead switch to open monitoring or lovingkindness. I typically don’t connect emotionally, but I found myself more open to experimentation during my time in the chamber and got to try a lovingkindsess meditation that resulted in new max scores.

Self-knowledge. I learned an incredible amount about myself. The psychological defense systems I built as a child aren’t needed anymore (adult environment is different) but I can’t let them go. No wonder people make such slow progress in therapy, change is frightening, especially of core identity/patterns. As part of investigating those patterns, whether effective or not, you will end up exploring your mind.

Lower Stress. Finally, with the forgiveness protocol (and also from my reading of David Hawkins’ book Letting Go, you can remove some triggers from your life that would otherwise consume your energy. For example, I think I won’t be stressing out as much about being late.