Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess: 5 Simple, Scientifically Proven Steps to Reduce Anxiety, Stress, and Toxic Thinking

by Caroline Leaf

TABLE 1. The Five Wave Frequencies in the Brain Delta (0–4hz) Deep nREM sleep, repair, complex problem-solving. High amplitudes of delta are also found in people who are in touch with the nonlocal spiritual mind even when they’re wide awake, such as the brains of meditators, intuitives, and healers. Theta (4–8hz) Creativity, insight, healing, light sleep, vivid dreams (REM sleep). The dominant frequency in healing, high creative states, remembering emotional experiences (good and bad), memory retrieval, and encoding. Theta frequency activity is increased, especially at frontal sites, during activities that require attention or short-term memory such as mental arithmetic and working memory load tasks. Information-sharing behavior might be associated with higher theta amplitudes, particularly at frontal sites, since this behavior demands engagement of higher cognitive processes. Theta activates during self-regulation. Alpha (8–12hz) An optimal state of relaxation and alertness, bridging between the conscious and nonconscious mind, which brings peacefulness and readiness and aids meditation. Alpha connects the higher frequencies—the thinking mind of beta and the associative mind of gamma—with the two lowest-frequency brain waves. Beta (12–15hz) Processing, being alert and attentive, working through something challenging, focusing, having sustained attention. This is known as “workhorse energy” and represents our normal waking state of consciousness when our attention is direc...