One snowy morning in February 1982, Gari Carter, a businesswoman and owner of a bookstore near Charlottesville,Virginia, was driving to Baltimore with her 11-year-old son to a gift show to buy items for her shop.
She relates the event in her book, Healing Myself (Norfolk, Hampton Roads): "My son and I discussed turning around and going home but decided to drive five more minutes. During those five minutes a large station wagon full of kids lost control and hit us head-on. ... The main impact was on my side of my little foreign car ...The engine crushed my legs and partially severed one of them, and the steering wheel just totally demolished my face. My face was a hole from the eyes down.
"My son realized that he was OK ... didn't have a scratch. He got out ... suddenly realized that his mother didn't have a face and his mother wasn't breathing. He learned the week before in Cub Scouts how to do CPR and he did it ..."
Gari Carter was rushed to UVA Hospital within minutes. After her condition was stabilized, Dr. Milton Edgerton reconstructed her face in a series of 10 surgeries during the 10 years after her automobile accident. Dr. Edgerton is with the Craniofacial Clinic in the Plastic Surgery Department of the UVA Medical Center Hospital in Charlottesville, Virginia.
In the beginning surgeries, Dr. Edgerton reconstructed and grafted the jaw and cheekbones. "The beginning surgeries were very painful and disagreeable... horrible surgeries," said Mrs. Carter.
Before the next set of painful surgeries, Mrs. Carter received a call from a friend who insisted she try a set of tapes that control pain. These tapes were from the Hemi-Sync Surgical Support Series, produced by the Monroe Institute. She felt relaxed after trying out the tapes. Before her next surgery to create her new nose, Mrs. Carter asked the doctors and nurses not to medicate her, but to observe her with the tapes. "If they worked, fine. If they didn't work, I wanted codeine right away."
Before the surgery, Mrs. Carter "felt happy and relaxed going down to the operating room, instead of having the shivers and wanting to throw up." She used the tapes in the operating room during all her subsequent surgeries.
Hemi-Sync is an external stimulus that entrains the brain, producing distinct states of consciousness. The Hemi-Sync process uses binaural beats, which are the result of specific auditory processing in the brain.
Binaural beats were first discovered in 1839 by a German experimenter, H.W. Dove, who speculated that binaural beats were an evolutionary adaptation of the brain to localize sound accurately. For example, a tone of 1000 Hz behind and to the right of the listener, reaches the right ear first, and several milliseconds later, the left ear. These sounds combine in the brain, and the location is determined based on the phase difference of the sound in the brain (Oster, 1973).
In nature, these phase differences would be used to determine location of a sound source. But in an artificial environment of headphones, binaural beats can induce the frequency following response (FFR). For example, when a 400 Hz tone is played in the right ear, and a 404 Hz tone in the left, the binaural beat produced by the brain is 4 Hz. This is a standing wave which in turn can entrain the brain waves. Binaural beats were required by Hemi-Sync technology because it is not possible to record and play on standard audio technology the low frequencies required to tune the brain.
The term Hemi-Sync is short for hemispheric synchronization. Each hemisphere contains an olivary nucleus. Because each ear is "hardwired" to both of these nuclei, standing waves of equal amplitude and frequency are present in each hemisphere of the brain. These two separate standing waves theoretically entrain portions of each hemisphere to the same frequencyruck, and then brought into the vicinity of another 440 Hz tuning fork, the first fork will entrain, or cause the second fork to vibrate. Three basic principles underly this phenomenon:
The physics of entrainment similarly apply to biological organisms. For example, brain waves represent the net activity of millions of neurons, based on external environment and internal will. Input from the senses is translated into electrical impulses that travel throughout the brain. Light and sound are very powerful stimuli, and in turn cause more electrochemical response within the brain. Often powerful light and sound combinations can actually entrain the brain to follow a particular pattern. This is the FFR. For example, a strobe light flashing at 10 Hz will often entrain brain waves to its frequency.
However, not all individuals who are presented with the strobe light stimulus will entrain it. For example, a subject with high-amplitude brain waves around 26 Hz would most likely not be affected or entrained by the strobe light. Simply being nervous or distracted can prevent proper entrainment. In this instance, based on the resonance rule, the second system cannot vibrate at the same frequency. However, if the strobe frequency is brought to within 85% of the subject's current state, for example, 20 Hz, its influential power is multiplied, and the brain is more likely to be influenced by that stimulus.
Brain waves represent the net activity of neurons, and are usually approximated by EEG waves, which reflect brain activity near the surface as recorded by electrodes. Throughout the day, EEG waves, which range over 1-32 Hz and beyond, predominate in different patterns reflecting distinct states of consciousness, from alertness, to a relaxed state, to deep sleep.
Brain waves also reflect the way an individual perceives the outside world. Some states of consciousness, like relaxation, provide expanded awareness, while alertness corresponds to narrow, focused awareness. Conversely, the outside world may influence states of perception. For example, circadian and ultradian (rest-activity) rhythms, and social environment can all influence states of consciousness, whether directly or indirectly (Rossi, 1986; Shannahoff-Khalsa, 1991; Webb and Dube, 1981).
Like biofeedback and relaxation training, Hemi-Sync allows one to gain greater conscious control over normally unconscious processes of the brain and mind. During the day, an individual shifts through various states of consciousness, some productive to the task at hand, others not. This shift happens automatically, and not very efficiently.
Researchers at the Monroe Institute have isolated specific productive states of consciousness, and manufactured the Hemi-Sync tones that resemble these natural states. An experienced listener can place himself in a desired state of consciousness without the use of Hemi-Sync sounds (Atwater, 1988).
In one major project, called the Personal Resources Exploration Program (PREP), subjects climb into a sensory-isolation chamber, and listen to Hemi-Sync tones. As they enter these deep states of relaxation, they explain to a monitor what they are experiencing. This is used in concert with physiological data to ascertain any effects of Hemi-Sync on the brain and body.
Observations of individuals before and while listening to Hemi-Sync tones show that Hemi-Sync produces a more coherent synchronous EEG pattern with significantly higher amplitudes in the actual frequencies than in the original sound stimulus. Through such studies and mapping of EEG patterns, the Institute is able to produce replicable states of human consciousness "relatively unknown by contemporary cultural standards" (Atwater, 1988).
Hemi-Sync technology has been shown to be effective in a widening circle of applications. Different products are available that incorporate Hemi-Sync, with such applications as attaining simple relaxation, overcoming depression, enhancing energy, accelerating learning, and eliminating chronic pain or acute pain during surgery.
Moreover, the Institute maintains a Professional Division, which consists of hundreds of MD's, PhD's and others. Members of the Professional Division actively apply Hemi-Sync to therapeutic, educational, or medical situations in their practices or companies, and relay the outcome to the Institute, which in turn uses this feedback to improve future versions of Hemi-Sync. For example, Dr. Mohammad R. Sadigh, director of psychology and psychophysiological services at a center for pain and stress management in Bethlehem, PA, uses Hemi-Sync to support autogenic training in the treatment of a variety of psychosomatic and stress-related disorders.
Workers at Flashback Enterprises, among others, have studied how Hemi-Sync can boost the immunity of HIV+ patients. Dr. Raymond O. Waldkoetter implemented Hemi-Sync supported language training and counseling programs for the U.S. Army. Dr. Suzanne Evans Morris, speech-language pathologist, author, and educator, is internationally known for her work with children with developmental disabilities. Dr. Morris discovered Hemi-Sync facilitates beneficialese children when used as background in a therapeutic environment.
Very recently, the Institute contracted with Dr. Justine Owens, a researcher from Stanford currently affiliated with the University of Virginia. She will help prepare the research studies and data for publication in major peer-reviewed journals.
The mainstream of medicine and science is not aware of the Institute's findings. But after many years of working privately, the Institute is ready to move into a more public mode, where the results of many years of data will be published. The ideas published should certainly have an impact on scientific thinking, elucidating a stronger link between the mind and body than is presently understood.
Such a shift in the paradigm could, perhaps, provide leads for disease cures, and help eliminate many philosophical and medical questions that still remain unanswered. The possibility of integrating these discoveries with science and medicine creates exciting possibilities.
At the time this article was written, Stefan Kasian was a Trinity College junior majoring in computer science and psychology.
Spring 1995 contents
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