The Sound of Stillness

In 1983, a US Army intelligence officer sat down to write a classified report. His subject wasn't a weapon or a foreign government. It was a meditation programme, one that used sound to guide the brain into unusual states of awareness. Twenty years later, the CIA declassified the report.¹ In 2021 it went viral, read by millions who wanted to know: can sound really change the brain?

The secret report

The report, written by Lieutenant Colonel Wayne McDonnell, examined the Gateway Experience, a programme developed by the Monroe Institute in Virginia. It used special sound recordings, layered with tones known as binaural beats, to help listeners reach deep meditative states quickly. The officer's task was to assess whether the technique was worth exploring for intelligence work. His report, with its famously missing page 25, now sits in the CIA's public online archive.

Whatever the intelligence world made of it, the deeper question it raised is one neuroscience has been exploring ever since: what happens to the brain when we change its rhythm?

The music of the brain

Your brain's 86 billion nerve cells communicate with tiny electrical pulses. When large groups of them fire together, they create rhythms, or brainwaves, that can be measured on the scalp. Each rhythm is linked with a different state of mind:

We move through all of these every day. But many of us spend far too long stuck in high beta, wired, distracted and stressed, and too little time in the slower states where the mind rests and the body heals.

Theta: the state of artists and athletes

Some of history's great creative minds seem to have found the theta state on purpose. Thomas Edison and Salvador Dalí are both said to have dozed off holding an object, so that it would drop and wake them just as they slipped into that dreamy borderland, catching the ideas that surfaced there. In 2021, scientists in Paris put the technique to the test. People who spent just 15 seconds or more in this earliest stage of sleep were nearly three times as likely to discover a hidden shortcut in a maths problem.⁹

Athletes show something similar. In studies of expert golfers and marksmen, a rise in a type of theta activity at the front of the brain appears in the moments before a successful shot, a sign of deep, effortless focus that's often called being "in the zone".¹⁰ (See The Natural Edge.)

Meditation deeper than a Zen Monk

The makers of Holosync make a bold promise: that it can help you "meditate deeper than a Zen monk". To see why that would matter, it helps to look at what happens inside the brains of the world's most experienced meditators.

In the 1960s, Japanese scientists recorded the brainwaves of Zen monks during zazen, seated meditation. As the monks settled, their brains moved from busy beta into calm alpha, and in the most experienced masters, on into slow, dreamlike theta, while they stayed fully alert. The longer a monk had practised, the deeper the shift.¹¹

Forty years later, neuroscientist Richard Davidson invited Tibetan Buddhist monks, each with more than 10,000 hours of meditation practice, into his laboratory. When they meditated on compassion, their brains produced bursts of gamma activity more powerful and more widespread than scientists had ever recorded in healthy people, with large areas of the brain firing in harmony.³ Even at rest, before meditating, their gamma activity was higher than that of beginners. One of the meditators, the French-born monk Matthieu Ricard, was later dubbed by the press "the happiest man in the world".

These masters spent decades, and tens of thousands of hours, learning to reach such states. The promise of Holosync is that sound can carry you towards the same slow, deep rhythms within minutes, with no technique to learn, simply by listening.

The states we think of as rare, even mystical, can be trained.

Can sound guide the brain?

A binaural beat happens when each ear hears a slightly different tone through headphones. Play 200 cycles per second in one ear and 207 in the other, and the brain "hears" a third, pulsing beat of 7 cycles per second that doesn't exist in either ear. The effect was first described by the German physicist Heinrich Dove in 1839, and its potential for meditation was explored in the 1970s.¹²

The idea is that the brain may begin to fall into step with the beat, a process called entrainment, gently drawing the mind towards alpha, theta or delta. A review of studies found that listening to binaural beats had a modest positive effect on anxiety, memory, attention and even pain.¹³ Scientists are still debating exactly how it works, and studies measuring brainwaves directly have had mixed results.¹⁴ But many people find that sound simply makes deep meditation far easier to reach, especially at the start, when a busy mind can make sitting in silence feel like hard work.

The brain that changes itself

For most of the last century, scientists believed the adult brain was fixed: we were born with all the brain cells we would ever have, and the wiring was set by adulthood. We now know this is wrong. The brain is constantly reshaping itself according to how we use it. This ability is called neuroplasticity.

One famous study looked at London taxi drivers, who spend years memorising the city's 25,000 streets. Part of their hippocampus, the brain's memory and navigation centre, was larger than in other people, and the longer they had driven, the larger it was.¹⁵ The brain had grown to meet the demands placed on it.

Neuroscientists sum this up in a simple phrase: neurons that fire together, wire together.¹⁶ Every time we think a thought, feel an emotion or repeat a habit, we strengthen the connections behind it. This works both ways. Years of worry, anger or self-doubt carve deep grooves. But with practice, new pathways can be laid down.

The research on meditation and the brain is striking:

• A thicker, healthier cortex. Experienced meditators had a thicker outer layer of the brain in areas linked with attention and awareness of the body. The difference was greatest in older people, suggesting meditation may help to slow the thinning of the brain that comes with age.¹⁷
• New grey matter in eight weeks. After an eight-week mindfulness programme, people showed increased grey matter in areas linked with learning, memory, regulating emotions and seeing things from another's point of view.¹⁸
• A younger brain. Using brain scans to estimate "brain age", researchers found that at the age of 50, the brains of long-term meditators were estimated to be 7.5 years younger than their actual age.¹⁹
• Calmer genes. After a single day of intensive mindfulness practice, experienced meditators showed lower activity in genes that drive inflammation, and recovered more quickly from a stressful test.²⁰ Our genes are not our destiny: how we live influences which ones are switched on. (See Not Written in Stone.)

Happier, from the inside out

We often look for happiness outside ourselves, in the next achievement, holiday or purchase. Meditation research suggests a lasting kind of happiness can be cultivated from within.

• A brain tilted towards joy. People who are generally positive and enthusiastic tend to have more activity on the left side of the front of the brain. After just eight weeks of mindfulness training, office workers' brains shifted in this direction, and the change was still there four months later.²¹
• Less mind-wandering, more happiness. A Harvard study that checked in with thousands of people throughout their day found that our minds wander almost half of the time, and that we're less happy when they do.²² Meditation trains us to come back to the present moment, where, it seems, happiness lives.
• A natural lift. During a form of guided meditation called yoga nidra, the release of dopamine, one of the brain's feel-good chemicals, rose by 65%.²³
• The body's own painkillers. Endorphins and other natural opioids are the body's own pain relievers and mood lifters, the same chemicals behind a "runner's high". Meditation can ease pain in more than one way: in one study, its pain relief still worked even when the body's opioid system was blocked with a drug.²⁴ Having more than one route to relief may be part of why meditation can help so much for people living with pain, low mood or anxiety.
• More love, joy and gratitude. Just a few weeks of loving-kindness meditation increased people's daily feelings of love, joy, gratitude, contentment, hope and awe, and these good feelings went on to build lasting benefits, including greater life satisfaction and fewer symptoms of depression.²⁵ A review of studies confirmed that loving-kindness meditation reliably increases everyday positive emotions.²⁶
• Protection against low mood. In a large trial in the UK, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy was as effective as continuing antidepressants at preventing depression from returning over two years.²⁷ (Never stop or change prescribed medicines without speaking to your doctor.)

Resilience: a steadier you

Resilience is the ability to meet life's challenges without being knocked off balance, and to recover quickly when we are. Meditation seems to strengthen it at the level of the brain itself.

• A calmer alarm system. The amygdala, the brain's alarm centre, became smaller as people's stress levels fell after mindfulness training.²⁸ After eight weeks of meditation, it also reacted less strongly to upsetting images, even when people weren't meditating.²⁹
• Wiser responses. Meditation strengthens the connections between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex, the brain's calm, reasoning centre, helping us to pause and respond rather than react.³⁰
• Less anxiety. In a trial of adults with anxiety disorders, an eight-week mindfulness programme worked as well as a commonly prescribed anti-anxiety medicine.³¹
• Lower stress hormones. A review of dozens of trials found that meditation lowered the stress hormone cortisol, especially in people under the most stress.³² (See The Cortisol Clock and The Hormone Web.)

Becoming the witness: the roots of inner peace

Much of our inner turmoil comes from the mind's habitual chatter, the loops of worry, judgement and craving that run in the background of our lives. Many spiritual traditions describe a quiet awareness that can simply watch these thoughts come and go without being swept away by them. They call it the witness.

As this awareness grows, a deep sense of peace often follows. Thoughts and feelings still arise, but they no longer run the show. It also becomes harder to carry on with self-sabotaging habits, because we see them clearly as they arise. Brain scans support this. Experienced meditators show quieter activity in the brain network linked with mind-wandering and self-focused thinking,³³ and mindfulness has helped people break habits as stubborn as smoking.³⁴

Peace may come sooner than we think. In one study, just five days of 20-minute meditation sessions left people less anxious, less angry, less tired and less low, with lower stress hormones and better attention, compared with a relaxation group.³⁵

Calmer mind, warmer relationships

The benefits of meditation don't stay on the cushion. They often show up most clearly in our relationships.

• Less reactive. People who are more mindful report greater satisfaction in their relationships, and in one study they felt less anger and hostility during a disagreement with their partner, and recovered more quickly afterwards.³⁶
• Closer as a couple. When happy couples learned mindfulness together, they felt closer, more accepting of one another and more satisfied with their relationship, and less stressed day to day.³⁷
• More connected. Loving-kindness meditation increased people's sense of support and connection with others.²⁵
• Kinder. After only two weeks of compassion training, people were more generous towards a stranger who had been treated unfairly, and their brains responded differently to others' suffering.³⁸

When the nervous system is calmer, there is more space between what someone says and how we respond. Instead of reacting from old hurts, we can listen, understand and choose our words. Holosync's creators describe the same effect: as the threshold for what you can handle rises, they say, people often find they are more patient, less easily triggered and more present with the people they love.

The body benefits too

When the mind settles, the body follows. Meditation switches on the body's "rest and digest" mode, the opposite of the stress response:

• Healthier blood pressure. The American Heart Association has said that Transcendental Meditation may be considered as a way to help lower blood pressure.³⁹
• A healthier heart. In a trial of people with heart disease, those who practised Transcendental Meditation had 48% fewer heart attacks, strokes and deaths over around five years than those given health education.⁴⁰
• Less inflammation and lower inflammatory markers in the blood.⁴¹
• Stronger immunity. After an eight-week meditation programme, people produced more antibodies in response to a flu vaccine.²¹
• Healthy ageing. After a three-month meditation retreat, people had higher levels of telomerase, the enzyme that helps protect the ends of our chromosomes as we age.⁴² (Read more in A Natural Age.)
• Better sleep in older adults with sleep problems.⁴³
• Less pain. After just four short sessions of meditation training, people rated the same painful heat as 40% less intense and 57% less unpleasant.⁴⁴

Evolution of Mind

Feeling calmer and healthier is only the beginning. For thousands of years, meditation has been seen above all as a journey of discovery: an exploration of the mind itself, and of what a human being can become.

Many people who meditate regularly describe an expanding sense of who they are. They speak of sharper focus and clearer thinking, a richer creative life, ideas and insights that arrive unbidden, stronger intuition, and a growing sense of connection with other people and with nature. Some describe moments of profound stillness, awe or oneness, the states the monks' gamma waves seem to reflect. These experiences are deeply personal and hard to measure, but the people who have them often say they are among the most meaningful of their lives.

This is perhaps the greatest gift of meditation: not an escape from life, but a deeper, more vivid way of living it. As old patterns loosen, we find we have more choice, more energy and more of ourselves to give. Life's quality changes from the inside.

Holosync: meditation made effortless

One of the best-known binaural beat programmes is Holosync, created by Bill Harris and Centerpointe Research Institute in Oregon, and used by more than two million people. Its recordings layer carefully designed tones beneath soothing sounds like rain and bells. There is no technique to master and nothing to force: you put on your headphones, close your eyes and let the sound guide your brain towards the slow alpha, theta and delta rhythms of deep meditation.

Holosync is designed as a journey. Its creators describe each level as gently stimulating the nervous system, encouraging it to reorganise itself at a higher level of resilience, much as a muscle grows stronger when it's challenged. Over time, they say, this gradually raises your threshold for what you can handle, so that situations that once overwhelmed you no longer do. Many users say they reach depths of meditation that would otherwise take years of practice, and describe growing calm, clarity, creativity and self-awareness as they progress. Like most meditation tools, Holosync hasn't been the subject of large independent trials, which are costly and rarely funded for approaches like this. But much of what matters here, inner calm, clarity and self-awareness, is deeply personal and can't be fully measured in numbers. For many people it opens the door to the benefits of meditation that the research above describes, and the best way to know is to try it for yourself.

Getting started

• Use stereo headphones. Binaural beats only work when each ear hears its own tone.
• Find a regular time. Early morning or early evening works well for most people.
• Sit comfortably, close your eyes and let the sound do the work. There's nothing to force.
• Be patient. The benefits of meditation build over weeks and months.
• Never listen while driving or operating machinery.

At Rootwise, we see the mind and body as one. Alongside nutrition and herbs, a regular meditation practice can be one of the most powerful steps you take towards lasting change, and the beginning of a lifelong adventure. (Read more in Heart-Brain Coherence and The Healing Breath.)