https://elemental.medium.com/what-i-learned-tracking-my-brainwaves-for-6-months-6c394750a1d5

What I Learned Tracking My Brainwaves for 6 Months (excerpt)

One biohacker’s quest to change her brain through meditation

Holly Erin Copeland

We found that emotions like gratitude and love produced more delta brain waves and that deep absorption and focus produced gamma waves. Most importantly, through tracking our brain waves, we were learning to identify specific inner felt states and reproduce these states in meditation.

The trend graphs of my daily meditation sessions (60–90 minutes per day) reveal fascinating changes in my brain waves over six months — including steady increases in alpha, theta, and gamma waves.

Alpha and theta increases are consistent with published literature on the effects of meditation and indicate a calm, alert, awake brain with an activated vagal nerve and parasympathetic nervous system. Scientists are also looking at these brain waves as markers for health. One study linked lower alpha/theta ratio with Alzheimer’s disease patients, and my own graph showed an improving alpha/theta ratio.

I was most excited and intrigued to see increases in gamma. Gamma is the marker for a deeply relaxed, but highly alert, hyperconscious flow state and has been associated with profound feelings of compassion and happiness. In advanced meditators, gamma has been found to be a marker for increased brain coherence and accessing flow and higher levels of consciousness.

I learned that when meditating, I am training my prefrontal cortex to be a better conductor of the symphony of brain waves in my head. When I leave meditation and join the waking world, I now live in a high performing, elevated state where the turbulence of the external world cannot penetrate and dissolve a clear, calm mind.