May 5, 2012

Audio Interview from https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/2012/05/how-you-can-use-sound-and-music-to-change-your-brain-waves-with-laser-accuracy-and-achieve-huge-focus-and-performance-gains/

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Introduction:   Hey folks, this is Ben Greenfield and the field of neuroacoustics is  perhaps something that you’re not familiar with or you haven’t heard of before but the fact is that sound is all around us and it affects our health – the way we think,  our physiology and many other things that we are gonna talk about today with Dr. Jeffrey Thompson.  And Dr. Thompson has been in the healing field of medicine since 1980.  He has done lots of research and work in the use of sound frequency to do everything from spinal and cranial adjustments to  normalizing organ function to balancing the meridians in your body.  And he really is the expert when it comes to this stuff. He has designed methods actually use sound pulses to do things like train your brain and optimize your mind-body connection.  So sound can be used for everything from stress reduction to enhancing sleep, to relaxing, to peek performance and we’ll be exploring all that today with Dr. Thompson.  So, Dr. Thompson, thank you for coming on the call.

Dr. Thompson:  Thanks for having me, Ben.

Ben:                   So, before we jump in to kind of how sounds and frequencies affect human physiology, can you tell me a little bit more about yourself and what exactly it is that you do?

Dr.Thompson:Well, my work research in sound has gone through a lot of different evolutions but presently, the work that I’m doing is three kinds of parallel avenues of  the use of sound.  One is  this idea of physical resonance that we can resonate different parts of the body with different specific sound frequencies.  It’s you know, the principle of  sympathetic resonance.  Why does a wineglass vibrate when it’s in the right note? Actually, there’s a whole science behind that phenomenon.  It’s called the science of coupled oscillators.  When one thing oscillates or vibrates, it causes any other material that has a fundamental resonance that’s an octave of that where the same frequency or a harmonic of that will also vibrate.  In other words, if I got this wineglass, I wanna make it, I wanna sing a certain note and make it vibrate.  How I know what note to sing is by pinging the glass.  I hit it with my finger and I hear a little note,  I pitch my voice on the same note, and that one when and if I sing it loud enough, it will start to sympathetically resonate with my vocal cords. You know, the opera singer sing a note.  But if I sing any octave of that note, it’ll also vibrate.  That’s called octave resonance.  And an octave is double the frequency or one half the frequency or one half of that or one half of that or double that or double that, kind of the way a piano is set up on the piano keyboard or any harmonic third or fifth or seventh or ninth, any harmonic of that note would make it vibrate.  So…

Ben:                   Gotcha!

Dr.Thompson:This principle of direct resonance, octave resonance, harmonic resonance, it’s how the body is set up.  All the different pieces and particles of the body, the organs and the glands, and the skull, the structure and all the different parts of the body are different densities of materials.  You know here, your liver has a different density than your kidney and your fifth lumbar vertebrae are different size, density and shape than the ninth thoracic and on and on. So, you should be able to treat each of these body structures like a wineglass. And do some testing to find out what’s the fundamental resonant frequency that makes that particular body part respond.  And when you do this with the body, the body responds by normalizing its function because you’re stimulating the cells in a very specific way.

Ben:                   Is this idea that our body operates based on specific frequencies, is that kind of  rooted in science?

Dr. Thompson:Well, that’s not, it is rooted in science and that’s not exactly the way to put it.

Ben:                   Okay.

Dr. Thompson:We can influence the body’s functioning by resonating it with sound frequencies.  The body is set up in such a way that all the systems are intertwined together and there’s no real way where one body system or one body organ or one body gland or one body part can function independently from all the other parts because they’re all intimately webbed in that work together so, there’s no possibility of having  a problem with my back without having a problem with a bunch of other things that are associated or compensation so that or you know, there’s emotional low back.  There is, I can’t tell you how many people I’ve seen over the years  who come in with a chronic shoulder problem and the real problem is they’re shouldering too much responsibility.  I know that sounds funny but it manifests as a metaphor in their physical body.  A mental state can manifest as a  physical symptom.  An emotional state can manifest as physical symptom or you could get hit by a truck and have a real physical symptom.

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Dr. Thompson:It’s all network together.  So, it also means that if I injure my back physically, I begin to have emotional repercussions for that because of influence in my life and how I can do things and I start to feel bad about how bad I feel and now I’ve got a this is feedback cycle, you know.

Ben:                   Now, when we get down to this on kinda like a physiological or  or cellular level, how exactly are sounds or frequencies, you know, music, the type of things that we’re exposed to when it comes to, you know, I guess, vibrations or whatever you’d call it, how does that actually affect our biology, you know, if you look on this like a physiological or cellular perspective?

Dr. Thompson:That’s a good question.  First of all, let’s distinguish between the fact that we’re talking right now about  the influence of sound frequencies and not music.  Music is now another thing.  Now we have a number of sound frequencies that are mathematically related to each other as harmonics that form a chord.  And a major chord or a minor chord or augmented seventh chord has an emotional interpretation.  So, really, music is language of  emotion so we can affect emotional states by what kind of music we compose.  But let’s back off from that and pick that music apart into its frequencies and now we have a specific frequency that’s maybe accurate to a couple of decimal points so  we’re no longer on a keyboard anymore.  There’s the equipment that I’ve got I can tune between let’s say C and C# by a hundred steps with a digital read out.  So now we got a frequency that could be interpreted as C# plus 23 cents.  23 divisions out of a hundred are sharp. And that’s a certain frequency, you know.  That’s 225.36 cycles per second.  So that’s the kind of thing we’re talking about when we’re dealing with the body.  We’re gonna have a frequency that’s highly specific that causes a physical response that we can measure.

Ben:                   How do you, kind of find out what frequencies are associated with what physical response?

Dr. Thompson:Lets’ take it back to some of my first experiments.  My first experiments were to see if I could make a chiropractic adjustment with the sound wave.  But the sound frequency tuned very specifically so let’s take your hip lumbar vertebra is located to the right too far and the right of a set joint is pinched.  The right joint is pinched and that’s causing pain and the muscles tighten up to immobilize that now you’ve got hyper tight muscle in your low back that also hurt.  And so, I’m going to monitor a stress response in your body.  We know that when your body has a stress response, a number of different things happen.  Heart rate, respiration, galvanic skin response, muscle tension, a bunch of different things take place that we can measure.  And I’m gonna start pushing with my finger on your fifth lumbar vertebra in various directions lines of drive.  And when I push the vertebra in the direction that has rotated too far, you know, I’m making a bad situation worse.  You follow me?

Ben:                   Yes

Dr. Thompson:So, let’s say it’s rotated to the right and the right joint is pinched, if I push it more to the right, the joint pinches more, fires new signals to the brain.  The brain says ooh, a bad situation just got worse and I have the alarm response that we can measure.  Once the alarm response is in place and we’ve confirmed that we have just identified a right facet joint that’s  compressed, because we’re compressing it more and making this stress response, we’re in the position to start choosing different sounds and exploring different sounds and micro tuning those sounds into the body until we find the sound wave that neutralizes the stress response while we’re still pushing on the vertebra.

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Dr. Thompson:So, while we still got the stress response in place, we can turn that response off in the presence of the correct frequency that resonates the vertebra and shakes as it sore, we’re stressing a thing out in the body and giving it what it needs to fix it at the same time and the two of them will cancel each other out.

Ben:                   So, when you resonate a vertebra, are you talking about like the actual frequency of sound that it’s exposed to like physically moving it back and forth into specific position?

Dr. Thompson:Yes.  So now, we’ve got is, the vertebra is the wineglass and the vertebra is now in the state of resonance.  It’s floating in a state of vibration in relation to the  vertebrae below and above which are tuned to different frequencies. So, if I have a dozen wineglasses different sizes and shapes and I pick up one wineglass and ping it and I sing that note, and I sing it loud enough that the wineglass shatters, none of the other wineglasses on the table are gonna vibrate because it’s not their tune, you know, it’s not their tone.  So, unless they are tuned to an octave or a harmonic of the glass you picked up. Right? So, that means that now, when I put the vibrational frequency into the fifth lumbar, it’s in a state of resonance.  It’s  in motion.  And the facet joint is jammed together.  We have to understand a little bit about what that means. If I do misalignment effect incorrect, what happens is the joint rotates to the right a bit too hard and too fast and the perfectly molded surfaces of the joint, you know, curve it with hyaline membrane that perfectly smoothes surface and synovial fluid that perfect lubricating fluid.  They lock together with a vacuum lock.  It’s like two wet panes of glass stuck together, all right.  You can’t pull them apart because of the capillary suction phenomena.  But you can slide them off each other. Do you follow me?

Ben:                   Yup!

Dr. Thompson:So, that’s what this idea of the bone being subluxated or stuck.  It’s really the joint cervices compressed together and cause a vacuum lock.  And in industry, you can release a vacuum lock between two surfaces by vibrating one of the two halves of what’s locked. That’s essentially what’s happening.  We’re resonating the fifth lumbar vertebrae.  It’s going into state of resonance and each half of the joint is now vibrating and the vacuum lock is broken. And so the adjustment has been made.

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Ben:                   Gotcha.

Dr. Thompson: But…

Ben:                   Now… Oh go ahead.

Dr. Thompson:Let’s take it one step further and let’s say that we’ve got a disc problem.  Let’s say this lumbar disc is the problem and we have injury to the cellular matrix of what the disc is made of, you know, null matrix.  And the disc is made of cells and now the sounds are gonna be the wineglass. So, now we’re gonna test to find out what’s the frequency for the cells that make up the disc.  And when we vibrate the cells with a certain frequency, ah, we’re boosting those cells to the highest possible energy state just like we would do at the wineglass if you sing louder and louder and louder.  Pretty soon, the glass cannot contain the energy of the tone structure and it explodes and it shatters.  We’re not gonna shatter the disc. We’re gonna bring the cells up to the highest energy state and that’s biologically a healing  state at the cell level.  The cell goes into healing state. It increases its metabolism. Its intake of food is expelling of waste and rebuilding of tissues.  So, we’re pushing the cells into higher energy state and they normally could go when they’re near healing state so we’re they’re kind of pushing the envelope of a super healing state at a cell level.  So, we can speed up rehab or injury repair.

Ben:                   Okay

Dr. Thompson:Particularly with athletics …

Ben:                   Gotcha!

Dr. Thompson:That will truly shine a lot.

Ben:                   Now, in terms of  cellular repair and recovery with athletics, how would something like this actually work in terms of using  changing the actual frequency with which a cell is resonating to help it to repair, recover faster and how’s that kinda working on the physiological or the anatomical level?

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Dr. Thompson:That was a basis for me of eventually realizing  that I needed a delivery system of low frequency sounds into the body. It’s these low frequency sounds 500 hertz and below that cause this phenomenon.  That’s because hearing is separate from vibration sense in your body.  Vibration sense is four different skin sensors that are buried in different levels of your skin that communicate to these pores close to your spinal cord into an area in the brain stem where the special neurons for processing vibrations since even if you’re deaf, you can still feel music. You know, Beethoven?  Beethoven, when deaf, one of the greatest composers was deaf and he  composed three symphonies after he was deaf  and he heard those symphonies by sawing the legs of his grand piano and lying on the floor with his head on the piano and hearing the vibrations through bone conduction of the skull.

Ben:                   Hmm…

Dr. Thompson:So, I invented a  sound table with big low frequency transducers built into it.  They’re basically lying on top of the sounding board that’s upholstered.  And the sounding board has this big low frequency transducers attached to it into the equipment so the sound waves come right into your body.

Ben:                   Uhm…interesting.

Dr. Thompson:Ah, because sound travels mostly we hear because sound travels through the air.

Ben:                   Right!

Dr. Thompson:Sound is a mechanical energy wave so we strip off the name sound.  What we’re looking at is a form of energy that moves through a medium so it’s moving through air molecule just pumping them against each other like billiard balls.  You know,  one billiard ball hits another one and its stops and the other one starts moving and hits another one and the second one stops and the third one keeps moving and that’s how sound waves move through the air molecules.  Well, sound travels through water five times better than air because the molecules are more densely packed.  And sound travels though a solid five times better than water because molecules are more densely packed.  So, in the physical body, it’s you know,  70% water and 30% minerals.  It’s skeletal structure in fluids – perfect medium for transmitting sound.  So, if I’ve got you laying on top of the sounding board, I’ve got sound transmission into your body straight through a solid 25 times more effective than if I was trying to get the same vibration on your body through the air through speakers. So, it’s a highly efficient way of getting sound waves into your body without a lot of noise in the room.

Ben:                   Gotcha.

Dr. Thompson:And since I can hook you up and measure what’s happening in your body and I can precisely control the sound frequencies coming through the sound table, you know, actually, to a hundred divisions of sharps or flat or a thousand or a ten thousand or a hundred thousand for the computer, we can very precisely influence various parts of the body to do things.

Ben:                   Now, what about  if people don’t have access to a table like that,  what are ways that people can actually  monitor or use you know, something that would actually allow them to ensure that their cells are resonating at a good frequency or you know, or to  say like prepare their cells or do something of that nature by using some kind of frequency?

Dr. Thompson:There’s you know, all of these work  has been done over the years in my clinic with patients so I hook people up and I see what happens and I make a custom CD for them to use to take home.  You know, they don’t have a sound table at home but  many people have a home stereo system with some big speakers so you can put the speakers against your body.  It’s not as sufficient but you know, solve matter of degrees so there’s a second  well, that’s for the physical  resonance and response in the body. You really have to have something that can deliver low frequency sounds into your body. So, you got a home stereo system with big speakers then you got to put them against your body.  There’s a second parallel , I don’t know how we use sound and that’s got to do with the idea of brainwave entrainment.  You cannot train your brainwaves and change your set of consciousness with sound. And that’s a different principle….

Ben:                   Is that,  why I like monks hum when they’re meditating?

Dr. Thompson:I think when monks are meditating, that’s  two things.  One is you’re resonating your physical body with your own vocal cords.  And the traditionally, in the way past, you know, you go to the Master and sees at all His vibration.  And He sees that you are a very specific vibrational signature of the universe and since your fundamental frequency, you know, you’re the wineglass and it tells you what that frequency is and you sing it back into, you memorize it then you go your k avenue champ that tone that tonality into your own body and resonate yourself to your own core. So, it’s the fact that you’re resonating with a very specific frequency that you’re singing and it’s resonating your body with your vocal cords.

Ben:                   That’s right.

Dr. Thompson:That’s more like the Gyuto monks. You know if heard down there once they sing the lowest note that  vocal cords can resonate at.

Ben:                   Right!

Dr. Thompson:Now, they sing around a big circle and bathing themselves in a  sea of vibration. If you have two or more people singing the same note, if one person slightly varies the tuning of their voice, so they’re slightly out-of-tune, you create a phenomenon called the binaural beat where these two notes are slightly out-of-tune but not enough for your brain to recognize there’s two notes yet.  You know, they have to be out-of-tune by a certain amount before your brain can pick up these two notes. Up to that point the brain will hear one note and within that note will be this pulsing sound which is the phase modulation of difference within the two notes.  So, that’s called the critical bandwidth in science.  If two notes are within the critical bandwidth of tuning, the brain can’t tell there’s two.  You’ll hear one with the pulsing in it.   So, let’s say that one tone is a hundred cycles per second.  We have a scientific tone coming out of our left speaker hundred hertz and over the right speaker is a hundred and five hertz so there’s a five cycle of second difference between these two tones.  None of the tuning between each other for us to tell there’s two notes.  So, we’ll hear a five cycle of second pause.  Just so happens that five cycles of second is a state of brainwave frequency pulse. And it will cause my bio clocks in the center of my brain to want to change allegiance in time my bio clocks to this new pulse.  The sound pulses are the physio pulse that we just created.  So, within a few minutes, my brain myocells start to change well, from wherever they are to try to match the speed of this five cycle second pulse and change my consciousness.  In the meantime, I think the earlier use of  that was probably Shamanic drumming practices where  we’re pounding a drum and Shamanic classicals in our recording Shamanic drum is about four and a half cycles per second.  Very deep, say the dream the sound of the brains well, my brain goes on communing at night.  That means that we can pound the drum for a certain amount of time.  My brainwaves will change my rapid beta of around you know, 15-18 hertz and slow itself down more and more and more and pass through alpha and then pass into theta and then go into a dream without going to sleep first.  Classic definition of Shamanic trance state.

Ben:                   Yeah.

Dr. Thompson:And we can do that with science.  Now, we can build these pulses into musical soundtracks and cause your brainwaves to do all kinds of interesting things, particularly the kind of things that we would see on EEG that would be the kind of state that we want. For instance in athletics, the flow state.  Everybody talks about the flow state, you know, you get into this perfect kind of zone where you just can’t do anything wrong. Everything is slowing and your brain waves do something very specific when that happens and your nervous system does something very specific when that happens.  And that means that we can use the sound technique of brainwave entrainment to bring your brain waves to that particular state.  And every time you listen to the soundtrack your brainwaves go there.  We’re now in a gym for your brain because everything in the body works the same way.  If you use something over and over and over again, it gets stronger to do that particular use.  So, if we can use sound frequencies to train your brain waves to the zone and we do it on a daily basis, your ability to go to the zone gets strengthened or to go into a certain state of meditation or to go into a certain state of relaxation.

Ben:                   That’s right.

Dr, Thompson: Or to access your creativity or your learning or your memory.  All kinds of different states that you can identify have an EEG signature.

Ben:                   So, it sounds to me when we’re talking about using sound technology, there’s kind of like two different primary areas that, for example, listening to a CD or  using some kind of a sound frequency vibration could be used for: number one, to heal the body like you talked about in terms of  vibratory therapy for the spine or for the cells and number two, to actually change your state of consciousness.  Am I  correct?

Dr. Thompson:Correct. Those are two different uses that now you can the magic starts to happen when you combine those two together. Because, remember I said that there’s this law of octaves for the wineglass.  If I ping the wineglass and let’s say it resonates at 100 hertz, I ping the glass, it’s a 100 hertz and I sing 100 hertz, that’s direct resonance. If I sing an octave 200 hertz, 400 hertz, 800 hertz or  50 hertz or 25 hertz, right?

Ben:                   Yes.

Dr. Thompson:It’ll still vibrate.  But let’s follow that through.  Let’s  take our calculator and go 100 hertz, one octave lower is 50 hertz, one octave lower is 25 hertz, one octave lower is what, 12.5 hertz?  Right?

Ben:                   Yeah.

Dr. Thompson:We’re not  hearing anymore because sound waves of hearing is twenty to twenty thousand hertz. And I’ve just identified an octave of the wineglass that’s below hearing at 12.5 hertz and half of that is six point something something hertz and half of that is three point something something hertz, correct?  Clearly, octaves of the wineglass and in this case the wineglass is my fifth lumbar vertebra.

Ben:                   Okay.  Gotcha.

Dr. Thompson:And  so the fifth lumbar vertebra is a hundred hertz.  And I’m going to use my calculator to identify a lower octave below hearing.  That is a brainwave frequency now.  12.5 hertz is a beta brain frequency step state of consciousness.  One half of that is 6.25 hertz and that’s a theta brainwave state of consciousness.  And an octave below that and an octave below that eventually will have a delta  brainwave state which is where my brain goes at night when I sleep to heal myself physically.  And if I use these binaural beats and set them to the delta brainwave octave of the frequency to the fifth lumbar, I’d pick a lock of a neuro program where my brain already goes to heal my fifth lumbar vertebra at night when I’m asleep.  And so the state of consciousness I’m choosing is highly specific and it’s related specifically to that body part. So now, when the sound waves these low sound waves are coming from the sound table into my fifth lumbar, between those sounds are the sound pulses that are pulsing at a delta brainwave octave of the note for the fifth lumbar and that two of these things now aligned together like I’m directing my state of consciousness of self of my physical body to that body part.

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Ben:                   Gotcha.

Dr.Thompson:I know that sounds like Star Trek but this is all clearly measurable physiological phenomena.

Ben:                   Well, I think anyone listening in has felt before that certain frequencies, certain sounds whether be nails scratching on a blackboard or you know, maybe even   some  form of a  techno music or maybe trance type of music that seem to bring them into a different state of mind has experienced this on some level such that  you’re kind of like identifying and targeting the actual frequencies and sounds and using them in a little bit more precise manner, right?

Dr. Thompson:Right. So, we’re bringing the phenomenon of energy waves moving through a medium that we call sound.  You know, when I’m on that sound table and  these energy waves within a certain frequency range that we call sound are coming through the sound table into my body, I am infusing large amounts of energy directly into my body.

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Dr. Thompson:You kind of forget the fact because we’ve labeled that sound.  It’s energy that’s moving into my body that’s within a certain frequency range between 20 and 20,000 hertz.  The fact that we have a name for it called the sound, doesn’t let it off the hook of the fact that it’s energy causing effect on my body.

Ben:                   Gotcha.  So, I know that a lot of people that listen to this stuff you know, it’s one thing to hear and another to experience that.  Now, if someone wanted to try to use neuro acoustics somehow and feel this for themselves,  is there somewhere where you can point people like an MP3 they could download  and put in their speakers and listen as they’re going to bed or preparing for, you know, a race or a game or a competition, or some type of a CD that someone could use, I mean, do you have recommendations in terms of places that people can go if somebody just wants to kinda take this concept and for how you use it from practical standpoint?

Dr. Thompson:Yes.  I’ve taken the principles that I’ve worked with in patients and I’ve built them into generic soundtracks that are in the market.  So, over time, you know, over 20 years you see thousands of people and pretty soon you’ve got a bell curve. You know, what kind of sounds work on large groups of people the best. So, those CDs are, you know, Barnes and Nobles, Borders and places like that.

Ben:                   Where, where are they, what are they called?

Dr. Thompson:But the thing is that nobody knows what to use.  So, because it’s Sony soundtracks, there’re 60 soundtracks in various categories.  So, the best thing is to go to the website which has a kind of a guide.  If you’re interested in meditation,  choose one of these.  If you’re interested in peak performance, choose one of these.

Ben:                   Okay, I see.  You’ve got  a sound section, right? neuroacoustic.com.

Dr. Thompson:Right.  So it’s  neuroacoustic.com.

Ben:                   Got it. Okay.  So, you can basically…Are these CDs or these…can  you get these as MP3s as well?

Dr. Thompson:Ah, there are CDs and there are MP3s but they’re not available on my website.

Ben:                   Okay.

Dr. Thompson:Those are like Amazon and things like that.

Ben:                   Okay.

Dr. Thompson:There is kind of a  strange thing with MP3s that I’ve noticed with patients that  you know, I’ve may discussed on CDs based on my measurements and the patient take it home and I’m seeing them every week and I’m watching the progress and I was noticing the patients are coming back and their progress was not going anywhere but was reversing.  And they had taken my CD and they had ripped it down to MP3 and put on their I-pod and that’s what they were using and something about that was changing what was going on.  So,  you know, the sounds that they remove from MP3 to compress it, you know, you’re compressing the sound recording by one thirds so two thirds of that recording sounds are being taken out and thrown away somehow.  Somehow, the rhythm or something I’m not sure what it is. And that’s fine for music but for medical sounds, it’s seems to be causing some problem with some people.  So, that’s why I don’t offer MP3s downloads on my site.  I use something called flac – FLAC. It’s another compression format that does not remove any sounds from the soundtrack.

Ben:                    Gotcha.  I’m on your  store right now.  We’ve got a lot of these CDs list.  It is interesting because  you know, I can get one here  for example, I’m  a writer, I see one here called The Creative Mind System and it’s basically a certain frequency would play while you’re working, brainstorming, problem-solving, or involved in any artistic endeavor.  So, you’re basically ….which brainwave are you trying to stimulate with something like that?

Dr. Thompson:That’s theta and that CD is that was based on work with Mattel and Cisco and Nike.

Ben:                   So, you would wanna listen to that like before you’re going out to  run on the track, right? You’d…

Dr. Thompson:Ah there’s no reason why you couldn’t do that.

Ben:                   Okay.

Dr. Thompson:I mean, people who run on the track and people who jog, their mind is set free.  It’s a meditation.You know, you’re running and your body goes to this automated procedure as soon as you’ve taken two steps forward you’re already one in the running program.  You’re not even involved.  Your mind is free.

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Ben:                   But the alpha brainwaves…

Dr. Thompson:And that’s why people come up with a lot of best creative ideas during that period of time.  So…

Ben:                   Yeah, it’s a good point.  The alpha waves are more of the waves that are associated with kind of being in the zone though, right?   That you mentioned?

Dr. Thompson:  Yes.

Ben:                   Okay.

Dr. Thompson:  The zone is kind of a placed between  you’ve kind of a border zone.

Ben:                   If I were gonna listen to these, like if I were gonna choose a CD to listen to before I go and do a triathlon or marathon, what type of   CD  would you recommend?

Dr. Thompson: I think the alpha one is the better one.

Ben:                   They offer relaxation?

Dr. Thompson:Yeah.  Even  if you’re on the track and you’re running and you’ve got a little your buds on, you’re listening to something, that’s a good one.

Ben:                   Okay.  Gotcha.  So, how about and this is something I’ve heard of before, using like  discs or wearing things on your body that help these frequencies to be magnified? Is that something that  has any relevance here in terms of like using things to actually magnify like your one thing that I’m thinking of, for example, is  like  the electrical frequencies that your heart is producing or if you’re in alpha brainwaves state, trying to figure out  how to amplify those frequencies,  is that something that has any credence to it?

Dr. Thompson:Well, there’s a lot of people out there doing a lot of things. And, that’s  a tough question that is because there’s an 80/20 rule out there.  When I was going to school, there’s an 80/20 rule with the physical body.  80% of your body is supporting tissue.  Blood and bone and limbs, 20% of governing tissue – brain, nervous systems, spinal nerve roots and  2% of that is calling the shot.  You see the same thing in society.  80% of the people are “supporting tissue”.  They go to work, they make babies, they eat food, they buy things.   20% of governing tissue, that‘s governments and multinational corporations and 2% of them control everything.  Illuminati   who knows a lot. You know, and in the market place, we do the same thing. 80% of the products you buy are produced by entrepreneurs and that normally doesn’t matter except when you’re dealing with health products.

Ben:                   Right.

Dr. Thompson:So, in this case, we’ve got all kinds of CDs out there – binaural beat CDs, brain entrainment CDs, and the medallion things that you’re talking about, there’s dozens of companies producing those.  80% you can pretty much be sure entrepreneurs who don’t know what they’re doing are putting something together to make a buck. Hate to put it that way but you know, 20% are the people who are researching on new phenomenon who have people hooked up and are watching monitors and are actually doing it – they’re seeing what’s going on and their products are result of that research.  That 20% are following the cue of the 2% of the real innovators in the world who have come up with the idea. Somebody comes up with the idea they’ll publish a paper and then all the scientists jump on and try to reproduce it and then it spins out from there.

Ben:                   Gotcha.

Dr. Thompsons:When you asked me about the medallion, 80% of them, probably junk. 20% of the real thing, 2% of the people who really invented the idea.

Ben:                   Uhuh…interesting.

Dr. Thompson:So, it’s a tough one to know, I mean as a consumer, you don’t have a faintest idea who’s telling the truth and who’s an entrepreneur, you know…

Ben:                   Right!

Dr. Thompson:So, you have to kind of research.  Say, for instance the sound in this bunch of sound tables and sound chairs out there. And the best sound chair and the best sound table in the world is only as good as the sound playing through it.  So, the question is who composed the soundtrack that’s playing through it and what do they know? So, look them up, research them, see if they’re on the up and see if they’re you know, a chronicle researcher, or a physician or somebody who’s got some track record of knowing what they’re doing.

Ben:                   I have one other question for you. I know we’re kinda running short on time but does this type of philosophy of how sound and frequency affects your cells or your bones kind of influence our music choices if we work out, say, and you’re listening to music, does or do certain types of music have the potential to either kinda hold you back or decrease your performance or decrease your recovery or is that a completely different realm?

[0:40:27.7]

Dr. Thompson:Well, the answer is yes and yes.  They do have yeah, the possibility of affecting you and there’s a bit of a different realm that the there’s a certain type of …I’m a composer and a musician so I create these soundtracks for the CDs I put out.  And when I’m creating a soundtrack to put you into an alpha state, there is a certain type of music that is associated with that state.  So, I have to compose the music to put you in that state all by itself.  And then I’m going to add these binaural beats to it to spike it to make it more powerful.  And the more things you add and they’re precisely aligned together the more powerful the whole thing gets.  So, if I’m gonna take you into a say the dream state, then that would be a different kind of music than an alpha state. That would be more dreamy kind of vast and mysterious. If I was gonna put you into a delta state, it would be a whole different type of music.  So, yes, the music that you choose has a huge influence on your emotional state.  So, many people who are in exercise program are choosing a rapid upbeat, you know, high beta music to speed themselves up and get their body filled with energy. Right?

Ben:                   Right.

Dr. Thompson:So, but if I’m  a long distance runner and I’ve got ear buds and I’m listening to a soundtrack, that’s not necessarily what I wanna use because I have to pace myself.

Ben:                   Right.

Dr. Thompson:I don’t wanna burn all my energy up in the first two minutes so, I’m gonna choose a soundtrack that’s gonna hold me for the long term – for the next ten miles.And that’s more of an alpha state because that’s where I go.   I go into this the zone and that is kinda one of their thing here.  And that work with athletics is all about the connection of how the brain and the body synchronize and work together.  This idea of synchronizing the clock systems at various levels in the body is what separates a man from the boys in the photo finish..  When you’re talking about one second or a fraction of a second in a photo finish in a long race, the person who’s got the more tuned system is going to win.   And that’s part of what we do with athletics is tune the brain-body interface.  Like a Ferrari, you’re tuning its engines to a fine degree that hasn’t been possible before because we never had the type of management and equipment that would hook you up to.To see how the brain and  when the fire signals to the muscles and we see signals back from them that tells the brain that they just did what it told them to do, that network has to be tuned.  And if nobody’s tuning that network, then you got lag. And if you got lag, you lose.

Ben:                   Yeah.

Dr. Thompson:Pretty simple but and then you got tuning between opposite pair muscle groups – antagonist muscle groups.  If you have an out-of-tunist between your quadricep muscle and the front of your thigh and your hamstring in the back, when one of those contracts, the other half leg go and have to do it in tune.  And if it’s out-of-tune, you get a pulled hamstring.  That’s where that comes from.  There’s no way that you can pull a hamstring or tear a muscle if the system is tuned. Because you’re a top level  athlete.  There’s no way that should happen.

Ben:                   Right.

Dr. Thompson:The hamstring is hyper tight because the quadriceps is slightly weak and you go to kick a football and you tear your hamstring because you didn’t release completely because it was out of tune. And all that is possible to do with these sound tables, sound chairs.

Ben:                   Yeah. Well, the more I’ve looked into it the more it makes sense to me.  I voice, you know, I’ve known about ultrasound and using photon frequencies from light using ultrasound frequencies for  muscle to improve blood flow and heat and  you know,

Dr. Thompson: All vibration are frequencies.

Ben:                   Having  grown up, you know, playing the violin for thirteen years, I  understand frequencies…

Dr. Thompson:Yeah! You get it…

Ben:                   And kinda how they affect you and I just wanna I’m trying now to kinda put this message together and bring it to some other folks,  you know, hopefully, people who’ve made it this far and are listening in.  this is something that I’m going to continue to explore here at www.bengreenfieldfitness.com and I’ll bring more word to you about this as we go through.  But this is really a perfect place to start. I’m gonna put a  link over to Dr. Jeffrey Thompson’s website.  Like just pick up a CD and listen to it.  You know, Graboid TV, Alpha Wave Productions CD.  I’m not I’m not affiliated with Dr. Thompson.  I’ll not make money if you’ll buy it buy the CDs or anything like that.  I just think that this is something that people need to be exposed to.  It’s how to use sound and sound waves and frequencies to help your body be in the right place whether it be your brainwave frequency or the ability of your cells to be resonating at the correct frequencies.  So, it’s cool stuff. It’s not explored often enough I don’t think in the realm of human health and human performance but Dr. Thompson, thanks for  explaining  a little bit to us.

Dr.Thompson:Thanks, Ben. And you play the violin? A bodybuilder and plays the violin.  That’ll be great.

Ben:                   I actually have…

Dr. Thompson:Tune the strings. You understand what I’m talking about with binaural beat.

Ben:                   Exactly.  I soon switched to guitar but…

Dr. Thompson:Still, it’s the same thing.  You’re tuning strings, you’re getting those strings tune, hear the pulse you’ll get with, you know…

Ben:                   Yup!  Exactly.

Dr. Thompson: That’s cool.

Ben:                   All right…

Dr. Thompson:Great talking with you.

Ben:                   Well…Yeah… Those fantastic and folks, once again, this is  Dr. Jeffrey Thompson from neuroacoustic.com thanks for having a call today.  Thanks, Dr. Thompson.

Dr. Thompson: Thanks.