More and more people are taking up meditation and in America alone, 10 million people are now meditating daily. This number is growing day by day.

The fact is meditation takes us to a different level of mind.

Our minds operate on 4 different levels – beta, alpha, theta and delta. Each level has its own set of benefits - mentally and physically.

To truly master and receive the full effects of meditation, it’s very important that you understand the basic fundamentals of Meditation and Levels of Mind so that it would be easier for you to bring about the changes that you want in your life.

Meditation has been proven to be good for your body and mind. Even the doctors are recommending it!

Now to help deepen your understanding, its important to know the two different types of meditation and how they relate to your levels of mind.

The Two Types of Meditation: Passive and Active

When we meditate, several important things happen physically and mentally. First, we are “focusing internally” and letting go of the outside world (similar to going to sleep, but without losing consciousness).

This allows our brains to shift into more stable, stronger brain frequencies (called alpha and theta by scientists) typically only reached during sleep.

When we can reduce our brain frequencies to these levels while staying awake we are able to bring the unconscious mind to the conscious level. This allows us to control and harness the power of the unconscious mind.

There are two types of meditation.

Passive Meditation

All meditation systems, such as Yoga, Zen, Transcendental Meditation ™, Silva Life System and others have similar benefits.

By “passively” letting go and going within, we “deactivate” our survival mechanisms and allow our body’s natural health and rejuvenation abilities to be activated.

Each method has its own way of reaching the inner state of mind, and each has its own goals.

Active Meditation

Certain techniques (such as the silva method or holosync) allow you to use the relaxed, healthy state of mind that occurs during meditation to solve your day-to-day problems.

Jose Silva (founder of the silva method) found that by “actively” utilizing brain languages (kinesthetic, visual, and auditory thought processes), we can use this higher energy state to improve memory and learning skills, change unwanted habits, enhance health, and healing.

He also developed techniques to achieve what many people call “tapping the super-conscious” to solve problems, reach goals, come up with new ideas and solutions to problems.

Using such techniques within a meditative state is called “active” meditation.

But what exactly happens when you meditate?

Your brain functions on a small amount of electricity. This electrical current vibrates and pulses at various speeds. When you are wide awake, with your eyes focused, your brain vibrates 20 times per second – what scientists call 20 cycles per second or the Beta frequency.

You are probably at this beta level of mind right now as you read this.

When you go to sleep, your brain frequency slows down, all the way to about half cycle per second in the deepest levels of natural sleep. This is known as the delta level of mind.

In between Beta, the waking state, and Delta, the deep sleep state, there are two other levels of mental activity.

When you are in a light level of sleep or in meditation you are in the Alpha range, which is 7 to 14 cycles per second. This is the center range and this is what we mean by saying “going to your center”. Going to the alpha level or centering is essentially the same thing as meditating. When someone meditates, scientifically, they are simply slowing their brain wave frequency to Alpha. The Alpha level is the level we use to activate our minds. Theta is a level of deeper relaxation or sleep, when your brain waves are at 4 to 7 cycles per second. The table below summarizes the 4 states of brain frequency.

There are many benefits of “going to the Alpha level” or meditating. Jose Silva found that people who can remain in the Alpha level while analyzing information have access to more information than those who remain in Beta to do their thinking. Feelings of intuition, creative ideas, inspirational thoughts and ideas come to people while at this Alpha level. The alpha level of mind is ideal for programming your subconcious. At the Alpha level you can learn to overcome all kinds of problems, such as insomnia, tension and migraine headaches, bad habits, and much more. You can also program your mind to help you achieve your goals and make your dreams come true.