Take off your brain waves to accelerate your self-education 🌊🏄‍♂️ 🧠

Have you ever used a revolving door?  The door rotates around a vertical axis within a cylindrical enclosure and usually is at the entrance to modern office buildings. Imagine that this door was rotating automatically during the day with different frequencies. Sometimes it is slow enough that people can enter, sometimes faster and only the bravest trying to enter. And sometimes it spins really fast that even the bravest step back. Did you know that our brain behaves the same way as this door with the difference that the people are the knowledge we trying to acquire during learning?

I wrote this article to describe really fascinated concepts of our brain which helped me a lot during my self-education and I believe will help you. If you want to have one extra tool that will immensely improve your ability to teach yourself, you should definitely read it.

The brain waves

Our brains can work in different speed modes. They are usually referenced as the Brain Waves.

In short, Brain Waves are the level of brain activity measured in frequency or cycles per second. And there are 7 of them:

• Delta Waves - it is when the brain works with a frequency from 0.5 to 4  cycles per second. It is really slow, so slow that it is not recommended to drive a car. Well, at least before buying a self-driving car. This brain activity usually occurs when you are in a phase of deep sleep.
• Theta Waves - the brain works a bit faster, from 4 to 8 cycles per second. The self-driving car would be still really useful here. This Brain activity emerges when you sleep, half-asleep, or in deep meditation.
• Alpha Waves - the brain works even more actively, from 8 to 12 cycles per second. Well, if you have a self-driving car, keep it, I think it is a cool device. But if you are not a novice to driving and you drive an empty countryside road, you probably can turn off autopilot and enjoy driving. With this brain activity level, you are in a calm, very relaxed, and resting-state with small notes of light-meditative state. It is when thought and ideas are naturally flowing through our consciousness and you are able to clearly observe them.
• Beta Waves - here our brain accelerates even more, from 12 to 30+ cycles per second. Usually, this mode is split into 3 subactivity levels: Low Beta (13-15), Mid Beta (16-22), and High Beta (22-30+). You will turn on this brain mode when you get bored with autopilot in your self-driving vehicle and you decided to recall the taste of driving to your favorite downtown coffee shop at a peak time. Most likely this activity dominates in our everyday waking state.  Our brain is in alert, concentrated, decision-making, problem-solving mode. The brain is open to process all of the external data. It is the mode you spend most of your waking hours. But if the brain is in Hight Beta, it often produces anxiety and can the overall body state into "fight-or-flight" mode.
• Gamma Waves - here our brain runs at its peak, from 30+ up to 100+ cycles per second. It is when you finally decided to fulfill your dream and participate in car racing. And you were so good and licky that you crossed the finish line first! This brain activity mode usually emerges when you feel love, happiness, compassion. It is when you experience our "peak performance".

As you can see our brain can work at different activity levels. And some levels allow us to do certain things better than others.

The Delta Waves, Theta Waves, and Gamma Waves take a really small portion out of overall brain activity during the regular day compared to others. So let's focus on those that are more dominant in continuous daily life: Alpha, Low Beta, Mid Beta, and High Beta.

Waves you better not take off during learning

The brain in High Beta works with a frequency of 22-30+ cycles per second. You can observe this brain activity when you are in a stressful situation. Your body turns into a survival mode where the body starts releasing all surviving chemicals. The brain is erratic and reactive and it consumes an enormous amount of energy.

At this brain activity level, your organism prepares to "war" rather than to learn something new. Which country would invest resources in developing something new if they are on the brink of war? Obviously that all resources will be directed to war-related activities. Same with your brain and body when our brain High Beta.

When you try to learn something at High Beta, the results would be shallow. You should not expect any long-term knowledge retention. The brain will throw out most of what you trying to learn as it is not something one thinks is important at the moment. The best you can do is to calm down first.

There are also Mid Beta waves. Although the neocortical activity is not as intense in this mode as in High Beta, it is still too intense for building solid mental models of new knowledge. It is more suitable for the exploitation of what you already know. So, for the best results, try to calm down more to get to the right state.

Waves you better riding during learning

The brain in Low Beta works in a range of 13-15 cycles per second. Its overall neocortical activity is low. You pay attention to things but in a relaxed and thoughtful manner.

Let's imagine: it is a sunny Sunday, you have done all the important things you need and you have some idle time for yourself. You sit at your favorite couch, your favorite drink right near you. You turned off all notifications and your laptop screen has only one window opened with this article. If at this moment you enjoy reading the article and you have some familiarity with the topic, you can say that your brain is "riding" the Low Beta waves.

Let's go even further. You not only enjoy reading the article but also have found something that directly applied to you. You take a pause and without actively realizing it dive into your thoughts. This is the moment when you "take off" Alpha brain views.

During "riding" the Alpha waves your brain ignores a lot of external sensory information. You might not put a lot of attention to what you hear, see, touch, smell, etc. Most of your attention is released from the outer world. Most of it is in your internal world.

This is the most efficient state you can be in to learn and master skills. Most of it will become an integral part of your brain architecture. This is a state when you can deeply understand the topic you are learning and recall it at any time further. When you are in Alpha you have access and permission to write directly to the neural network.

Putting your brain into the Low Beta activity level state is exactly what you need to start with when you learn something you want to last. And then move your state even further to Alpha which will allow you to commit new knowledge into neural networks of your brain. The process is slow but right.

Self-education and brain waves

I was not familiar with the concepts of brain waves during my journey to a self-taught Software Developer. So I was not able to explain to myself why traditional education was not working for me but self-education was.

But now it has become clear to me. There were too many sources of distraction, worry, and frustration in the traditional education system. I can recall just a few moments of deep learning experience I enjoyed during my school and university years. If I were measuring my brain activity levels during my traditional education, 80% of it would probably be within the High and Mid Beta.

But I can recall dozens of moments when during self-education I was so deeply concentrated during learning that I felt like nothing else existed around me. Many times I felt how new knowledge was literally built-in into my brain. These were the moments of Low Beta and Alpha brain waves at work.

Summary

Learning is a complex process and there are many tactics we can use to improve it. However, what we have covered I believe is one of the most important.

Each time you realize that the "revolving door" is spinning too fast, do not push hard to enter it. Additional pressure on yourself will make things worse. Acknowledge that your brain is "riding" the High Beta. Then do your best to calm down your brain and "take off" the Low Beta or Alpha. Then you will be able to enter through the "revolving door" effortlessly.

Now when you know that learning is the most productive during Alpha and Low Beta brain activity, you have understanding. But the true power will come with the ability to measure and control your brain modes. I believe there are a few devices you can find on the market which will help you to measure brain activity. But a unique person, you would need to find the best way to control the brain activity unique to you.

"Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power". - Laozi

PS: I know only Muze 2 which can help to measure brain activity. But if you know some other tools in the market, please share them in the comments!