How To Access Theta Brain Waves

As you’ve read, learning to harness theta brain waves has the power to improve your life in a myriad of ways. But the question now becomes how can you tap into this peak mind state for yourself?
From all the research I’ve done on theta, by and large, experts have all stated that it is difficult to produce. Most people unintentionally catch glimpses of while awake but aren’t able to enter this mental state consciously.
Yet researchers have also found that with conscious practice, practically anyone can learn to produce theta at will. Most of the biofeedback-based studies which trained subjects to produce alpha/theta had a protocol of at least 8 weeks of regular training sessions. I’d approach this with the same expectation.
In the next section, I’ll share some of the best tips I’ve come across that will help you speed up this process.

1. Reduce Beta Brain Waves

The first step in accessing theta is to quiet the chattering mind. In neuroscience talk, this means reducing beta waves. Fast oscillating beta waves are associated with conscious mental activity, which includes problem-solving, planning, analyzing, future projections, remembering past events, or any other type of active thinking.
With the monkey mind unchained to run about, it inhibits your mind’s ability to produce theta. Therefore we need to cage the monkey to free up theta. Increasing your alpha waves will naturally reduce beta, and the next step outlines how to do just that.

2. Increase Alpha Brain Waves

Alpha brain waves are associated with a relaxed mind and body state. As you let go of the thought streams running through your mind and turn inward, your brain naturally relaxes and enters an alpha state. There are a number of apps that have excellent guided meditation sessions to help you with this. I can personally vouch for headspace, calm, and buddhify.
Outside of these apps, here are some additional tips to tap into alpha.
Closing your eyes are physiologically linked to the production of alpha waves. If you’re hooked up to an EEG device, you’ll see a spike around 10hz (which is in the frequency range of alpha) the moment you close your eyes.
Getting in touch with the physical senses is a sure-fire way to get out of your head and activate alpha waves. Pay attention to all the subtle sounds around you. Do a body scan starting from the top of your head, making your way down to your toes. Watch the colors of all the objects in the room. Are there any smells around you that stand out?
One of the most tried and true methods meditators have used for thousands of years is to simply follow the breath. You can either pay attention to the rising and falling of your stomach/chest or feel the air moving in and out of your nose.
Another great tip I’ve heard from biofeedback expert Judith Pennington is to relax the tongue. This is a mind hack that long-term meditators have been using for centuries. It’s counter-intuitive, but by relaxing your tongue, I’ve noticed the mind follows suit and begin to slow down.

The Alpha Bridge

Most adults only enter a theta state before dosing off to sleep, and while in REM sleep. As we’ve discussed, it’s very difficult to retain the content your mind produces during these moments. This is because alpha waves are not present.
Alpha waves are the bridge that connects subconscious content to conscious awareness. Alpha helps both transmit conscious thoughts down to the subconscious and allows material from the subconscious make its way to your conscious mind for you to process.
Anna Wise writes:
The theta provides the depth of meditation – the subconscious inner space from which the creativity springs, or the spiritual connection is made, or the self-healing is programmed in the body. Theta gives you the experience of profundity in your meditation. Alpha provides the link, or bridge, to the conscious mind so that you can actually remember the contents of theta. If you meditate without alpha, producing theta alone, you will not remember your meditation! Remember, theta is the subconscious, and theta waves generally occur below conscious awareness. So anything that takes place below that line will remain subconscious unless the brainwaves that bridge the subconscious to the conscious are active. When acting as a bridge, alpha waves provide a clearer, sharper form of imagery through which the contents of the theta can be filtered.26

3. Access Theta Brain Waves

As you begin to generate greater alpha waves, theta will eventually break through the surface. How long will this take?
I’ve interviewed a number of brainwave entrainment experts on Warrior Radio who use pulses of sound and light to entrain the brain into alpha/theta mental states. Most of these experts have told me it typically takes 30 minutes or so diving into alpha, where their clients can finally see theta increasing. Keep this in mind during your theta training sessions.

Technology To Access Theta

There are also a number of methods that have been proven to increase theta waves, listed below.

Theta Brain Wave Meditation:  The House of Doors

One of the most widely used ways biofeedback experts I’ve researched have used to access theta is through a particular visualization. This involves visualizing yourself traveling downwards. This could be walking down a set of stairs in a castle, or traveling down a tunnel, or sinking deeper down an ocean. Anna Wise writes:
The key to accessing theta is to find a way to go deeply into yourself – into your own subconscious. The type of images that best access theta brain waves are those that take you on long journeys. The actual image itself doesn’t matter; it is the effect the image has on your brainwaves that is important. Images that take you down, through, and in help to access theta brain waves.
The more changes you make, the deeper you tend to go. Remember the experience in the House of Doors meditation above. After stimulating alpha waves with the sensual imagery in the outdoor environment, you went in through the front door, passing through an entrance hallways, into and through a room of mirrors, down a long hallway, and into a room. Then the process deepened your brainwaves even more by repeating it on the opposite side of the hall.
To help deepen theta waves, you can also use images that you under, over, around, and up. You can create your own theta-accessing meditation by developing imagery using these directional movements.

Write About Your Experience Afterwards

Once your theta meditation session has completed, draw or write about the experience. It’s far too easy to forget about the contents of your meditation. This is especially true if you weren’t generating strong alpha waves, which act as the bridge to transport unconscious material to conscious awareness. Anna Wise writes:
If you were producing a true meditation pattern of theta and alpha, you will have already created the bridge that allows you to be aware of the content of the experience while it was happening. If you alpha is low in frequency, however, the material will travel only halfway along the bridge. Because nothing is drawing it strongly enough toward consciousness it will literally turn around and slide back down into the subconsciousness, and it even feels as if it is there on the tip of your tongue, but you can’t quite get it to emerge from the subconscious.
Writing down key insights immediately after the experience will help solidify content in your mind.
Alternatively, you can draw. During my holotropic breathwork retreat, (a method known to produce strong theta waves), participants are encouraged to express what they went through by drawing inside a mandala circle. Here’s a picture I drew that represented the intense energy flowing through me during the breathwork session:

Conclusion

Numerous myths throughout history have spoken of the untapped power buried within all of us. Everyone has the potential to tap into things like deep insight, healing abilities, boundless creativity, the capacity to reprogram the mind, and mystical experiences.
Theta is the ‘royal road’ you travel to access these higher levels of power. Through long-term practice, you can learn to quiet the mind, and strengthen theta waves, giving you the power to walk this royal road at will.
Cover Photo by Seam Less