Reduce Your Stress 
Fortify Your Immune System 
Enhance Your General Sense of Well Being. 

by Steven Halpern
©1997 Steven Halpern
Dear Friend,

Once you understand the significance that relaxation and specific brainwave states can play in your personal health and well being, I think you'll agree that it's important to nourish yourself with the essential ingredients to insure against being deficient in this area.

But even to call it "music" does it a disservice. What we're talking about is more than music... more than "entertainment" . . . it's a subtle but amazingly potent resource which affects your body, mind and spirit in ways that few of us ever considered.

Brainwaves and You
For over half a century, scientists have known that the electrical activity of the brain could be measured. They divided this activity into four main classifications. We spend most of our waking moments in beta, in which our brainwaves pulsate at between 13 and 39 cycles per second (cps).

When we get deeply relaxed, however, we shift into alpha between 8-12 cps. Theta brainwaves are associated with deeper experiences of creativity and meditation (at 4-7 cps)

Delta refers to the state you're in when you sleep (from 1-4 cps). For many years, we've known what happens if we don't spend enough time in delta - we get irritable and agitated. Sleep disorders, which would thus include a deficiency of delta, are relatively well known.

Only recently, however, has the question of a deficiency of alpha brainwaves come to light. I believe the implications are significant not only to you personally, but to our society as a whole.

Let me tell you why.

In 1989, Dr. Eugene Peniston of the VA Hospital in Fort Lyon, Colorado, and Dr. Kulkosky, of the University of Southern Colorado, published a landmark study involving alcoholics and children of alcoholics - and brainwave biofeedback. The doctors discovered that many of these individuals shared a glaring deficiency - alcoholics and their children were not producing as much alpha brainwaves as a normal person.

But when they drank they DID produce much more alpha. Could drinking and other forms of addictive substance abuse be understood, at least in part, as a misguided attempt to remedy their alpha deficiency? Recent research is suggesting that this may be so.

What could these alpha waves provide that the body so instinctively craves?

When practiced regularly, relaxation can help prevent many today's stress-related diseases and help you live a healthier life - with more energy, more clarity in thought processes, a more robust immune system, and more ease in falling asleep.

Indeed, many unhealthy, compulsive and addictive behaviors, such as alcoholism, smoking, overeating, and violence, are actually the result of our inability to handle stress in our lives.

At an intuitive, subconscious level, most of us are aware of the need to attain this highly attuned state of inner peace and harmony. There is no doubt in my mind that it is built into our genetic coding. But little in our society encourages or nourishes us in this regard. We are now paying the personal, social and economic costs of ignoring this basic need.

For that reason, it's up to each of us to take responsibility do things for ourselves. We must include time for relaxation every day to get a sufficient supply of alpha brainwaves to keep us in "sound health" and safeguard our well-being and that of our children.

How to Make Sure You're Getting Your Share of Alpha Brainwaves
There are many ways to get yourself into an alpha brainwave state:

You can take brainwave biofeedback training, in which a machine monitors your body and indicates when you have achieved the necessary control of your body/mind. You can study meditation, learn yoga, or practice exercises suggested in Dr. Herbert Benson's landmark book, The Relaxation Response.

On the other hand, you can use something that people have used for thousands of years that is legal non-addictive, non-fattening enjoyable. Not only that, it doesn't require any special training.

I'm talking about music. But not just ANY music will work.

Most music, from Bach to Rock, is intended to stimulate rather than relax. It literally makes your nervous system "more nervous." Playing "radio roulette" (which is what I call listening to the radio and hoping they'll play a song you like) may be entertaining, but it's definitely not relaxing. It's clear that when the goal is "attunement" rather than "entertainment" you're dealing with a different order of priorities - and only certain music possesses the characteristics needed to be effective.

Here's why.

Most music tends to dominate and override the natural rhythm of your heart by "entraining" it to the rhythm of the drummer (or these days, more likely a drum machine). It's no secret that most pop, rock or classical music was not composed with your health and well being in mind!

The second factor is that "Music is a carrier wave for consciousness." In ways that we don't fully understand, the emotional state of the performer or composer is actually recorded onto a tape or CD.

Is it any wonder, given the lifestyle and mindset of most rock and rap musicians, that their music is unsuitable as a resource to nourish us at a fundamental level of our being?

What is needed is music that comes from a place of peace. When you listen to such music, your body, mind and spirit automatically resonate to this harmonious vibration.

Tuning Your "Human Instrument"
In a deeply relaxed, meditative state, your physical body vibrates at about 8 cycles per second. Scientists have discovered that this is related to a slowing down of the heartbeat, and has been measured with micro-motion sensing devices. At the same time, our brainwaves shift from their everyday beta range (13-39 cps) into the deep alpha range (about 8 cps).

When this occurs, an electromagnetic field is created around the head. This field entrains (links up with) the actual frequency of the Earth's electromagnetic field - which also happens to resonate at about 8 cps. Coincidence? You be the judge. I hardly think so.

Adding to our understanding of why this is so, geobiologist Joseph Kirschvink of the California Institute of Technology has just reported finding tiny magnets (actually, crystals of the mineral magnetite) in human brain tissue. Future research will surely shine more light on this topic.

Are You a Type-A Person Getting an "F" in Relaxation?
I've dedicated the past 20 years to researching and producing music that would automatically evoke a "relaxation response" in virtually any listener. It began as a personal quest, out of my own need to find something legal and non-addictive that could save me - a stressed-out Type-A New Yorker - from "burn-out" due to stress-related factors.

My academic background in psychology, music and pre-med sciences gave me with the ideal tools to unravel this mystery. However, the breakthrough I experienced was not a result of my academic studies or intellectual pursuits... but they did provide me with the scientific framework to make sense of what had happened.

Much like Mozart in the movie "Amadeus," I began to hear a new kind of music in my dreams. With practice, I was soon able to hear and play this wonderful music when I was wide-awake.

At this point, the pieces of the puzzle all came together for me. I developed a reasonable hypothesis and began doing research to investigate the remarkable powers of this music.

The results of these biofeedback studies yielded brainwave charts and data which demonstrated that this music was far more effective for relaxing listeners than any other music available at that time.

But that wasn't the biggest shock.

To my amazement and absolute delight, most everyone who heard the music had a similar experience of inner peace and harmony. . . even the totally strung-out corporate stressaholics.

No matter what our belief system, "Peace is an inside job." If we ever are to have peace on our planet, it's axiomatic that we must experience peace within ourselves first.

Ultimately, this is the grand vision I had when I first received this music. This is the vision that sustained me over the years as a "starving artist." And this is the vision that sustains me now more than ever.

Why This Became the Best Kept Secret of the 70's

By 1973, 1 had completed my initial research, but had no idea how to share this music with a larger audience. I had no money or business training. I had just begun working as a music specialist in the Palo Alto, California, school district. But boy, did I have a sense of mission!

As soon as I could, I borrowed as much money as I could on my new credit card and recorded my first album on January 4, 1975.

Like a Zen archer, I meditated in preparation for playing my first notes. From that centered place, I completed the album in one day.

Getting the music recorded was the easy part. I quickly learned that it would take much longer to design and print the cover than it would to compose and record the music. Even that paled by comparison with the most formidable challenge… getting the music to the public, let alone helping them understand what it was about and why it was so different.

I have a confession to make. I apologize to you for taking so many years to finally talk personally with you in an educational, informative form such as this letter, in order to communicate what my music is all about - and what it can mean to you.