Have you had an "out of body experience"? How to balance your brainwaves and change your life

"The Monroe Institute of Applied Sciences" by Stefan Kasian, Duke University. Reprinted from College Bound Magazine, 1995.

My summer of 1994 was the best summer of my life. During my three months as an intern to the Monroe Institute, I learned things that no professor or textbook either in college or high school could have taught me.

My experience at the Monroe Institute has completely changed the way I will think of my career in medicine, and more importantly, it has changed how I think of myself.

The Monroe Institute had its inception late one night, over 30 years ago, when Robert Monroe, a famous Broadcast Executive, awoke to find himself “floating” over his body.

Periodically he had been suffering from strange vibrations that felt like strange electrical shocks running through his body. They lasted only for a few minutes, but he was concerned enough to consult his doctor and a psychologist. Both told him that he was perfectly healthy both physically and mentally. While at first these floating experiences had frightened him, they eventually became as commonplace to him as a night’s sleep.

Rediscovering Out of Body experiences (OBEs)

Robert Monroe had decided to explore this world of OBEs (Out-of-Body-Experiences) as he coined the phrase, and with his own money founded a not-for-profit institute to investigate and research these altered states of consciousness.

I had first heard of The Monroe Institute from a friend, and later read about the Institute in a book called Superlearning: The Revolution, by Schroeder and Ostrander. Superlearning described the exciting discoveries that were revolutionizing how scientists were thinking about learning and memory.

Interested in improving my own skills because I wanted to maximize my academic performance in school, I had decided to contact them. Although the professionals at The Monroe Institute usually do not have the additional time to train a volunteer, the Institute was completing several research studies that could make very good use of my skills.

Scientific studies of Altered Consciousness

The Monroe Institute investigates changes in the body as the mind and brain enters into deep states of relaxation and beyond, into altered states of consciousness. In one major research project called PREP (Personal Resources Exploration Program), subjects climb into a sensory-isolation chamber. Wires are attached to the subjects’ fingers to measure temperature changes. All of this information was recorded on the computer.

My task was to hand-edit the data from nearly 1,000 PREP sessions. After having been edited, this data would then be loaded into a more powerful computer that would determine statistically the effects on the autonomic nervous system.During my three-month internship I gained an appreciation for the complexity of Hemi-Sync.

How "Hemi-Sync" actually entrains and balances your brainwaves

Hemi-Sync is a technology based on binaural beats. Binaural beats are created when the brain hears the “difference” between slightly different sounds. The brain then follows this sound, called Frequency Following Response (FFR). When a person listens to a Hemi-sync tape, it will gradually lead them into a different state of consciousness depending on the combination of binaural tones.

Hemi-Sync is not only sound tones, it is an entire process which employs relaxation, hypnotic suggestion, guided imagery, and last but not least, the placebo effect.