For most people, Alpha Theta Training is recommended every five sessions. It is a protocol designed to produce a pathway from the subconscious to the conscious, and trainers use it for everything from addictions to peak performance. It is especially used to “lay in” training achieved in the previous four sessions.

Why Do Alpha Theta Training

6-8 Hz theta seems to be the frequency that most relates to memory, visualization, and access to the subconscious. We train for 7 Hz crossovers in alpha-theta training and ideally take the client as an observer to the entrance to his own subconscious mind.

When you are producing more alpha, you are in the observer state; when you produce more theta at 7 Hz, you are standing at the entrance of your own subconscious. Going down into theta and staying there is likely to lead to drowsiness and perhaps sleep. Staying in alpha is just meditating. But if you can go into the observer state, then dip down into your subconscious (home of memory and emotion with a language of imagery), then come back up, then dip down again, etc., you are crossing over, becoming an observer of your own history, feelings, etc.

Site to Train

Alpha theta training is conducted at two locations, O1 and P4. Use O1 referenced to A1 for a more visual experience; use P4 linked to A2 for a more physical/kinesthetic experience. O1 often results in more visual “trips” where P4 often involves more physical sensation to the memories and experiences.

How to Respond to Music in Alpha Theta Sessions

There are multiple pieces of music that play in our alpha theta sessions. You may advise your clients or yourself: “During the first piece, just let the mind be still and pay attention to that while the piano is playing. For the second piece, when the girl starts her chant, either visualize something you’d like to have in your life in as much detail as possible, or mentally replay a video of you doing something you don’t want to do but keep doing. But change the script in the movie in your mind, so you respond in some other way. Once you’ve visualized, then just go wherever your brain takes you, but remain aware of it. Once the male voice chants and then the violin begins to play. The violin is telling you that you’re on your way back, just a few more minutes.”

What You’ll Hear During A/T Training

The Pachelbel Canon is a 60-beat baroque piece which has been shown to be effective in increasing alpha levels in the brain. The instruction while the “piano is playing” is to disengage your mind from your thoughts: just watch them. When a thought comes in, don’t fight it and don’t ride it. Just notice it is there, as you notice the music and your body.

The Chant of Metta is a beautiful prayer–a blessing song sung in sweet childlike voices. When “the girl begins to sing” the client is to begin her visualization. After they have finished the visualization, then we tell them let your brain go where it goes.

Chant is a male voice, more of a primitive feel. Some see it as darker, scarier. The instruction here is just to continue your voyage, go where you go.

Finally the Meditation on Thais, the violin piece, tells us that we’ve turned for home. The music will end, we’ll open our eyes (when ready) and recall what we choose. The higher frequency violin line tends to draw the brain toward faster speeds as well.

Training More Than Plan Indicates

Once every five sessions is ample. However, if alpha theta training seems to be helpful, you can do one session per week through the first couple of circuits of block training.

Falling Asleep During Training

Alpha theta is designed to guide the brain to a hypnagogic state–and help it stay there. Stage 1 sleep is characterized by a reduction in alpha/beta and increase in theta. It’s also called the twilight state. If you have ever been hypnotized, you probably had trouble telling if you were awake or asleep, because the state is between the two.

I’ve rarely seen a person fall asleep training SMR or Alpha Theta, though it has certainly looked like it from time to time. Often when I’m watching a program on YouTube that my wife will come in and tell me that I was sleeping, when I can tell her what has been happening in the program. It looked like sleep but was not.

The Importance of 3Hz

There is a 3 Hz graph line because when a client is moving into an abreactive state the 3 Hz activity spikes up; it is usually rapid and not a slow spike. Since delta is often the place where dissociative experiences are buried, a sudden burst of delta 3 Hz can indicate that the client has dropped out of theta and gone down to a place where there may be trauma being re-activated. On the other hand, it’s not unlikely that all of us have dissociated material and that one of the deeper results of good alpha theta is allowing that material to be integrated.

Uncomfortable Reactions

If you have uncomfortable reactions to alpha theta training, you can suggest to your brain several times a day during the 3-4 days preceding an A/T session that you would prefer that it bring up material that is less upsetting to you (though usually brains do that on their own). Also, remember the powerful ability to prepare a visualization to carry into the session. If there is a behavior or habit that you would like to change, visualize yourself in detail going into a situation that would normally trigger that behavior (or has recently done so), but change the script. When you get to the point in the visualization where you would normally do X, take a breath and smile and do Y instead. See yourself doing it. Once you have run through the visualization once or twice, your brain will normally begin bringing up material of its own, and you can drop the visualization. You are carrying a new program into your subconscious–an image-based program, since imagery is the language of the subconscious–and dropping it there. Repeat these several times over several sessions, and you’ll be surprised how the patterns begin to change automatically.

Another thing to mention is that the first goal of A/T is to move into the still/present observer state, where you are watching what is happening within and around you–that’s alpha. The visualization will help carry you down into theta (the 7Hz visualization and memory state), but if you can go there as an observer, that distance will help you deal with what the brain brings up without falling into it quite so hard.

One thing that I find very helpful–absent a therapist you can talk with after the session–is to either write or (even easier) get yourself a little digital recorder. After the session, you may choose to keep your eyes closed and just dictate what you remember, how you felt, any connections that come up for you, etc. Some people prefer to get up and go out for a walk and do the same thing. As with dreams, in many cases moving the imagery and memories into language helps to integrate the left and right sides of the experience and remove its more primitive power.

It’s no surprise that all that stuff is down there deep, and probably you are well aware that it will have to be integrated for you to be able truly to let it go and move past it, but alpha theta training should not be a frightening or seriously painful process.