Douglas Prater – Stealing Flow Gamma – iAwake Technologies

Description Of Stealing Flow Gamma

About the Stealing Flow+ tracks

• 01 Warm-up is a full-spectrum, whole-brain workout, ideal to listen to before beginning your day’s work, or as a morning meditation.
• 02 Stealing Flow – with subtle affirmations is a program for inducing flow in creative work. Helps build confidence too.
• 03 Stealing Flow – clean is very similar to the previous track, but it excludes the subtle affirmations.
• 04 High Focus, in addition to providing a pick-me-up when energy is flagging, is excellent for editing, proofreading, or debugging.
• 05 Breakthrough is a deep theta track designed for brainstorming, problem-solving, and creative exploration.
• 06 Release, Relax, Recharge is used to wind down when you need a break. Can make you feel downright blissful.
• 07 Gamma begins at beta 15 Hz, ramps relatively quickly to 40 Hz gamma, then slowly ascends to 67 Hz, and is designed to provide the listener with energy, focus, bursts of insight, and “aha!” moments of clarity.
• 08 Power Nap begins at alpha 12 Hz, ramps down optimally to delta 3.5 Hz, and then more slowly to delta 1.0 Hz, for a deeply relaxing power nap. The final two minutes guide the listener back into a relaxed and rejuvenated 10 Hz alpha.

Have you ever been so fully engaged in something – a creative practice, a sport, a conversation, a meditation, or even (gasp) your job – that it felt completely effortless? Perhaps your sense of time seemed to fall away, and the hours flew by in what felt like a matter of minutes. Or maybe time slowed down, and every second of your experience came alive in rich and vivid detail? When this happens, our “inner critic” goes silent, freeing us from the doubt and fear that held us back. Action merges with awareness. We trust our intuition. And we experience the richest, most enjoyable moments of our lives.

If you’ve ever experienced what I’m describing, you’ve experienced what psychologists call the “flow” state. Athletes call it “being in the zone”. For experienced meditators, it’s jhana. Characterized by selflessness, timelessness, effortlessness, and richness, the flow state helps us perform at our best, live our happiest and most fulfilled lives, and bring our gifts to the world. Most of us have had this experience at some point in our lives. For many, though, this state of flow feels elusive, like the stars need to align under perfect conditions for the experience to unfold.

How To Use Stealing Flow

The Stealing Flow suite is a diverse and powerful toolkit, and its components may be combined in a number of different ways for a number of situations. My philosophy, as always, is one of open-minded experimentation. As you become familiar with each of the tracks and the way it affects you, you’ll have a better idea of which tracks to use for which purposes. As you use Stealing Flow, we encourage you to share your stories with our community of practitioners on Facebook.

Stealing Flow uses a comprehensive entrainment matrix, which includes isochronic and monaural beats, enabling the tracks to work when played through speakers. However, the effect is substantially more powerful when headphones or earbuds are used, so using headphones or earbuds is our “best practice” recommendation when possible.

Keeping the above in mind, here a few sample suggestions that may help you begin your exploration.

Using Stealing Flow for Creative Work (and The Pomodoro Technique):

1. Begin with Warm-up for the first 25 minutes of your creative period. Before starting the track, establish a clear intention for your creative work. What will you work on? What will you explore? As the track guides your brain waves, allow yourself to run through a “mental rehearsal” of your creative work. See yourself sitting at your desk, standing at your canvas, working at your computer, or performing any task with skill and fluency. (You can also work with any other meditation practice you choose, such as following the breath, using a mantra, circulating chi, focusing on the heart center, and many more.) By starting your creative work period using Warm-up, you will neurologically push your brain waves through the “Struggle Phase” of the Flow cycle, making “Release” into flow easier and more powerful in the next step.
2. When the track finishes, take a 5-minute break. Stretch your legs, drink some water, gather your supplies. (Resist the temptation to surf the web, check your email, or browse social media, as these activities leave a sort of “attention residue” that can detract from your work.)
3. Start the primary Stealing Flow track and begin your process of creation. Allow yourself to jump right in and keep moving, working quickly enough to outrun the inner critic. Using your forward momentum as a “meditation object,” continue returning to your work as often as necessary as the “distraction” of the internal monologue falls away. Trust your intuition and go with the flow.
4. When the track ends, take a 5-minute break. Even if you’re on a roll. Especially if you’re on a roll. Why stop now? Because you’re deep in the process and excited about what you’re doing. Right now, you’re eager to get started again, whereas if you worked until your brain became fatigued, you’d be less likely to continue. So stand up and stretch your legs. Pet your cat. Do some jumping jacks.
5. Repeat steps three and four.
6. Repeat steps three and four again. Now you’ve worked for two hours, and it’s time to take a longer break. Take 15-60 minutes to disconnect and recharge. Have a snack, drink some water, get some sunshine. Try to completely disengage from your project; you’re in the recovery phase. This is also a great time to sit (or lie down) and listen to Relax, Release, Recharge.
7. Advanced: (Use caution if you’re sensitive to entrainment overwhelm; experiment with the tracks first to see how they affect you.) Repeat the process above. Four blocks work/rest, followed by a longer break.

Note I: For any of the work/rest cycles outlined in steps 3 and 4, feel free to substitute High Focus or Breakthrough for the primary Stealing Flow track. Use the right tool for each stage of the process, depending on what you need to do next.

Note II: There’s a productivity method called the Pomodoro Technique, which I’ve found to be incredibly effective. You work in 25-minute blocks, followed by a 5-minute break, and you repeat about four of these cycles. All six tracks of Stealing Flow are 25 minutes long, so you can listen to one, and when the track is over, you take a break, then you come back and do another one, then take a little break.

When I was using this technique with my writing, I was able to get a lot more done, with a lot better quality, explore my creativity—I just had better results. So, if anyone is interested in using Stealing Flow that way for work, for study, for whatever you need, it’s already set up as a perfect complement to this type of productivity practice.

Using the Stealing Flow Suite for Meditation:

There are a number of ways to use Stealing Flow as a stand-alone meditation, or as an addition to your current favorite iAwake® tracks.

Option 1 — Meditate with Warm-up, using your meditation practice of choice. Use the breath, the heart center, or the music as a “meditation object,” gently returning your attention when it wanders. This practice helps facilitate “state flexibility,” allowing you to drop into meditation, flow, focus, or relaxation more easily, any time you need to.

Option 2 — Begin your meditation with Warm-up, as described above. When the track ends, follow it with Relax, Release, Recharge for a deeply rejuvenating and healing meditation.

Target Brain Waves

• Gamma: Energy and focus, bursts of insight, “aha!” moments of clarity
• Beta: Alertness, attention, motivation, focus
• Alpha: Relaxed focus, heightened creativity, stress release
• Flow Zone (alpha/theta border): Selflessness, timelessness, effortlessness, richness – peak performance and creativity
• Theta: Deep creativity, insight, healing, intuition, access to inner guidance
• Delta: Deep meditative, formless awareness, and non-dual consciousness

Track Details

Stealing Flow – with subtle affirmations and Stealing Flow – clean: The track begins with a ramp from 12 Hz alpha to the 8 Hz alpha/theta border (the “flow zone”). Over the course of the track, this target frequency rolls slowly back and forth between 7.5 Hz and 9 Hz, allowing you to find your precise optimal flow frequency. In addition to the alpha/theta “flow zone” entrainment, a more subtle, 48 Hz gamma helps create moments of “binding consciousness” and bursts of insight, particularly as the entrainment intensity of the gamma “peaks out” above the flow bed at several points in the track.

High Focus: The high focus track begins at 14 Hz beta and slowly ramps to 30 Hz high beta. Over the course of the track, the target frequency continues to slowly roll back and forth between 22 Hz and 30 Hz, mirroring the natural cyclic nature of energy, motivation, and intensity of focus. The track concludes at 14 Hz beta.

Breakthrough: The Breakthrough track targets the theta state, oscillating between 4 Hz and 6 Hz over the course of the session, promoting profound relaxation, access to insight and intuition, and deep creativity. It concludes with a return to relaxed low alpha 10 Hz.

Relax, Release, Recharge: The healing and recharging effects of this track come from the strong, stable entrainment to the Schumann Resonance frequency of 7.83 Hz. This frequency is associated with a number of powerful effects, including relaxation, a sense of grounding, balance and harmony, enhanced rejuvenation, and intuition.

Warm-up: Designed to facilitate versatility and easy shifting between states, Warm-up is a full-brain, all-state experience. The track begins with 12 Hz alpha, ramping down to 1 Hz delta. From there, it ramps slowly to 48 Hz gamma, then back to a relaxed 10 Hz alpha.

Gamma: Designed to stimulate focus, creativity, enthusiasm, and motivation, this track begins at beta 15 Hz, ramps relatively quickly to 40 Hz gamma, then slowly ascends to 67 Hz, where it remains for the final 5 minutes.

Power Nap: Designed to restore energy and help you move through blocks and fatigue, this track begins at alpha 12 Hz, ramps down optimally to delta 3.5 Hz, and then more slowly to delta 1.0 Hz, for a deeply relaxing power nap. The final two minutes guide the listener back into a relaxed and rejuvenated 10 Hz alpha.

The Music

Forming the musical bed, recorded and triggered samples of double bass, cello, viola, violin, and a flute ensemble have been dynamically arpeggiated at a rate consistent with the shifting entrainment frequencies, then carefully filtered to accentuate their naturally rich overtone signatures.

Each note of the primary chord, which makes generous use of soothing “perfect fifths” at the golden mean ratio, is played by a different instrument, providing a rich harmony of overtones working in concert. The sounds were run through a slow decay reverb, tuned to the proper room size that allows the reflection series to reach the ears at the rate of flow-state brain waves.

On the lower end of the frequency spectrum, a pair of LFO oscillators drive a gate-trigged filter to shape the envelope of the sound. The result is a tonally smooth and highly effective synergy of non-standard entrainment modalities.

Entrainment Technologies

Stealing Flow combines multiple entrainment modalities, which work together to enhance its effectiveness, including binaural, isochronic, and monaural technologies.

From the creator, Doug Prater:

Have you ever been so fully engaged in something – a creative practice, a sport, a conversation, a meditation, or even (gasp) your job – that it felt completely effortless? Perhaps your sense of time seemed to fall away, and the hours flew by in what felt like a matter of minutes. Or maybe time slowed down, and every second of your experience came alive in rich and vivid detail? When this happens, our “inner critic” goes silent, freeing us from the doubt and fear that held us back. Action merges with awareness. We trust our intuition. And we experience the richest, most enjoyable moments of our lives.

If you’ve ever experienced what I’m describing, you’ve experienced what psychologists call the “flow” state. Athletes call it “being in the zone”. For experienced meditators, it’s jhana. Characterized by selflessness, timelessness, effortlessness, and richness, the flow state helps us perform at our best, live our happiest and most fulfilled lives, and bring our gifts to the world. Most of us have had this experience at some point in our lives. For many, though, this state of flow feels elusive, like the stars need to align under perfect conditions for the experience to unfold.

As a writer, I recognized long ago that entering the flow state allowed me to do my best work. In flow, the words poured onto the screen; my fingertips could hardly keep up. The characters of my stories took on a life of their own, acting entirely of their own accord, often in ways that surprised me. I felt free to trust my intuition and see where the journey led. These moments of flow allowed me to create better work, faster. And they have been some of the most rewarding experiences of my career.

The trouble was, it was a challenge to enter the flow state reliably. There were countless days when, even with a deadline looming, the words wouldn’t come. Self-doubt and perfectionism overcame me, and every labored sentence I wrote lacked “magic.” The insight hit me, as I struggled with a manuscript a few years back, that I needed a tool to help me reach the flow state on demand.

I’ve been meditating, composing music, and crafting brainwave entrainment tracks for nearly fifteen years, so creating my own tracks to enter flow felt like the realization of a very personal calling – the nexus of my passions. My new mission took on a life of its own as I began experimenting and testing the tracks. The ultimate crucible, of course, was their usefulness in my own creative and productive work.

The program had to be strong enough to override the conscious “resistance” that inevitably shows up when pursuing deeply meaningful work, yet harmonically pleasing and smooth enough to use regularly. After countless iterations, I finally succeeded in “Stealing Flow.”

These tracks are the result of that work. The primary tracks, Stealing Flow – with subtle affirmations and Stealing Flow – clean have been important tools in my own creative work, helping me to enter that place of relaxed, creative attention. They’ve been the muse in my ears for a number of published works. And I hope that they’ll be a powerful tool for you, as well.

The creative process, of course, isn’t limited to flow states. And Stealing Flow is far more than a tool for creative work. Bringing our gifts to the world involves an idea generation phase, a highly focused, “convergent” evaluation and polishing phase, and the space to let go and recharge in between bursts of inspired work.

Perhaps the most interesting track of the series is Warm-up. Designed to build mental flexibility and the ability to rapidly shift mental states on demand, Warm-up has proven to be a powerful meditation track in its own right. And, as the iAwake® team serendipitously discovered, Warm-up adds an intensely catalytic effect when used as a precursor to meditation with PMP 3.0, Deep Delta, and other iAwake® tracks. The Warm-up track alone is, as they say, worth the price of the ticket.

Stealing Flow is something of a departure from iAwake’s traditional offerings of meditative, spiritual, and healing programs. But I believe it fully aligns with our larger mission of helping people discover their best selves and bring their gifts and talents into the world.

May these tracks guide and empower you on your journey of discovery and creation.

Blessings,

Doug

Who are these tracks for?

• Professionals: executives – lawyers – physicians & healthcare professionals
• Students at all levels
• Creatives: writers – artists – designers
• Meditators: from beginners to advanced
• Developers
• People working in open space work environments or cubicles
• Digital nomads – telecommuters
• Entrepreneurs
• Individuals in the military, law enforcement, fire departments , emergency response teams

About Douglas Prater

Douglas Prater is an author, meditator, fitness enthusiast, and musician who holds a degree in Music: Sound Recording Technology from Texas State University. Born and raised in Littleton, Colorado, Doug also spent significant periods of his life in Austin, TX, and Atlanta, GA. Always longing to return to the mountains, he now lives in the Smoky Mountains of western North Carolina.

Doug has composed and engineered brainwave entrainment audio tracks since 2010 for meditation, creative pursuits, and the attainment of peak performance flow states. He is the developer of Rainstorm Sleepwave, Infinity, Stealing Flow+, Stealing Flow – Power Nap, the technology and soundtrack for The Near Death Experience: Waking Up to Life, and the technology for The Freedom of Forgiveness. He is also the producer, webmaster, and project manager of the Journey of Integral Recovery podcast.

Doug is the author of the forthcoming book The Dharma of Harry Potter: A Muggle’s Guide to Buddhism (and a large catalog of fiction written under a handful of pseudonyms that he won’t tell us… we suspect he writes romance novels).

More courses from the same author: Douglas Prater