Meditation augmentation: iAwake vs NeoRhythm

If like me your Facebook feed has been jammed with brain entrainment systems lately then you may want someone to talk about it who’s used a couple of them. I’d just hit the Buy button on NeoRhythm when my psychonaut, psychiatrist brother in law, (let’s call him ‘Luke’) told me of iAwake. 

My own reasons for doing this

In recovery from alcoholism I’ve been looking to fix the underlying issues through an organisation called One Year No Beer (OYNB). They’re fantastic and have helped me on my journey like the NHS system couldn’t. This isn’t a review of them though! One of the standard practices you need to do as part of recovery is meditation. 

I do meditation and journaling at 5:30 every morning. Masochistic? It’s the best time of the day to do something solely for you. I’d been using the Calm meditation app but seem to have hit the wall with it. In a Zoom with the OYNB founder Ruari Fairburns he suggested I get into Transcendental Meditation (beginning this weekend) but thanks to other issues I had to break that wall quickly and I couldn’t wait for TM as I’d frankly be in the shit!

Essentially, clinging onto sobriety and support by my fingernails, I needed to smash that wall down I’d faced in standard solo meditation. 

First up – iAwake

Waiting on the delivery of the NeoRhythm I downloaded the iAwake free trial sound track. You need a decent pair of headphones and a mobile device to plug it into (yes, that meant my iPad Pro and not my iPhone X which lacks such a port…). 

I’m a reasonably bright guy and like to call myself a science writer but the way this system works is a little beyond my understanding. Read this article on the iAwake website if you want to try. It’s way over my head!  

I did this as an experiment. I sat down and used the trial over a few days. Using the ‘counting method’ of mindfulness (literally counting to 10 repeatedly in concert with your breathing) I took that mental wall down a wee bit by having a fully conscious dream. That told me there was something in it so when offered the discount, I thought that yes, there’s a journey to be done. I downloaded Profound Meditation Program 3.0 (PMP).

I’d complicated things a little by reading a book on meditation and decided to try mantra meditation as a step towards TM. I then made the mistake of doing my first 40 minute PMP session first thing in the morning on a Monday. A friend was teetering on the buy button herself and sadly didn’t buy. Why? It was like a bomb going off in my skull. Something so intense and powerful my concentration was basically fucked for the morning. It took 2 hours to do a job that normally takes 45 minutes!!!

For some reason I sat to it again that evening. Thinking I would be forever screwed up by this I tried again only to find tremendous inner peace. The dreams returned and concentration went far the other way – I could almost hyper-focus. 

Other important things happened. The effects appeared for 12 hours at a time. No matter how tired I am I soon find a wakeful clarity at the end of a session. Bigger things happened though. Self-acceptance has long been an issue even at 45 years old. Inner dialogue mellowed out. Analysis of personal impulses became possible. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not ‘there’ suddenly but certainly the wall preventing me from achieving those things is no more. Never mind ‘taken down’ – more like vaporised by an H bomb. 

NeoRhythm

This arrived on the Tuesday of my iAwake experiment. I would open the box on Friday having had a shakedown period and then 2 days to explore the system. It went on charge on the Friday night and before my 200 mile round trip to my mother’s on the Saturday I set it up. 

Getting it to pair with the app on your phone is relatively easy. After the aural bombardment of the iAwake system I was a little uncomfortable with the timeless silence of the NeoRhythm. I ended up playing an ambient background track such as Brian Eno’s Thursday Afternoon or something by Mogwai. There’s no timer or sound so I ended up sat for 1h15 not realising it had ended. 

A full explanation of how the NeoRhythm works can be found here – it uses pulsing magnets in a proven method called Pulsed Electromagnetic Field (PEM). PEM has been used for depression and ofher psychological interventions over the years. It works. 

I felt grumpy and dozy on the drive down. Even had to pause for a caffeine fix midway. I was grumpy and depressive all day but perked up on the way home. 

I found a depth to the meditation that I may have discovered if I hadn’t used iAwake. I saw light coming through my ‘third eye’. A mild experience.  

This morning, midway through a NeoRhythm session I cut it short. I wasn’t getting what I needed. There’s only one intensity setting and honestly if I had used this without first trying iAwake I would have been impressed. Sadly it’s as if I had been used to drinking vodka all day and went round to a promised piss up at a mate’s house to find only one bottle of Lambrini – I was into the hard stuff and was offered something that at best would caress me gently. I wanted to be bent out of shape!!!

Conclusions

Brain entrainment is something that without doubt works. It is a legal way of exploring the inner self without resort to LSD, psilocybin or DMT. I once had a PhD student studying LSD assisted psychotherapy explain that if meditation is walking along your journey then LSD and the spirit molecule DMT are like taking an express train. Particularly iAwake is like being given a Porsche – not as quick as the train but a darned sight better than walking!

There are other PEM machines. Luke suggests the Muse headband but I cannot comment on that. He’s about to try maximum PMP and Muse together which given my experience, sounds to me like a dose of electroconvulsive therapy!!!

As to NeoRhythm? They say you should do this over 2-3 weeks but then only offer a 60 day money-back guarantee. They don’t rush to respond to your emails either. Given this somewhat grumpy customer service, sadly I’m not convinced. It’s a shame as I like the pioneering spirit of start-ups but you have to sell something of substance in order to get a good review. Mine is positive-neutral, about as much as the change of consciousness it achieved. 

What to buy? If you’re just starting out and like cool gadgets? Try NeoRhythm. If you want to get an almost psychedelic experience from Day 1 and build from there? iAwake!

Rich Shrubb