Theta State: How the Brain Signals Relaxation
Theta State: How the Brain Signals Relaxation What’s happening to your brain when you float? How do you go from being awake, conscious, and stressed to relaxed and dreamy? While we still have a lot to discover when it comes to different states of consciousness, one key element is the “Theta State,” when our brain waves operate at a certain frequency most often linked to the moments between sleep and wakefulness. To really understand what the Theta State is and how it benefits us, we have to first explore a little bit about brain waves more broadly. In 1924, German psychoanalyst Hans Berger recorded an electronic signal coming from the brain for the first time. The signal was chaotic, intermittent, and didn’t exactly fit with the contemporary understanding of how brains functioned. It took him five years to figure out what his findings meant before he could publish any meaningful r...