Fixing up my daughter with a bandaid every time she falls reminds me that we are frail. Each time I squint to read the newspaper with my glasses perched on my head…. I'm reminded that I am growing old.

So I use Beta waves each time I curse the car for not starting, lose patience in traffic and each time I surprise myself at finding my glasses. But electricity and waves? Perhaps we are more that we think.

I find Alpha waves to be of particular interest. Since lately the usual irritations, daily annoyances, frustrations and worries (job, deadlines, MBA, certain people) have just been flying over my head. Ignorance has been bliss. I've been 'floating', shall we say. These alpha waves at 7-12 hertz, as studies confirm, occur at times that include relaxation and deep self-introspection. I've been doing a lot of the latter lately, since the wife said ‘either I go, or the dog goes.' Confusion!

Getting back to the waves, it is said that between 7-8 hertz, the sensory input to the brain apparently lowers. Without sensory functions for the brain to control, the brain expands its other functioning powers. And voila! The normally unused portion of the brain becomes active and performs at maximum capacity. The mind then experiences the body in a half-in half-out state of sleep or detachment. The feeling is of being conscious of all things around you but the body being in deep relaxation. I think I reached this point several nights ago, only to hear my wife saying ‘did you let Bruno in tonight? I think I hear a noise in the kitchen’. 

Anyway, apparently our normal environment is at 7-8 hertz (minus the next door kid’s electric guitar ‘noise’). This is the level at which both mind and environments frequencies align. And this state achieved naturally, discovered thousands of years ago by few religions in the world including Buddhism, is called 'Meditation'.

I’ve been trying to meditate recently.  To bring myself to be ‘one’ with nature. But being a busy executive at bank, a father of three and volunteer soccer coach over the weekends, I rarely get the chance to do so. The other day I nearly fell asleep trying to meditate in the only peaceful place I could find: the men’s toilet at work, at 9 pm. I found myself open mouthed leaning against the partition. If that ‘getaway’ I got for 10 minutes is called a ‘nap’, I could just imagine what bliss, meditation would bring.