The High-Performance Mind: Mastering Brainwaves for Insight, Healing, and Creativity

by Anna Wise

Book Overview

"Her purpose here is to discuss and illustrate the four types of brain waves--beta, alpha, theta, and delta--with emphasis on what they do, how they work together, and whether we can use their power."--Booklist.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0874778506
• ISBN13: 9780874778502
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 9.1"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Don't be put off by the title...

I'm not sure why Anna Wise gave this book its rather inappropriate title but it is very misleading. The books sounds like some sort of low-grade improvement guide meant for high-power executives searching for ways to increase their ability to outwit dumb consumers and investors; nothing could be further from the truth.There was a lot of interest in biofeedback in the 1960's and then interest turned to more "scientific" endeavors such as genetics; we're only just beginning to realize our folly. Luckily a few researchers continued what was begun and their hard work and determination can now be seen to have a lot of value.Wise owes a lot of her background to her mentor, Max Cade, and some rather personal problems she outlines in the book. She combines experience and theory from Eastern meditation with EEG biofeedback work, something Pelletier and others have alluded to for a while. However, Wise really puts a lot of valuable tips and information together and that is the beauty of this book.The book outlines some basic information about brainwaves and then gets into a great overview of some typical patterns and their apparent link to various personal states. Of course there is no purely theoretical link between what EEG measures and what is happening in your head but there can be no doubt that there is a connection. And this book details some of the important connections.There is an excellent overview of meditative "states" and their subjective "landmarks". Wise offers some great insight for people who are starting on the path to meditation and are getting stuck at certain points. This material has been available through other sources, notably from the Zen tradition, but these days it can be difficult to make sense of the multitude of books and so-called "masters". Wise's suggestions are straight-forward, simple and clear which is great.There are guided meditations, again taken from EEG studies, that allow anyone to make his/her own tapes. The visualization exercises have been used successfully in beta-theta biofeedback studies and anyone who has participated in Qigong or Zen will recognize many common elements. But the best part of this book is the clarity and the way information is presented in a manner better suited to those of us from the scientific framework.That's the funny thing, the information has been available for thousands of years but science is only just beginning to acknowledge it. In the book's final pages Wise details her own struggles with healing blindness and Kundalini rising; something that most Western readers would scoff at without the preceeding pages "explaining" the link to something we can relate to.Definitely worth buying and, more importantly, using.

Awaken Your Mind

This is a book about biofeedback, but from a different perspective. Just about every other book ever published on biofeedback has a clinical, reductionist medical approach (except for Elmer Green''s books, Beyond Biofeedback and Ozawkie Book of The Dead.) Anna Wise, a regular trainer at Esalen, takes a more holistic approach based on her 25+ years of experience observing the brain wave patterns of people with awakened mind-- yogis, top executives, artists, etc. Rather than talking about treating illness, she talks about optimizing brain function and mental states, about enhancing the contents and quality of consciousness. She discusses how she uses the Mind Mirror, a technology originally developed by her Mentor Max Cade and engineer Geoff Blundell, to assess how our brains are operating and then, she devises strategies to get our brains working more like a person with an awakened mind. She offers exercises and a strategies which help you learn to put your brain in better places. If you want to see the whole picture of the biofeedback world, Anna is definitely not a part of the medical pathology mainstream and that's the way she likes it. When she is a speaker at the EEG biofeedback conference I run, she speaks a different language, which addresses spirit and the whole person. There have been some academic researchers who were really turned off by her, at first. But after discussing her approach, in detail and not just reacting to her "soft" approach to brain technology, many have turned around, and found common ground with her. Jim Robbins book, Symphony in the brain, is a good history of the more recent developments in higher frequency brain biofeedback, mostly focused on treatment. Evan's and Abarbanel's Quantitative EEG and EEG Biofeedback is a strictly professional text, with about 15 contributed chapters. Anna Wise's contribution to the writing on brain biofeedback provides a very nice feminine ying to the masculine yang that has predominated in the field.

Very clear and useful

Anna Wise gives clear guidance on how to gain meaningful control over brain wave states. Her techniques work. I highly recommend that you buy the accompanying cassettes - worth the extra outlay as the two compliment each other and aid quicker learning. Wise is regarded as an expert in her field and has helped design healing tapes for Andrew Weil and others. The tone is clear, insightful, and accomplished. Relatively jargon free and able to make sense of brainwave states -beta, alpha, theta and delta in the context of the type of human experiences they are associated with. In that sense it is where EEG science of the brain meets the human. Highly reccommended.

EXCELLENT WORK BY A PROFESSIONAL

The author has a very good experience with the "esoteric and philosophical" biofeedback, as developed by the late C. Maxwell Cade and Geoffrey Blundell (England). The original method and way of using biofeedback machines in the ascension of self consciousness and higher states of mind is very well adapted by the author to the need of modern man for accuracy, dependability and clarity. If you like to learn in a professional way what is really behind the brainwaves, "alpha training" etc..., this book is highly recommended.I work as a hypnotherapist and studied with Max Cade in England 20 years ago during 6 years (only a few years after Anna Wise did). I assisted in the Dutch translation of "The Awakened Mind" by Cade and Coxhead. The reading of "The High Performance Mind" was a welcome refreshment to the old knowledge of 20 years ago. Many thanks for the effort and clarity

A great book for self-explorers

This is a great book for anyone who wants to master his/her brain power in any situation of everyday life. It is so clear about how our brain works, explaining about beta states, alpha, theta and delta. It becomes so clear. Anna Wise gives you exercises to master your brainwaves, to boost your creativity, to heal, to concentrate, to get the best out of yourself and it is easy if you follow what she says and if you give some daily time to them. I practice meditation, visualisation since some time and this book is really simple and clear to apply. It is not about spirituality only it is a scientific point of view from someone who applicates what she explains. She gives tips I had never read in any book before. She gives you the key to be what you've always been without knowing it, to become an awakened mind as anybody should be.