Awakening the Mind: A Guide to Harnessing the Power of Your Brainwaves [Paperback]

Anna Wise (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 14, 2002

Each moment of our lives, from birth to death, our brains are engaged in an endless symphony of patterns. In Awakening the Mind, Anna Wise reveals how a careful understanding of the four types of brain waves, and the practice of carefully designed meditation exercises that lead to a mastery of each type, can vastly improve everyday focus, memory, concentration, and overall mental awareness.

Over the past three decades, Wise has measured the brain-wave patterns of spiritual teachers, artists, high-performing businessmen, athletes, and other highly creative and productive individuals. She discovered that, during periods of peak mental awareness and clarity, they all exhibited a specific brain-wave pattern in which the four categories of brain waves-alpha, beta, theta, and delta-combined in a distinct configuration. In this book, Wise provides meditation exercises specially developed to lead readers to achieve that heightened mental state referred to as the Awakened Mind.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Like Wise's more technical The High-Performance Mind: Mastering Brainwaves for Insight, Healing, and Creativity, this work aims to help readers improve their mental powers by optimizing brain-wave patterns. A meditation and brain-wave development teacher, Wise writes lucidly about the four types of brain-wave patterns, or EEGs, giving readers "subjective landmarks" to help them gauge their own patterns without an EEG biofeedback machine. Expanding on the work of C. Maxwell Cade, who developed the biofeedback machine, she offers an analysis of the brain waves of successful people including Chi Kung masters, healers, artists, and CEOs that helps bring scientific measurement and clarity to the subjective processes of creativity and enlightenment. Unfortunately, her overuse of such corporate trainer jargon as mastery and power can become tedious. And though this work is more accessible than her previous title, it doesn't really offer anything new. It is an adequate addition to self-help collections, particularly those lacking her first book, but Jim Robbins's A Symphony of the Brain: The Evolution of the New Brain Wave Biofeedback offers more historical background and clinical application of EEG biofeedback. Annette Haines, Univ. of Michigan Lib., Ann Arbor
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Anna Wise, author of The High-Performance Mind, has taught meditation and brain-wave development for three decades. She leads workshops, seminars, and corporate-training programs worldwide. In 1988, she founded The Anna Wise Center in Larkspur, California.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Tarcher (March 14, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1585421456
• ISBN-13: 978-1585421459
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #273,031 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent start..., March 28, 2002

By 

Yuri Kuzyk (Toronto, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Awakening the Mind: A Guide to Harnessing the Power of Your Brainwaves (Paperback)

Well, Anna Wise has basically taken her previous book "The High Performance Mind", polished all the rough spots, added some more information and, thankfully, come up with a relatively good title. This book uses the previous as its core and adds a number of additional meditations, more examples and references to other disciplines.

She has removed some of the material found in the previous book, notably the graphs about brainwaves which, although they are a bit useful from a theoretical point of view, are mostly useless to those who don't own an EEG. In their place are a lot more guided meditations and many more personal stories. In particular, I think the addition of the anecdotes rather good since they help show that there are many possible paths besides just EEG; this should be obvious since many of the other disciplines (Zen and Taoism/Qigong for instance) have been around for a very long time.

This is a great advancement in the continuing quest to start to reconcile the differences between Western medicine/scientific method and Eastern disciplines. Wise notes that some Qigong masters she monitored during healing exhibited Delta brainwaves in excess of 50 times a "normal" person; she takes this as further evidence of great movements of energy since this could not likely be produced by the brain alone. Wow, well, this is what the Qigong masters have been saying for thousands of years!

The only weak points of the book concern holistic views. That is, Wise focuses on the brainwaves only when no solution is going to come only from work in one area. That is, meditation based on a diet of softdrinks, chips and other junk is probably not going to help you that much; you need a holistic view and methodology. Of course, this has been preached by many Eastern traditions for quite a while and I think Wise probably should have commented on this aspect.

Anyway, despite a couple of weak points this is an excellent place to start for anyone starting to work on his/her lifestyle. Check out the old classics "Mindfulness in Plain English", "Zen Training" and perhaps "Scholar Warrior" and start on the road to centering yourself.

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Practical tipsto explore the higher reaches of consciousness, March 16, 2002

By 

Robert Kall "Rob Kall of Opednews.com" (Newtown, PA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Awakening the Mind: A Guide to Harnessing the Power of Your Brainwaves (Paperback)

This is a wonderfully practical book on how to explore the further reaches of human consciousness and potential. Anna offers us a gift of practical tips, techniques and strategies on how to, with or without EEG / brainwave biofeedback, tap the strengths and resources and find the highest aspects of our selves.

Her decades of experience as a master teacher, and her serious commitment to pursuit of training from her own teachers has enabled her to write a clear, easily followed book that makes it so much easier to find what so many people used to go to the Himalayas to seek-- inner wisdom, peace, higher consciousness.

After thirty years in this field myself, I don't recall any other book that has done such a good job of providing the exercises and techniques you can use to "Get there."

As a speaker at my Futurehealth Winter Brain Meeting, Anna has always been a favorite among the cognoscenti-- the people who are experts themselves. Her heartful insights and wisdom shine through in this book.
You might also want to try out her book High Performance Mind, or her CD set which she did with Andrew Wile, on Meditation.

38 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Guide for Exploring States of Consciousness, April 8, 2002

By 

Patricia Ellsberg (Berkeley, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Awakening the Mind: A Guide to Harnessing the Power of Your Brainwaves (Paperback)

Anna Wise's book is a treasure. I have been a student of meditation and transpersonal psychology for over 30 years. I have experienced many workshops, teachers, meditation retreats, and also have read innumerable books on spiritual subjects. "Awakening the Mind" is one of the best guide books I have ever found for gaining mastery over states of consciousness.

It suggests many effective techniques for taming the "monkey mind" and deepening meditation. It shows ways to access healing energy, personal insight, and greater creativity. It is filled with meditations that help one lead a richer every day life.

At the same time, it is much more than a "how to" book. "Awakening the Mind" also provides many guided meditations that are poetic and revelatory. When practiced with care, they can lead to profoundly meaningful and transcendent experiences.

For several years I have had the privilege of studying with Anna Wise in person, participating in her workshops, working with her individually, and training to do her work using biofeedback to help gain mastery of states of consciousness. I have also used Anna Wise's excellent set of CD's, entitled "High Performance Mind", along with her previous book of the same title. I cannot begin to express how much my life has been enriched by this work and by knowing her.

I highly recommend "Awakening the Mind" and the CD set to anyone interested in exploring the further reaches of consciousness and in awakening to their full potential.