Altered States of Consciousness
Under everyone’s veneer of consciousness is an unexplored world of mental activity. There have been many scientists and psychologist try to explain what consciousness is, however, it isn’t such an easy task. Consciousness is aware of being aware. However, an altered state of consciousness is when there is a temporary change in a person’s mental state without them considered unconscious. They are very different from one another, but both have become new approaches for psychology.
Altered states occur due to an accident or illness, and can be created intentionally. For example, some experiences could be childbirth, sleep deprivation, panic, and daydreaming. Some of these states occur to everyone of us everyday. Dreaming is arguably the state that we experience the most. However, it is unexplainable, and we can never fully understand it. Some may even experience lucid dreaming. This state is when the dreamer is aware that he, or she, is in a dream.
Some even try to alter their own conscious state of mind. It may be because of religion, relaxation, or ways to increase health. People do this by mind control techniques like hypnosis, and meditation. Unfortunately, they may use drugs to achieve these experiences too. Many notions of research
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By connecting a Electroencephalograph (EEG) to a subject, we can measure a person’s brain waves in cycles per second. Some societies from hundred of years ago have known how the achieve greater states in their minds. However, such knowledge was given to very few people. Many of these studies have discovered more than just information on conscious states. Paul Maclean done a research on the brain and discovered that many people in western society are trapped in the left side of their brain. Many types of illnesses result due to lack of communication with the right side