Recently, I discovered some amazing evidence about why Power of Eight® groups create a transcendent state.

It all has to do with entrainment.

Entrainment is a term in physics which means that two oscillating systems fall into synchrony. It was coined in 1665 by the Dutch mathematician Christiaan Huygens, after discovering that two of his clocks with pendulums standing in close approximation to each other had begun to swing in unison.

He’d been playing around with the two pendulums and found that even if he started one pendulum swinging at one end, and the other at the opposite end, eventually the two would swing in unison.

Two waves peaking and troughing at the same time, are considered ‘in phase,’ or operating in synch. Those peaking at opposite times are ‘out of phase.’ Physicists believe that entrainment results from tiny exchanges of energy between two systems that are out of phase, causing one to slow down and the other to accelerate until the two are in phase.

It’s also related to resonance, or the ability of any system to absorb more energy than normal at a particular frequency (the number of peaks and troughs in one second).

Any vibrating thing, including an electromagnetic wave, has its own preferential frequencies, called ‘resonant frequencies,’ where it finds vibrating the easiest. When it ‘listens’ or receives a vibration from somewhere else, it tunes out all pretenders and only tunes into its own resonant frequency.

It’s a bit like a mother instantly recognizing her child from among a mass of school children.

Once they march to the same rhythm, things that are entrained send out a stronger signal than they do individually. This most commonly occurs with musical instruments, which sound amplified when all playing in phase.

Since the early 1960s, consciousness researchers have explored studies showing that under many types of circumstances, the electrical signaling in the brains of people gets synchronized.

The frequencies, amplitudes and phases of the brain waves start operating in tandem.

This is definitely the case with intention, where studies show that the brain waves (and other bodily functions like heart rate and breathing) start mirroring those of the sender.

In a number of studies of healing, the EEG waves of the patient have synchronized with those of the healer during moments when healing energy is being ‘sent’. Brain mapping during certain types of healing also shows evidence of brain-wave synchrony.

Dr Andrew Newberg, a neuroscientist formerly at the University of Pennsylvania and now the director of research at the Marcus Institute of Integrative Health in Philadelphia, took this one stage further.

After studying prayer groups with MRI and PET scans, he discovered that this kind of brainwave entrainment (and its neuropathway signature of a transcendent state) amplifies in a group of people in a mystical state.  If the group is praying and another joins them, he will enter that state more quickly than he may have done alone.

And as I’ve seen in my own brainwave studies, when a group does intention together, the brain waves involved in our feelings of separation and also negativity get dialed way down.

And a group’s intention becomes contagious, quickly elevating everyone involved to a higher state of consciousness

When we send intention, in a manner of speaking, we ‘become’ the other. And in a group, we lose our individuality and enter a state of blissful oneness – the state where true healing happens.