meditation Theta band
Zen Meditation
7 Hz beat · 136.1 Hz carrier · 4 phases · 30 min · intermediate
The one programme in the catalogue built on a carrier that comes from astronomy rather than from a musical tradition.
The beat and carrier in the heading are the main phase — the part of the session it was built around. They are not what plays for the whole length. Every programme here opens in the alpha band, wherever it is going afterwards, and most come back up before they finish. The full phase plan is on this page, and it is the honest picture of what you would actually hear.
Hear it
Thirty seconds rendered at the parameters of the phase named above — not an excerpt cut from a finished file, because sessions are built to order and yours does not exist yet. The figures the player draws are computed from the audio or from plate mathematics; none of them is a measurement of your hearing.
What this actually is
Seven hertz sits in the upper theta band, near the alpha boundary. It is slow enough to settle and quick enough to stay perceptible, which is why it recurs in meditation-adjacent material across the category.
Theta runs from four to eight hertz. It is the band most of this catalogue sits in, and the one where the published literature is least thin — the reviewed trials on procedural anxiety cluster here.
The full phase plan
Four phases across thirty minutes on a single carrier — one of only two programmes here where the pitch never changes and the beat does all the moving. Ten hertz settling, then 7.83 for the descent, then seven for a fifteen-minute stillness, then back to ten to finish. That 7.83 is the Schumann value, the resonance of the cavity between the Earth and the ionosphere, and it appears in this catalogue three times as a beat rather than as a carrier.
| Phase | Role | When | Beat | Band | Carrier |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Settling | induction | 0–5 min | 10 Hz | Alpha | 136.1 Hz |
| Deepening | deepening | 5–10 min | 7.83 Hz | Theta | 136.1 Hz |
| Stillness | main | 10–25 min | 7 Hz | Theta | 136.1 Hz |
| Return | emergence | 25–30 min | 10 Hz | Alpha | 136.1 Hz |
Where the 136.1 Hz carrier comes from
Cosmic octave. Calculated by Hans Cousto in 1978 by taking the length of the Earth's orbital year as a period and doubling that frequency up through roughly forty-eight octaves until it lands in hearing range. It is the tone usually tuned to OM.
The arithmetic is checkable and correct — you can redo it with the orbital period and a calculator. What that arithmetic means for a listener is a separate question, and it is not established.
The carrier is the pitch you actually hear. The binaural difference — the part that makes this a structured session rather than a tone — lives between the two channels and is set by the beat, not by the carrier. Choosing one carrier over another is a tonal choice, the way picking a key is a tonal choice. It is not a functional one.
What this does not claim
The name borrows a word from a specific tradition to describe a length and a shape. It is not instruction in that tradition, it comes from no lineage, and it is not endorsed by anyone within one.
Who it is for
An existing sitting practice that you want a timer and a floor for. It will not teach you a practice you do not have.
Nothing here is for sale yet. These are the starting points a session can be built from, published so you can see the whole range before anything is priced.