If you think about deep meditation, chances are that your mind conjures up a picture of a Zen monk sitting cross legged and contemplating the universe. Which is definitely one way to experience a deep meditative state. But for us mere mortals, who haven't got a life time to spend just meditating, is there another way?

Sure, you could practice for years and years. But, fortunately, there are other deep meditation techniques that don't take what seems like forever to achieve their results.

Modern technology makes it a fairly easy task to see what patterns are being produced in the brains of people who are meditating deeply.

Modern technology also allows us to find new ways to coax our brains into this same state but without all the years of practice involved in more traditional methods.

The best way that we've found to date is a method called brainwave entrainment. This involves different "beats" being played, usually masked by the sound of rainfall or other natural sounds. These beats encourage our brain to naturally slip into the same state of deep meditation as that experience by Zen monks and other life-long meditators.

The technology behind this has been shown to induce the same deep meditation state that it would otherwise take decades to achieve. The good news is that us mere mortals can do this simply by listening to a specially prepared MP3 or CD. With no other effort whatsoever.

Of course, you need to be careful that the track you are listening to has been professionally produced - this is one area where you definitely don't want to just be downloading a track from a random stranger - but other than that, there's nothing complicated involved.