In the 1983 Army report on the Gateway Process, Focus 10 is named only once, on page 20, as the state a participant has reached before moving on to Focus 12. The report does describe the steps that lead there, on page 19: the energy conversion box, resonant tuning, the Gateway affirmation, the first Hemi-Sync frequencies, deep relaxation and the energy balloon. A Monroe Institute bulletin in the same CIA collection labels Focus 10 as a state where the mind stays awake while the body sleeps.
Where Focus 10 appears in the report
The steps the report lists
How the Monroe Institute labeled it
Focus 10 compared with Focus 12
Where to read it
What the documents say, and what people claim
Where Focus 10 appears in the report
Paragraph 30 of the report, "Advanced Techniques," opens on page 20: "Having reached Focus 10, the participant is now ready to endeavor to achieve a state of sufficiently expanded awareness." That expanded state is Focus 12. Focus 10 itself gets no definition of its own in the Army text.
What the report gives instead is the sequence of exercises that come before it, in paragraphs 28 and 29 on page 19. Read together, they are the closest thing the report has to a description of Focus 10.
The steps the report lists
First, the participant learns to set worries aside in "a visualization device called an 'energy conversion box.'" Next comes resonant tuning: "a monotonous, protracted humming sound that sets up a feeling of vibration particularly in the head," hummed along with a chorus on the tape.
Then the Gateway affirmation, which the report paraphrases as a statement that the person "is more than merely a physical body" and wants to expand their consciousness. Only then is the participant "exposed for the first time to the Hemi-Sync sound frequencies."
Progressive physical relaxation follows, with added "pink and white" noise meant to put the body at the threshold of sleep while calming the left hemisphere and alerting the right. Last is the energy balloon: an imagined flow "beginning at the center of the top of the head and extending down in all directions to the feet," then back up through the body. The report says it also serves a protective purpose. More on these exercises: the Gateway tools.
How the Monroe Institute labeled it
The same CIA collection holds a two-page Monroe Institute bulletin, number GW22280, record CIA-RDP96-00788R001700210048-0. It lists the program's goals as Focus 3 (basic Hemi-Sync), Focus 10, Focus 12, Focus 15 and Focus 21, with a short label for each. For Focus 10 the label describes a mind that stays awake while the body is asleep. This is the Institute's wording, not the Army's.
The bulletin is Monroe Institute material, so it is described here rather than reproduced. It also says the program grew out of more than 3,000 test exercises with 1,932 participants over ten years, and that Robert Monroe received a patent for the method in 1975. These are the Institute's own claims.
Focus 10 compared with Focus 12
In the report, Focus 10 is the threshold and Focus 12 is where the work happens. Problem solving, patterning, color breathing, the energy bar tool and the rest are all done "at the level of expanded awareness known as Focus 12" (page 22). Nothing in the report assigns a task to Focus 10 beyond reaching it.
The documents: the Army report names Focus 10 once and describes the exercises that precede it. A Monroe Institute bulletin labels it as the body asleep with the mind awake. Neither document reports measurements of anyone in Focus 10.
The claims: that Focus 10 is a verified brain state, that it has a fixed frequency, or that the government confirmed it. The report is one officer's analysis, built on the Institute's own descriptions and Itzhak Bentov's models. It proposes experiments; it does not report results.
Last updated November 4, 2026.
READ THE DOCUMENTS OFFLINE, IN LUCID DREAM TRAINING & JOURNAL
Lucid Dream Training & Journal includes an original field manual on reaching Focus 10, and its Focus 10 session audio uses a 4 Hz beat differential.
The Gateway Process, answered: Page 25, Focus 10 to 21, the frequencies, click-out, who wrote the 1983 Army report and whether it works: short answers with page numbers and CIA record IDs.
What is Focus 12 in the Gateway Process?: The 1983 Army report calls Focus 12 a state of expanded awareness and lists six techniques used in it (pages 20 to 21). What it says, and what it does not.
What frequency does the Gateway Process use?: The 1983 Army report never lists Hemi-Sync frequencies by Focus level. Every number it does give, with page references, and what beat frequency means.