Neurofeedback Training
Neurofeedback Training is an exciting natural healing modality that offers an alternative to medication and other, perhaps less-successful interventions. It is a natural healing modality that promotes renormalization of central nervous system functioning -and has been shown to significantly help with:
- Attention and concentration (including ADHD)
- Anxiety and repetitive thoughts
- Stress including residuals of past trauma
- Sleep
- Memory
- Mood including depression
- Headaches, chronic pain
- Premenstrual and menopausal symptoms
- Learning inefficiencies and generalized cognitive dysfunction
- Optimal performance
Parents: Neurofeedback can be a natural alternative to medication. It is none-medical and non-invasive with an excellent track record in helping significantly with many problems, including attention, anxiety, learning issues, and mood.
Baby Boomers: You can age gracefully and with your mental faculties intact! Deterioration of mental functioning does not have to be your experience! In fact, neurofeedback can even improve your mental functioning beyond its current level, by helping your brain arrive at its own optimal way.
Athletes and Performers: You can optimize your performance with neurofeedback training!
Meditators and Spiritual Practitioners: Neurofeedback can enhance your “being in the present” and also be used in conjunction with prayer and subtle energy practices.
What is Neurofeedback Training?
Neurofeedback training is a pleasant, relaxing brain training that uses real-time EEG information to enable the brain to return to its own healthy state of functioning. Typically, no matter who we are, we have some inefficiency, instability, or “turbulence” in our central nervous system. When given the proper feedback, our brains can decrease (or cease) less-than-optimal patterns or tendencies and move on to more optimal ones.
Neurofeedback uses real-time EEG data and, in the system I use, gives the brain an auditory signal when it has done something “less efficient.” The brain, being organized to adapt towards health when given the chance to do so, ceases that activity and moves its attention into the present moment. With repeated training, the old patterns have less pull or “attraction” and the brain’s functioning is more efficient, stable, resilient, and flexible. With greater efficiency, stability, resiliency, and flexibility, the person experiences much improved functioning in daily living.
Who can benefit from Neurofeedback Training?
Anyone and everyone can benefit from neurofeedback training, because we can all do with improved brain functioning! I do neurofeedback with children and adults.
Neurofeedback has been demonstrated to be helpful for:
- Attention and concentration
- Memory
- Mood problems, depression
- Excessive worrying, repetitive thoughts
- Sleep problems
- Premenstrual and menopausal symptoms
- Ongoing pain
- Excessive anger
- Stress, including residuals of post-traumatic stress
- Chronic fatigue
- And other types of cognitive dysfunction and inefficiences
What is a typical neurofeedback session like?
A neurofeedback session is typically quite pleasant and relaxing. You sit in a comfortable chair, with sensors attached (using conductive paste) to your head and ears. (The sensors on your head pick up the electrical signals from your brain that constitute the EEG information. The sensors on your ears provide the grounding.)
You sit back, relax, and listen to music. If you want, you can watch patterns on the video monitor. Whenever your brain does something “inefficient,” the music is interrupted (for a second) and then resumes. This is the feedback to your brain! The computer program takes your brain through a stretch, warm up, work out, and cool down program, and then you are finished!
Sessions last from 20-40 minutes, depending on how your brain is responding to the training and how long you have been training. Your neurofeedback trainer keeps a log of how you’re doing, what progress is made, and guides the process, but in this neurofeedback program (Neurocare Pro, developed by the Zengar Institute), your brain decides what it is working on in each session (not the trainer.) This makes this type of neurofeedback session quite organic and natural.
Is neurofeedback “therapy”?
Neurofeedback is not therapy! Neurofeedback does not "treat" any condition, disorder, or symptoms. It is a brain training technique. When I do it, I am working as a neurofeedback trainer, not as a therapist.
What about neurofeedback and medication?
Neurofeedback can be done with people taking medication. What usually happens as the brain´s functioning becomes more efficient, it also utilizes medication more efficiently. Sometimes, such as with attention problems for example, it can make sense to try neurofeedback instead of an initial trial of medication.
Do the benefits of neurofeedback last?
Yes, neurofeedback lasts! Because the central nervous system tends towards health when given the proper "environment", once the brain has learned a new way, it continues in the new patterns. Occasionally, perhaps at times of great stress or crisis, a few booster sessions might be indicated, to remind the brain, as it were, of the new way.
Articles, Links, and Recommended Books:
For a wonderful article, written by Jim Robbins (who has also written a terrific book about his experience with neurofeedback, as well as its history, A Symphony in the Brain), go to PsychologyToday.com
Testimonials
“I have done about 30 neurofeedback sessions with Sarah. I started with her because I have ADD and depression, with low self-esteem. I work with computers and have had a lot of trouble concentrating. Shortly after my first five or six training sessions, I suddenly noticed that I was able to concentrate on the computer for hours instead of minutes! In the middle of my training sessions, about half way through, I had the most amazing experience of not being able to call myself a “loser.” Seriously, I started to say the word and actually could not get the rest of it out of my mouth after the “L.” It was incredible! And little by little my mood has seemed to be improving. I still take medication for ADD and for depression, but I am now taking smaller doses. Generally I have more stick-to-it-iveness and get more done. At some point, I’m going to go back for some more training sessions, because it just makes sense to keep improving your brain if you can.”
Andy B., Astoria, New York
“I am seeing Sarah for therapy and she suggested neurofeedback training sessions last year. I have attention problems, a lot of anxiety, low self-esteem, and am a compulsive eater. I had 38 NF sessions with her, and it seems that the whole effects were so organic for me that I wasn’t really consciously aware of what was happening. Sarah said she noticed in our therapy sessions that I was able to focus on a topic of conversation for much longer periods of time (not changing the subject—which I often did without noticing it) and that I have also been much less anxious. I have had a few very difficult family things happen in the past year and looking back on it, I see that I did handle them much better than I would have in the past: Mostly I was just less anxious about them, even when they were quite difficult. (I asked my friends if they saw any changes and they agreed, saying they did see what Sarah was describing.) Also, again while I didn’t notice it myself, I have a different relationship to my eating disorder. I would never call it an eating disorder before, and now I do, without batting an eye, and I also have a different perspective on it—like it seems not such an integral part of me that I have to do, that is, I don’t feel so compulsive about it…I’m still making progress in my therapy but I feel that the neurofeedback really changed things in a deep way, making more change possible on a whole new level.”
Lydia S., Forest Hills, New York