Titl Faces of Neurofeedback" [music] I will never forget, eleven minutes and fifty three seconds into that first session, his left hand opened like a flower. He called me the next day and said I slept seven hours and woke up without pain. I mean you know I used to do therapy and talk to people and listen to what they had to say and I recently for example worked with a gal that was bipolar. And she did I think about forty sessions, forty or fifty sessions without any medication and she got really calm, really even. If I had just been doing talk therapy, I think we’d still be talking. This whole arousal that would happen, she would just be so uptight with the pain and the discomfort and her whole over arousal state. And she would just settle down and she would be better. He told me about Neurofeedback, and I said yeah right. Headaches go away, uh huh. Seizures, sure. You know I’ve been a nurse forever, you can’t tell me that that works So, he came back a month later and brought the big computers and the whole Neurocybernetics box everything. And, we hooked up a few people over the next few days and I was blown away I quit my job the next week and flew to Encino to take the class, and haven’t looked back since. Getting into Neurofeedback is sort of a continuing education [laugh] requirement because now all of a sudden when you’re doing Neurofeedback you have reason to be interested in how the brain works. And this is a good time because there’s a tremendous amount of information out there about brain function. So people typically come into the class as some sort of therapist. Don’t know a lot about Neuropsychology, Neurophysiology, but get interested and then the ready becomes, ya know starts and all that information can be added as people go. I was overwhelmed with the information. But Sue and Siegfried presented themselves in a way that I really decided to stay with it. Even, I just decided this was a different language. I was in a strange land with people all speaking a language I didn’t know. You cannot image how much courage it took for me to do this. I am not a computer thrilled individual. I have lots of computers and I use them all day, but that wasn’t my thrust Neurofeedbacks such an interesting discipline because it spans the two chairs. There is some technology, one has to be able to handle a computer but it’s, it’s not hard. And more importantly is the human element. It’s really about working with people and helping people transform their lives. And where we’ve tried to go with the instrumentation is to make it very easy so as not to be too intimidating. We have quite intentionally tried to attract a wide variety of different professionals to this work. Each individual, each profession, brings its own take. It’s a different tool in different people’s hands. I got drawn into taking a look at Neurofeedback as perhaps a way to work with attention disorders and learning disabilities and cogni- traumatic brain injury. I was astounded when I got to my first training for Neurofeedback and discovered that it was also being used for anxiety and depression and eating disorders and you name it, whatever would walk through the door of a, of a clinical office I’ve treated the body for 12 years, the physical body, and really would get to a certain point with a lot of patients that no matter what I did to their physical body they just weren’t making any progress and the missing link was treating their mind. And that, in knowing that that actually was the foundation, I mean once we treated the mind, you know these other things would, would fall into place. Especially chronic pain, fibromyalgia, restless leg. I mean there’s just a lot of diagnoses that there’s that underlying, irritable reactive nervous system. If we treated that first, but you know all these other things I was doing, I don’t even know if I need to do them [laugh] I don’t really do talk therapy during the session because we’re trying to find, what I would call, the right idling frequency for this particular brain that allows it to feel calm and comfortable and collected and think clearly and relax well And if you’re talking about emotionally intense issues, you’ll never get there during the session. So it’s a real change of pace. Because what you do is you’re talking to the patient about very specific symptoms. Sleep, mood, very specifics of how they’re acting and behaving, managing their temper outside the office. That kind of thing. But you don’t go for the story of it, you go for the existence or non-existence, for that problem. Is it more intense? Is it less intense? Did it last longer? Did it get shut off sooner? The way I incorporate Neurofeedback into my practice as a Speech Pathologist is what I will do is, bring the student in or the child and I will give them about 10, a 10 or 15 minute session. It’s priming the pump, so to speak. The children are able to do the exercises with much more ease. I’ve had parents who have said “You know, I think my child's addicted to this.” And I said "well I don’t think you can do that, but why do you think that?” “Well, he really likes to come and do it and he asks when are we going to go do it again?” And of course when mom was there I interviewed him and his response was, “I like how it makes me feel. I feel relaxed. And I feel like I can focus.” With EEG, if I’m dealing with someone let’s say who has auditory processing issues. You can use lots of different educational products to do that, tutorials. And then you can bring on Neurotherapy. And then you can get the job done. And, together they’re incredibly powerful. I work primarily with children with different types of Neurologic injury, ranging from brain injury, brain tumors, fetal alcohol exposure, other toxic exposures. And have found it extremely useful in contrast using medications in reducing symptoms and improving their functional capacity. It’s such a privilege to do this sort of work and to have the influence that we have, the impact on people’s lives. And what I love particularly is the particular relationship that we have with our clients. It’s more of a coach than as a therapist or a doctor. We’re not fixing people we’re empowering people to become themselves and to function better in the world and that’s just a beautiful thing to do and to see. I love moms' reactions. I just love what moms will come in and say. You know, I’ll have run their child and they will come back the next day and almost on the verge of tears that they’re so excited cause they’ll say, “ You know, after we left here, things didn’t go well for the rest of the evening which normally would send my child into a temper tantrum and they just flowed.” It’s a wonderful position to be in to treat people. And it’s a wonderful position to be in to keep learning about the brain and what things we can do and I think we’re learning more all the time so, that makes it very, very rewarding and exciting for me. [nods] We really are meeting the goals of Psychotherapy faster, easier, swifter and better. I love it. I can’t imagine life without it. [music] Real Peole. Real Stories Real Success Incorporate Neurofeedback Into your practice. contact U ww.EEGinfo.com Europ ww.EEGinfo.ch