To Enhance the Connection between Your Mind and Your Body, Try Biofeedback Training

Understanding your individual ability to work at your mind-body connection is a benefit of biofeedback training. For a client, biofeedback sessions are instrumental in learning how to recognize, alter, and control their internal physiological changes. Despite its dififcult appearence, biofeedback training is almost like learning a sport or a musical instrument, say therapists. Also referred to as neurotherapy, this training affords successful behavior modification, which aids in non-pharmacological symptom alleviation.

Biofeedback training is a set of directions that use electronic feedback machines to aid people in controlling physical responses from the inside that almost all persons are unaware of, this is occasionally called neurofeedback training. Controlling one's own blood pressure and heart rate, called biofeedback treatment, has grown in recognition since the late 1960s. Today many physiological responses have been found to be within the power of each patient's control, using the mindset of biofeedback.

Biofeedback training is attained with the assistance of biofeedback therapists who help a patient to learn many different techniques to comprehend and act upon info that is delivered by a device called a biofeedback machine. This feedback data can be used to monitor changes that occur through applying biofeedback techniques as well as to gain control over the autonomic functions of the body, such as heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, circulation and perspiration.

Often, the intended results can be brought about by combining this kind of training with other measures. For those presently reliant on pills and medications to help control their chronic pain, biofeedback therapy is especially attractive, as it offers a non-pharmacological approach to control their chronic pain.

This specific training is also commonly used with patients who are either incontinent or constipated. Neurotherapy has shown success when used to treat stress, migrains, tension, and high blood pressure as well as other health concerns. Biofeedback is reported to help athletes in their recovery from injuries as well as aid in a quicker recovery from a wide variety of surgical procedures.

One of the main reasons there is such an attraction to the idea of a biofeedback program is that it gives someone another option besides a pharmacological approach to addressing different symptoms of disease and illness. This means that drug side-effects and interactions no longer impede treatment of many different health problems. One flexible alternative for patients is biofeedback therapy, which can be custom tailored to each individual's needs as well as specific psycho-physiological profiles.

Another reason biofeedback is gaining ground is because many people appreciate it's non-invasive and pain-free techniques. There is this therapy called neurofeedback which helps the person's body know what is the state it is in that can boost the functions of the nervous system for it to adapt to certain changes that is happening around the body both externally and internally. This can create positive changes in the long run, as well as increasing awareness and self-empowerment to control health and lifestyles.

A Symphony in the Brain: The Evolution of the New Brain Wave Biofeedback
Amazon Price: $11.20
Used Price: $8.37
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Review (rating: 5):
This is the first book I read about neurofeedback, when it had just come out and I was just going into training as a neurofeedback therapist myself. Now, seven years later, although I've read most of the books out there on neurofeedback, this is still the basic one I recommend to potential clients when they want to know what neurofeedback is, how it works, and how it might help them or their kids get or stay off Prozac, Ritalin, etc. or just have better moods, better focus, better health.

It's written by a journalist, not a scientist, not a therapist. It tells stories of people who successfully used neurofeedback to help them with brain damage, ADD, mood disorders, drug abuse, etc. It tells the story of the author himself getting neurofeedback therapy. It tells the history of neurofeedback and discusses why neurofeedback has had such a hard time getting accepted by the medical establishment. There is definitely a "Wow!" element to the book: "Can you believe this therapy works this well?", which is partly there because it enhances the story and partly because neurofeedback really does very frequently lead to amazing results. I find the stories interesting and the book compelling, well-written, and easy to read.

The book is not meant to be either an objective review of research or a technical manual for how to do neurofeedback. People wanting those will be frustrated by this book. Even if it had focused on technical aspects, the material would be out of date by now. Other books, web sites, and journal articles have these (and, yes, there is by now lots of research showing the clinical effectiveness of neurofeedback).

But for people wanting to understand whether neurofeedback might be useful for themselves or their kids, and what they might experience if they do neurofeedback therapy, I recommend this book highly.

Elizabeth Walker, Ph.D. www.seattleneurofeedback.com

Getting Started with Neurofeedback
Amazon Price: $25.35
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Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Review (rating: 5):
I've bought a biofeedback systems and this book helped me a lot it's clear and easy to read! Thank you Demos!
Giovanni Vota
Love & Gratitude :-)
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The Healing Power of Neurofeedback: The Revolutionary LENS Technique for Rest...
Amazon Price: $13.57
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Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Review (rating: 3):
Stephen Larsen, Psychology Professor Emeritus at SUNY, chronicles the development of neurofeedback - an electronic feedback of brainwave frequencies that elicits amazing healing responses in people with post- concussion syndromes, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorders, ADHD and more. Larsen focuses largely on the methods developed by Len Ochs, PhD, an innovative explorer in these realms.
The earlier approach of EEG biofeedback entrained the brain rhythms for alpha or theta frequencies, producing relaxation and enhancing meditative states. Ochs discovered that by feeding back to the brain the frequencies that the individual was producing at the moment produced much more rapid and profoundly effective results.
People with brain injuries who suffered chronic headaches, confusional states, emotional lability and instability and people who had long-standing psychological problems that had resisted conventional and unconventional therapies could respond very rapidly to this treatment. The amazing thing is that the feedback stimuli required to produce these changes are very delicate and brief, yet extremely potent. Initially Ochs used stimulation with flashing lights, but he serendipitously discovered that radio frequencies could produce the same changes more gently.
Ochs wisely does not promote neurofeedback as a cure-all, and often recommends this in combination with supportive and explorative psychotherapy, acupuncture and other therapies to help people process the emotional materials that are released by the neurofeedback.
This is an exciting new field that promises to help many people who otherwise are beyond helping within conventional medical care. Larsen's style is both informative and engaging, detailing both the excitement of scientific explorations at the leading edge of treatments for difficult problems, and providing heartwarming stories of dramatic successes in a broad spectrum of people with serious disabilities.