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Biofeedback is a safe and effective tool that you can learn to use to gain awareness of and control over certain areas of your body's functioning, such as your heartbeat or muscle activity. It is completely non-invasive and does not involve the use of drugs or medication.
About Biofeedback
Biofeedback has been used for the treatment of headaches and other stress-related conditions since the 1970s. Since that time, a solid body of research has been accumulated on numerous different modalities (types) of biofeedback, the various protocols (methods) used, and their effectiveness for treating different types of health conditions. Biofeedback has been repeatedly shown in research and clinical practice to be a most effective tool for reducing overall stress levels.
While it would of course be possible to purchase one of the many cheap biofeedback machines that are commercially available or to download a smartphone biofeedback app, bear in mind that professional quality machines can be expensive for the home user to buy, and you would of course lack having a trainer to guide you.
An initial consultation including a thorough case inventory is taken first to establish the client's current state of health, lifestyle, and what he/she wishes to address with biofeedback. Rather than deliver biofeedback in isolation, I recommend a life stress reduction programme is also followed in order to address the specific stressors in the client's life. Information from the initial consultation would be used to create an individually tailored programme consisting of both biofeedback and the life stress reduction programme. A client's programme may also consist of simple "homeworks" to do between consultation sessions.
The type of biofeedback used during the training would depend upon what would be most appropriate to the client's case.
Some Types of Biofeedback
Heart Rate Variability (HRV) Training
Contrary to popular belief, a person’s heart rate does not beat like a perfect metronome. In a normal individual at rest, there is a surprising amount of beat to beat and moment to moment variation. In periods of extreme stress or heavy physical activity, the heartbeat becomes not only faster but more rhythmically regular. In people who are in poor physical condition, the range of cardiovascular adaptability can be compromised.
HRV training enables the person to train their heart rate oscillations back to a more healthy state. These oscillations reflect the interplay between the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the autonomic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system can be thought of as the accelerator, which causes the heartbeat to increase. The parasympathetic nervous system can be thought of as the brake. This pattern is known as respiratory sinus arrhythmia. Medicine has long known that the heart rate increases with each inhalation and decreases with each exhalation. HRV training therefore uses paced breathing in order to achieve greater heart rate variability.
Skin Conductance Biofeedback
Skin conductance biofeedback, also known as electrodermal activity or galvanic skin response training, uses sensors to measure the electrical properties of the skin. Skin conductance has been demonstrated to indicate levels of stress, arousal and emotional state. By teaching the person to become aware of the body states that accompany stress and high arousal, they can learn to reduce stress by identifying the internal changes associated with skin conductance changes.
Skin conductance monitoring is also a vital tool for measuring the moment-to-moment emotional reactivity during therapy, such as life stress reduction counselling or traumatic incident reduction technique. This assists the facilitator (counsellor) in identifying which specific areas are "hot" (emotionally charged) for the viewer (client) and handling accordingly.
Surface Electromyography (sEMG)
Electromyography is a term used to describe the recording of the electrical activity from the muscles. Surface electromyography records this activity by using sensors attached to the surface of the skin.
Stress can cause a person to brace or tense up muscles and not necessarily be aware of the fact that they are doing so. This tension can lead to pain and discomfort in the muscles as well as tension headaches. The client can use this feedback to overcome muscle tension in the afflicted area(s).
Seeking Medical Advice
I am not a medical doctor and do not diagnose or treat medical conditions. Biofeedback is not a substitute for necessary medical advice and intervention.
If you are taking any medication, are receiving any other kind of medical treatment, or have had medical problems of a serious nature in the past, you are advised to seek the advice of your doctor first before embarking upon a course of biofeedback training.
There are other techniques that may be more beneficial to a very weak or incapacitated individual, and which are designed specifically for getting ill or injured persons back in communication with their body and environment, and thereby assisting the healing process. Always check with your doctor first.
Counselling
Traumatic Incident Reduction Technique (TIR)
Compared to traditional therapy, TIR is a rapid and highly effective method of reducing traumatic stress from emotionally and/or physically painful events in a person's past. It involves re-examining past traumas in a completely safe environment, free of distractions, judgments, or interpretations.
When something happens to us that is physically or emotionally painful, we have the option of either (1) confronting it fully and feeling the pain, or (2) trying in some way to block our awareness of it. In the first case, the action of experiencing (perceiving and understanding) what has occurred is allowed to go to completion and the incident becomes a past incident. However, in the second case, the action of experiencing that incident is blocked. That is, we repress the incident, and the incident (together with the intention not to experience it and any other intentions and activities present in the incident), continues to exist as ongoing unfinished business. Such traumatic incidents may continue to exert negative effects. Such incidents carry charge, defined as "repressed, unfulfilled intention".
This blocking activity is a self-protective impulse. It "works" to a certain extent, but it can cause us to have attention and awareness tied up in incidents from the past. This has a dulling effect on our ability to perceive, to respond intelligently in the present, and to enjoy our current environment. Unexamined, unresolved past events tie up our energy and intention.
Traumatic Incident Reduction provides a safe space and the means to fully examine material which had been blocked. A past incident loses its ability to hurt us at the point where we have looked it through and through. In the process, we release our resistance and the painful emotion and negative thought patterns contained in that past trauma. At the point where the incident has been fully viewed, we feel our attention become un-stuck from it and often have some realization. This is called an end point.
The idea that present difficulties may be caused by past traumatic incidents is not a new one, but the recognition of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as a major difficulty for many returning military veterans gave it a higher profile. Once the phenomenon was clearly recognised, PTSD was easily identifiable among other populations, such as rape survivors and victims of natural disasters. People with PTSD are severely incapacitated by ongoing, uncontrolled remembrances of their traumas. In effect, they are continually reliving these incidents.
Although survivors of all kinds of traumas with PTSD and flashbacks offer perhaps the most dramatic example of living in the past, the phenomenon is quite common to people in general. In normal life, most people can be triggered into momentary or prolonged reliving of past traumas of varying degrees of severity, with attendant negative feelings and behaviour. TIR is a technique designed to examine the cognitive, emotional, perceptual, or other content of past incidents, to reduce or eliminate emotional charge contained in them, and thus to relieve the person of their negative consequences, whether or not a diagnosis of PTSD applies to this person.
In the great majority of cases, TIR correctly applied results in the complete and permanent elimination of PTSD symptomatology. It also provides valuable insights, which the viewer (or client) arrives at quite spontaneously, without any prompting from the facilitator (practitioner) and hence can "own" entirely as his/her own. By providing a means for completely confronting a painful incident, TIR can and does deliver relief from the negative effects, enabling the person to move on. The resolution of past traumatic incidents can bring about a greatly improved quality of life. Because of this, Traumatic Incident Reduction is often included in a Life Stress Reduction Program.
Contact Gwyneth today for more information or to book your appointment
Service Categories
Bio Feedback, Counselling, Life Coaching, Psychotherapy
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