Biofeedback

Biofeed back is a technique where you are taught how to bring your body into a more optimal, relaxed state so that you can reduce stress and anxiety as well as help manage health problems like depression, migraine headaches, epilepsy, autism, ADHD or stroke.

Has anyone tried this?

Related Article:
By Tracy Hughes - Salmon Arm Observer - February 29, 2012

Joan Von Niessen is a coach, but she doesn’t work with bats, balls, hockey pucks or skates.

Instead she is armed with sensors that can record brain activity and a range of programs tailored to the issues her clients wish to address.

Von Niessen has recently opened a new business in Salmon Arm, called Shuswap Biofeedback, which is a treatment technique in which people are trained to improve their health by using signals from their own bodies.

http://www.saobserver.net/business/140904413.html

Biofeedback was part of pain management therapy for migraines that I undertook at a nearby university a few years ago. It didn't monitor brain activity directly, but measured changes in pulse rate, blood pressure and skin electrical conductivity. The idea was to learn to make oneself relax, thereby enhancing pictures on a computer screen.

I could manipulate the image if I wasn't having any cognitive problems and the pain level was low to moderate, bur otherwise it just did not work (which was most of the time).

Although it seems contrary to logic, it was actually hard work to make myself relaxed enough to fully enhance the image and I was unable to maintain it for longer than 10 minutes at a time.

I have done very basic biofeedback work - mostly learning to "listen" to my heartbeat and to breathe correctly. The only thing I have noticed is that if I breathe the biofeedback way, my medicine takes effect more quickly. Other than that, it doesn't help the pain at all - seems only to concentrate it!