Trauma Expert Dr. Bessel A. van der Kolk promotes Neurofeedback

 

Bessel van der Kolk, M.D.

 

Link:  Bessel van der Kolk, M.D. free webinar link

Medical director of The Trauma Center in Boston, professor of psychiatry at Boston University, and director of the National Center for Child Traumatic Stress Complex Trauma Network, Van der Kolk is recognized in the field for being a pioneer of once unconventional mind-body interventions, such as Eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) trauma psychotherapy, neurofeedback, and yoga. Over the last 30 years, he has established a reputation as an iconoclastic critic of traditional approaches to trauma—especially Prolonged Exposure therapy, which he’s characterized as “among the worst possible treatments” for trauma, merely desensitizing people to their suffering, instead of healing them.

Neuroplasticity and confidence.

Brain

I was reading this morning some research on brain neuroplasticity related to confidence from Mount Sanai Hospital School of Medicine. They call confidence ‘life’s enabler’ or the quality that turns thoughts into action. Taking small steps in daily life adds up, they say in other words. Also, viewing failure as new information to be accepted as part of learning, versus sense of failing.

Good posture, too, plays a part in how confident we feel. This is innately known with practices like Tai Chi or yoga; feeling confident physically imports into feeling confident emotionally and mentally.

Neurofeedback podcast interview with Upgraded Ape organization

If you want to hear what NeurOPTMAL neurofeedback does from the developer himself, this is a wonderful interview.  He gives his background and how he got into this field.  He also provides a simple explanation about how NeurOPTIMAL can improve resilience in life.  When your brain sees what is has been doing electrically, it improves itself because this is its design. This is the neuroplasticity.

After 8 years of using MeurOPTIMAL with clients as well as using it myself, I am still learning new things each time I hear Val Brown be interviewed.  He is a great teacher and able to synthesize very complex information into simple ways of grasping how NeurOPTIMAL can do what it does across so many symptoms and presentations.

Results sometimes show up a down the road with neurofeedback training.

down_the_road_again

A woman called us some time back to get some neurofeedback traiining.  She was really going through a difficult time, unable to work and experiencing an inability to generally function in her life.  She had even turned down a good job because she was afraid that she could not deal with it. And her husband was not being empathetic with her state of condition; he thought she was faking.

Neurofeedback for a Family

NeurOPTIMAL® neurofeedback for the entire family.

I began working with a gentleman about a year ago who was having anxiety issues, difficulty in his marriage, and was using alcohol to cope with his problems which is never a good solutions.  After just a session or two, he was noticing he had no attraction to alcohol as a coping tool and his relationship with his wife was improving.  Some sessions, we would do therapy around the couple process, helping him see his reactivity to her, and helping him detach from his reactions which was not helping things one bit. Other times he just did the neurofeedback session alone.

Neurofeedback: Athletic Performance Enhancement

Here is an interesting article about the limits of only focusing on physical endurance tactics for athletes but not engaging the mental and emotional factors that impact performance.  There is growing evidence that brain flexibility is a key to how well an athlete can do.  Many professional and Olympic athletes have discovered the added benefits of neurofeedback brains training.  Since the research in neuroplasticity has proven that our brain is capable of  not only dropping old, ineffective neural networks.  It is able to generate new neurons and new, more efficient and effective networks that allows us to literally change our behavior.

Chemo Brain Study using neurofeedback

My colleague Jean Alverez from Cleveland, Ohio has an ongoing research project regarding using neurofeedback to assist individuals who have cancer and are undergoing (or have recently undergone) chemo therapy.  Because many of these patients experience major brain fog, cognitive dysfunction and the like, she is researching to see if there are actual benefits past personal testamony.

 

Many clients say that the neurofeedback has helped, but this in not enough in the research circles.  One has to have ‘evidence’ based on a well crafted, acceptable research.

 

LINK to article on the Research Study

Brain-Mind: Society of Neuroscience, Dali Lama’s 2005 attendance…

Learn to function from the ‘inside-out’!

 

 

http://youtu.be/flJnlB4Tgu0

(More Flexible) Brains:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Probing the Partnership Between Buddhism and the Brain Sciences