Biofeedback, which has been called "the yoga of the west" and "electronic zen" is a safe & rewarding approach to health, healing and optimal performance that combines computer-assisted technology and proven psychological strategies to rapidly produce stress relief and life enhancement benefits.
Biofeedback can help you:
- take active control over stress and overwhelm;
- reduce symptoms of conditions that are associated with or exacerbated by stress including high blood pressure, diabetes, irritable bowel syndrome, headaches, insomnia, asthma, PMS, hot flashes, fibromaylgia, Raynaud's, or infertility;
- fine tune your ability to respond quickly to changes, think clearly and creatively, handle a fast-paced environment and work effectively with others;
- access your "peak performance zone" when you need it - useful for athletes or performers;
The Problem of Stress
Like it or not, stress is inevitable. Some stress is even necessary to grow confident and resilient. But we weren’t designed to cope with the chronic stress contemporary life dishes out.
Every day we deal with difficult people, face competition, and experience overwhelming demands on our time and resources. Each of these situations triggers our bodies’ stress response, and the result is that over time our nervous systems become overloaded, unbalanced and locked into a perpetual stressed out state. Click here to learn more about the stress response.
Chronic stress impacts our health, relationships, creative and mental abilities, performance, and capacity to enjoy life. And it’s now believed that at least 75% of visits to doctor’s offices are because of problems related to unmanaged stress.
Why “Stress Management” Doesn’t Work
We know we’re supposed to manage stress but we don’t do it well. Most of us cope with stress by working harder and longer or trying to escape from it. We try to relax like we’re supposed to, but it’s hard to unwind even when we have the opportunity because our nervous systems are too revved up (Click here for more about this).
If we try to manage stress without restoring inner balance to our bodies, we’re not getting to the root of the problem. So our strategies don’t work well and we find ourselves frustrated, burnt out, ineffective, unhappy and seeking medical treatment for stress related symptoms.
Restoring Inner Balance is the Key to Effectively Managing Stress
Inner Balance Biofeedback combines breath training and other self-regulation strategies with biofeedback to help you restore internal balance, release yourself from chronic stress and take control of your life.
Unhealthy breathing patterns are both a cause and a symptom of stress. Learning to breathe correctly is a stress management strategy that you’ve probably heard of or may have even tried, but it’s difficult to master. There’s no one size fits all approach to healthy breathing because everyone has their own rate and rhythm of breathing that helps their nervous system rebalance. Discovering your optimal breathing pattern is one of your most important steps toward restoring inner balance, improving your health and moving toward achieving your potential.
How Biofeedback Works
Biofeedback offers a dynamic window into your nervous system by monitoring physical functions such as breathing and heart rate and displaying that information on a computer screen. This helps you become aware of how your nervous system is functioning; how your body reacts to your behavior and where it’s out of balance. In this way, biofeedback offers proof of the mind/body connection. Click here for more about biofeedback.
Building on that awareness, you can discover your optimal breathing pattern and learn other effective new self-regulation strategies. The biofeedback shows you how your body responds to changes you make in breathing and behavior so you can see if and when you’re reducing your stress response and achieving inner balance. Without biofeedback, you have to hope and guess your approach is effective.
Safe and Powerful
Because this is a non-drug, non-invasive process, it’s completely safe. In fact, improvements made using biofeedback may help decrease the need for other medications.
Biofeedback may be a useful complement to traditional treatments for high blood pressure, headaches, irritable bowel syndrome, insomnia, breathing problems, fibromyalgia, PMS, hot flashes, anxiety or any condition that is impacted by stress.
Proven Effective
Biofeedback is not a fad or an alternative treatment. Since it first gained popularity in the 1970’s, extensive research has proven biofeedback therapies to be effective treatments for a variety of health conditions and as a means to enhance mental functioning and achieve peak performance.
Rapid Results
With biofeedback training, results can be seen in as quickly as a single session. Typically, noticeable improvements are experienced within a few sessions and most courses of training are approximately 8-12 sessions. Longer courses of training or follow-up "booster" sessions are not uncommon.
Biofeedback can be offered alone or as part of a comprehensive therapeutic or life enhancement program. Depending on your goals, circumstances and coverage, your health plan may cover biofeedback services.
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Copyright 2005 Michelle Marks PhD. All rights reserved.
