Pain/Fibromyalgia See also Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Often chronic fatigue, chronic pain and fibromyalgia are very wound-up Tone issues. There is a major sub-cortical drive related to long periods of unremitting stress, but the brain responds to it by wrapping itself in cotton (alpha) to anesthetize. The client doesn’t “feel” the emotional material, but it often becomes somaticized, and physical symptoms become major issues. This kind of alpha also is often low in frequency and blocks poorly with eyes open. […]

Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, also known as Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy RSD is generally a Tone problem–excessive activation of the autonomic nervous system. There can be a number of different cortical patterns related to the underlying stress response. I would suggest that you do an assessment and see what you find. Base your training on that. Oftentimes pain issues relate to problems with alpha, but it will be important to address not just the symptoms in this case but also the […]

Parkinson’s Disease/Tremors Parkinson’s is related to death of dopamine-producing cells in the substantia nigra.  That’s not the same as the apparent issues in essential tremors; those appear to involve the basal ganglia and cerebellum (and GABA, not dopamine). I have used Fz/A1/g/Cz/A2 with linked ears, training a standard SMR protocol with some success in symptom reduction in six or seven cases of individuals with Parkinson’s.  It appears the problem with Parkinsonians is deterioration of the dopamine producing system.  Dopamine is […]

Physical Relaxation Try Cz/A1 IN 2-38 and REW 12-16 (SMR training) for the physical relation states. One of the things that most trainers have to run head-on into a few times before they recognize it is that clients report their subjective experience, and that is generally measured against their standard state experience.  It is amazing the first time you have someone with massive beta who wants to be able to relax and work more efficiently–and they successfully change states and […]

Reading Speed Unfortunately, as with most such questions, my answer has to be that if there were something as simple as a protocol for speed reading, everyone would do it. There are lots of types of reading. Reading for pleasure can be done with speed-reading, because you aren’t expecting to remember much about what you read–but if the writer is any good, speed-reading through a piece is like putting a really good meal through a blender and pouring it down. […]

Restless Legs Cz or C4 SMR up (I like training it up as a percentage of the EEG) could be very helpful for restless leg. This would be especially true if there are sleep onset issues as well.

Rumination/Racing Thoughts Racing thoughts are often an indication of hot temporals, but they can also be consistent with high levels of beta and high-beta in various areas of the brain.

Seizures Working with seizures is probably trickier than meets the eye. There may be some possibility of triggering seizures in people who have had a history of them. I would think twice about working with such a person without a fair amount of experience or tight supervision by a well-experienced person. Seizure activity is normally related to extremely slow areas of the brain–as are ADHD and language-based learning problems.  In the neurofeedback world, below the level of diagnoses, they’re all […]

Sensory Issues Sensory inputs are supposed to be screened through the thalamus, which, in concert with the pre-frontal cortex, filters what is sent to the cortex to be processed, and blocks material that is not considered necessary.  When this function fails, or is too weak to do its job in situations of greater sensory load, the client’s sensory integration and association areas can be overloaded by chaotic inputs, resulting in what we see from the outside is extreme sensitivity.  This […]

The amount of sleep you require seems to be related to your ability to get into and process through five REM cycles per night. The more high beta, the less beta, or the more alpha intrusions, etc. you have, the harder it is to complete this, so the brain doesn’t get to do its psychological restoration and long-term memory storage and it doesn’t feel rested and ready to get up. Stages of Sleep Stage 0 When we are awake, the […]