Session Timing and Length

When we set up designs, we don’t know if the trainer will be working in sessions that combine HEG and EEG, or doing EEG only, doing one exercise per session or three. The choice of training time is usually based on the degree of activation involved.

If you are training to speed up brain activity–increase energy expenditure–then most of those protocols will be run for shorter periods. If I have a really slow brain, I may train for as little as 1-2 minutes per segment, give the client time to “catch his breath” between segments. So, I might do 5 segments of 2 minutes. In the same way, if you start doing aerobics with someone seriously out of shape, you don’t ask him to start running 5 miles.

For middle speeds, like alpha or SMR, I will often use a training segment of 5 minutes–time enough for the client to get into the stillness, but not so long that his brain can’t sustain it. So I might do 2 segments of 5 minutes each.

For deeper states, I often use 10 or 20 minutes as a training period, so the client has time to get into that deeper place.

Each trainer needs to select how long to train each segment (usually based on how many EEG training minutes are feasible in a session and the number of protocols/exercises to be trained).

For overall training time, I usually figure 15-20 minutes for HEG and ten more for cap placement and removal, which leaves me 30 minutes for EEG. If I’m doing three protocols, that’s eight or nine minutes per protocol. I like to do shorter exercise sets like that, at least in the beginning. After that, we may decide that one of the protocols is not particularly useful and drop it. Or we may find something that works really well and include it in other blocks. I often do six minutes of BAL4C RH and then another six of C3/C4 SMR% together.

As for EO and EC, I try half the neurofeedback training time one way and half the other to see how the response differs. After a few trials, we might switch to doing the whole block with one or the other.