Based on some research done years ago, we used to use a tape player (to show you how old this was) to play music in the background during our sessions in Atlanta. 60-beat Baroque (e.g. air on a G string, Pachelbel Canon) definitely helped people into the middle frequencies, especially alpha. Mozart, the faster sections […]

Binaural Beats Binaural beats are the result of hearing two different signals entering each ear separately but at the same time. This causes harmonics we hear as beats. The brain as a whole responds to them and often moves in the direction of the beat frequency. The beat rate is the difference between two separate […]

Brain Exercises Do brain exercises work? I’ve used several of them with clients and myself, and the ones I used pretty much did the same thing. Asking whether they work is like asking whether doing aerobic exercise will improve fitness. The answer is “yes, if you do it consistently over a period of time.” That’s […]

EMDR (Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) EMDR, when it works, is faster than neurofeedback, but it is very specific to an individual traumatic memory, so you have to do it a bunch of times if the client has more than one or two traumatic memories–and some clients are very disturbed by the process of bringing […]

Entrainment The brain is essentially an organ that receives information from outside (sensory inputs) and inside (memories, emotional responses, associations with previous experience), integrates all this and responds to it with motor outputs (speaking, acting) and changes in its own body’s internal environment. This is a constant cycle with outputs creating inputs (how did the […]

Heart-Rate Variability Training (HRV) There is a fair amount of research suggesting that, when the autonomic nervous system is working properly–not over-stressed–heart rate dances around like a barefoot ballerina on hot concrete. When stress levels are high, it tends to become rigidly locked into certain rates. The more variable the rate, the healthier the heart. […]

Games for Slow Brains It can be challenging to work with clients who have very slow brains. The following games may help you enhance your work with such clients, who tend to process information visually rather than with words. The Naming Game The naming game works like this: The player’s job is to name as […]

We are frequently asked about ways to make training sessions better or what tools can be used to improve and extend the results of neurofeedback training. The following is our commentary. It is not meant to be comprehensive. Trainer Improvement Tips Neurofeedback is good Zen practice (at least with brain-trainer designs) for the trainer. The […]

RSA Breathing (Respiratory sinus arrhythmia) Since RSA breathing tends to stimulate the vagus nerve, which pushes you into parasympathetic mode–and is the pair of the cranial nerves that connects the brain to the abdomen via the heart, esophagus and lungs, it prepares the body to participate more effectively in these parasympathetic maintenance functions. It also […]

Meditation Meditation is a process of allowing the brain to enter into the highly-efficient phase-synchrony state and stay there.  Alpha synchrony has long been recognized as the state of still mind/present in the moment–the meditative state, but also a peak performance, zone or flow state used by athletes, performers or others to perform tasks over […]