In my work with clients, I have generally used the analogy of working at the gym. If you go once a week, you may feel better after the workout, but you are unlikely to produce any long-term changes. On the other hand, working out every day may not give a lot faster changes. I believe two-four times a week is ideal. Training the brain, like training the body, involves changing an energy set point. That takes time and consistency. I like taking a day off between sessions to see how well the changes hold from session to session.

Frequency of Sessions

I don’t know of any specific research on frequency of sessions. I suspect it would be a pretty individual response. In my experience there was often a benefit (especially with kids) to an intensive beginning to training (3X/week), but I also strongly believe that the systemic change that occurs with most training requires a period of time as well.

In Atlanta we often had folks who came a distance for training and tried to mass 2-4 sessions around a weekend, and that generally seemed to work as well as spreading them out during a week, but I don’t recall that doing more frequent sessions resulted in shorter training (certainly in terms of sessions, but to some extent also in terms of duration of the training process.

I suspect that, as with for example weight training, there is a benefit to inter-session resting. Certainly, that has been found by Hershel Toomim, who has studied a number of training frequencies and found that, in HEG at least, every four days gets the same results as more frequent sessions.

A general rule would be if you are training to calm the brain, more frequent could be helpful; to activate it, you can train more frequently but it is still likely to take some time to get the change to occur and stabilize.

Training Too Often

Frequency of training depends on the client. The main issue would likely be burnout. I generally suggest that people train every other day, so they have enough time to see changes and see how long they last before fading between sessions. I suppose that with certain types of problems more intensive training could be fine, but it’s usually a good idea to take training vacations from time to time if you are going to do intensive training over a period of time.

As a general rule, I would say that 30 sessions in 15 days probably do not take a client as far as 30 in 60 days, but I think that might be very individual, and it may even relate to the type of problem and training. Certainly with alpha or even alpha/theta training, there may be an immersion benefit–just as meditators go on meditation retreats that absolutely overwhelm them in the meditative practice. However, if we are trying to speed up the brain, then there is a physiological/metabolic change that must take place (in my opinion). There the analogy would be like working out with weights. There is a re-charge period required for the body to change.

That said, I think that maybe doing 10 sessions in 5 days can have a pretty positive effect. I just never found that doing 40 in 20 days had the same effect as doing 40 in 3 months. Other things have to change as well.