Baseline setting

The QWIZ shows you when the baseline is ready. The yellow HEG light stops blinking when the baseline has been selected. If it stops blinking before you are ready to start training, press the link button beneath the green electrode plug on the front of the Wiz. That will restart the baseline calculation.

One trick I use before starting to climb or dive Is to get myself into the opposite state first. While I’m waiting for the yellow light to stop blinking I go into a focus state before I’m going to dive.

There are three values I watch, because they show me different things, and I can often help the client see how he or she is progressing with one or more of them in each session.

1. The percent increase (or decrease) from baseline shows me how well the client is able to activate or de-activate. Early in training, most clients will rise and fall, remaining more or less around the baseline. As training proceeds and they begin to build improved perfusion systems and state control, they are able to rise further, or dive deeper.

2. The percent change from highest climb to deepest dive appears to be a very good measure of the client’s range–ability to shift from maintaining closed focus to maintaining open focus.

3. The Average AI Points per minute are an excellent measure of ability to sustain a state. The client must produce 1/2 second of ratio values increasing/maintaining (or decreasing/maintaining) in order to reach an attention index of 100. Having reached it, he must maintain it for an additional period (half a second) in order to score an AI point. It’s possible, if the client sustains without a drop (see attached) to score a point every half second. However any value that doesn’t equal or improve on the prior one drops the Attention Index, so the climb or dive must be maintained again for half a second to return to 100 and start scoring again. This is the reason sometimes the client can produce a whole string of lifeforms, while others they produce one at a time with pauses between them.

The Average AI Points allow us to measure comparable values regardless of session length. Many clients will start early sessions achieving 0, 1 or 2 AI points. Since the points can be scored climbing or diving, getting a higher score requires that the client learn to do both well and sustain both. Values in the middle 20’s are very good.

The client Scores points by staying in climb or dive mode over a period, as explained above. Each score places a life form on the screen. But the number of points scored changes based on what type of life form–and that changes based on percent change from baseline. In climbing, the lowest climbs produce rabbits, which give 5 points each. When the percent increase rises further, dogs (10 points), lions (15 points), horses (20 points) and elephants (25 points) are added. The same is true in reverse, when diving, for fish, turtles, sharks, dolphins and whales.

I suppose if you want to watch one value, use the score. The greater the rise, the greater the value of the animals placed. The more stable the rise, the more animals placed in a given period. The only problem is that, as one increases the training periods, the score will tend to rise just as a result of time–even though it becomes harder to sustain a high AI points, the longer the session.

It’s perfectly possible for the client to raise/maintain only 2-3% above the baseline but hold it quite effectively, producing a higher AI points per minute, but obviously the percent change will be very low, and the score as well.

There are 3 things that I track in HEG training (though I always remind the client that DOING the exercise–focusing on it–is more important than the score you got. Some times/days your PFC is stronger, other times the blood is elsewhere. Just like working out any part of your body–sometimes it’s easier, sometimes it’s harder, to do the same exercise, but the exercise always helps if you work on it.

I watch the % change from the baseline as a measure of the client’s ability to activate and de-activate that day. AI Points/minute rise as the client is able to sustain the target state (climbing or diving). The Range from highest climb to deepest dive is a good measure of the client’s progress in both areas.

If you have been saving your sessions and clicking on the button before each to identify the site (Left, Right or Middle), you should be able to graph them all automatically.

AI points/minute (Stability): When you score an AI point, if you are climbing and out of the water (or diving and in the water) you will hear the “shing” sound and see an animal added to the landscape. If you are climbing but are in the water (or diving but are out of the water) you won’t get this feedback, but you’ll hear a click. You can score AI points even if you are NOT scoring Game points. AI points are a measure of you brain’s ability to SUSTAIN the desired state.

In each second, LIFE samples your HEG signal 10 times/second. If each measure is equal to or greater than the last (climbing) or equal to or less than the last (diving) for a second, the AI graph on the trainer screen will reach the top–AI of 100. Then, if you continue for another half second without going the wrong direction, you score an AI point. You may have seen times in your training where you placed a whole series of animals on the landscape one right after the other. That happens when you manage to climb or dive without a break for multiple half-seconds. The moment the brain shows a change in direction–even 1 step–the AI drops down, and you have to sustain the climb or dive for a second again to be able to start scoring AI points. So, for example, if you climb steadily for 10 readings (1 second) and reach an AI of 100, then sustain for a half second, then miss a step, then you maintain for another second to reach AI 100 again, you’ll score 1 AI point in 3 seconds. If you get to an AI of 100 and keep climbing without a drop for the next two seconds, you’ll score 4 AI points in 3 seconds.

There are two graphs at the bottom of the trainer page you can look at after the session is over to see how steadily you were able to maintain the desired state.

Game points/minute (Control): Obviously the more stable your brain’s ability to climb or dive, the more animals you will place each minute. But animals also have point values. As you begin, you’ll place (for example) rabbits on the screen–each worth 5 points. If you go up and down a lot, indicating a weakness in your perfusion system that supplies your neurons with blood, you may find yourself always placing rabbits–only rabbits. But as you climb further, you start to place dogs, then lions, then horses, and finally elephants. Each dog is worth 10 points, lions 15, horses 20 and elephants 25. The higher (or deeper) you go, the more Game Points you score for each AI point. So Game Points/Minute is a measure of how strongly you were able to activate or de-activate AND how consistently you were able to maintain the state.

Both AI points and Game Points are divided by the number of minutes of training, so they can be compared in a 1 minute segment and a 10-minute segment.

Range: As you are climbing or diving, in addition to the “shing” sound when you score a point, you may also hear a “ding”. If you are watching the screen, you’ll see a little flag (if climbing) or Life Preserver (if diving) appear on the landscape and briefly you’ll see a numeric value. This tells you that you have reached a new high or low for that session. The third measure for you performance is how high you are able to climb when climbing, and how deep you are able to dive when diving. These are measured against the climbing or diving baseline.

The ideal is that you are able to shift quickly back and forth from concentration to consciousness (climbing to diving) and that you are able to sustain each state when in it. Range measures the highest percent above the baseline you achieved when climbing to the deepest percent below baseline when diving. The greater this range, the more effectively your prefrontal cortex will be able to function.

Closed Focus / Open Focus

These are two states which are natural and (ideally) constantly shifting. When we are simply aware of what is going on around us (and within us), without trying to do anything, that’s open focus. When we shift into doing–focusing and processing–that’s closed focus. Just because someone has difficulty sustaining the closed focus state doesn’t necessarily mean he will be good at open focus.

Training is about flexibility, about ability to sustain. Do all three sites, both types of training, in every session.

Low Left Side Ratio

Using the gym analogy, you would not necessarily stop working your right arm, even if it were stronger than your left. The goal is not to make everything the same. It is to exercise everything. If you decide only to train one side or the other, you run a much greater risk of creating imbalances and reversals.

The baseline doesn’t mean much. If you are using a Peanut or Pendant with LIFE, the baseline will be all over the place. If you are using the WIZes, all of them should be set to around 100.

Client instructions

I tell my clients essentially the same thing to begin:

There’s a place inside of you where your mind stops thinking, stops “trying”, stops judging if you are doing it “right” or not. It’s a place where you are still and in the moment, not thinking about the past or the future or thinking at all. You’re just HERE and NOW. The LIFE game gives you a mirror so your brain can try things (not your mind), just as it did when you first learned to ride a bike. When you are close to that place in yourself–or you pass through it briefly–the brain on the screen will dive or climb and put animals on the screen. Then your brain will know it is getting closer.

What many people don’t get about LIFE is that both climbing and diving are the same place in your head. They are both stillness and presence in this moment. The difference is that when you focus your eyes on a single point and achieve that state, you will climb. When you defocus your eyes (or close them) you will dive.

One is called closed-focus (concentration); the other is called open-focus (consciousness).

I teach my clients to breathe out very slowly and count the seconds and see if they can empty their lungs in 7 seconds then let the air be drawn back in (and count to usually 3 seconds). Once they learn to do this, they keep their minds busy counting and their attention is focused on the movement of their breath. I ask them just to pay attention to the game then as they breathe. Do they climb better when breathing in or breathing out? Do they dive better with eyes closed or eyes partly open but not “watching” anything?

These are first few sessions. Once they find the feeling within themselves, then, like the dancer at the barre, they can move ahead at their own pace.

Climbing and Diving

If you start climbing and set your baseline, then go down for a while, it can be very frustrating (same if you are diving and start by climbing a ways), because you can go in the right direction but not get back into the range where you get feedback for a long time.

In a case like that, I keep hitting the Capture Baseline button if it’s early in the session, so any movement in the correct direction results in feedback. I’ll often pause the session if it is a clear problem (I’ve reset several times), and I’ll point out to the trainee, “Gee, in the beginning, before you were trying to climb/dive, you were doing much better. Since you started trying, you’ve been going the wrong direction. So maybe what you think is concentrating/being still is not really what it is. The game will tell you when you find the right thing in YOUR brain, so let your brain test out several things–always remembering that a still mind, relaxed state and focused/defocused eyes will probably be closer to the right direction.”

In diving, you can click Dive Now multiple times, and I believe it won’t reset the timer. Capturing baseline does reset the timer, so I do that only in the first minute or so if the client is going nowhere.

No feedback=no learning.

Sudden signal increase

Actually, when the brain jumps very suddenly (shows the parachute) that’s almost always related to either a bad baseline or artifact–the client moving his/her head around.

I would start both of these by teaching them the breathing/counting process I’ve described previously and have them work with EC on the diving only mode until they learn what diving feels like inside their heads.  Then I’d tell them that climbing is the same state, except they need to focus their eyes.

Don’t think, don’t “try”, don’t judge how well you are doing.  Just pay attention.