Biofeedback is a therapy tool that is used to teach children and adults to consciously identify and change their internal state of regulation. It is used successfully to treat the symptoms of disregulation that occur in the following conditions:
- Migraines
- Emotional Control
- Anxiety
- Stress Management
- Depression
- Chronic Pain
- Obsessive Tendencies
- Attention Issues
- General Health and wellness
Methods of Biofeedback
Galvanic Skin Response
Stress often creates a sweat response, particularly in the hands. Anxiety and stress will cause sweating. Biofeedback using galvanic skin response teaches the individual to control sweat activity thus regulating anxiety and stress in order to calm the body and brain.
Skin Temperature Regulation
This is a tool that provides feedback on an individual’s skin temperature. When a person is not in a regulated state, vasoconstriction occurs and the hands become cold. Learning how to warm the hands through biofeedback gives the body and brain the opportunity to calm down, thus alleviating anxiety and calming the stress response.
Electromyography
This is used to teach a person how to consciously relax muscles that are often held in a stress position (i.e. elevated shoulders, tightness in the jaw or brow). Muscles commonly tense during stressful situations but they often remain tense thereafter. Training the muscles to relax through the use of biofeedback not only helps relieve stress; it also helps learn a useful technique in how to contend with the stress response through the building of muscle memory.
Heart Rate Variability
This form of biofeedback encourages the individual to learn how to coordinate breath with heart rate. As an essential organ, the heart has tremendous influence on the brain state. Learning to control heart rate helps improve coherence between a regulated breath state and mind-centered state of control. During a typical stress response, the heart will beat erratically which lowers the brains ability to use cognitive functions to respond mindfully. Biofeedback through heart rate variability training helps the individual regulate the heart response so that mindfulness can be the response state during times of potential stress.
Benefits
- Learn how to identify your bodies’ physiological stress response so that you can actively alter your state of wellness in a stressful situation.
- Build a greater state of self-awareness.
- Continued practice will lead to the bodies’ ability to improve its physiological response to stress, anxiety, dis-regulation.
- Empower yourself by consciously improving your state of emotional control using the biofeedback methods learned during therapy sessions.
- Embrace the potential to improve your attention, decrease or eliminate chronic headaches and migraines, improve your mood, relieve feelings of anxiety or depression, and gain a better state of health and wellness.