Biofeedback

Biofeedback training is a process of learning various techniques to utilize information from a device called a biofeedback machine. This information is then used to monitor and gain control over so-called autonomic body functions such as blood pressure, heart rate, circulation, digestion, or perspiration. Biofeedback is feedback with biology.

Through the use of specialized electrodes attached to various parts of the body, a biofeedback machine can monitor and measure physical states such as muscle tone, skin temperature, the amount of sweat on the skin, brain wave activity, or other physical conditions as required. Responses from a biofeedback machine are both auditory and visual. Information gathered from the electrodes is relayed to the user through gauges, lights, tones, or other means.

This "feedback" provides the user with a new, perceptible awareness of different body/mind processes which extend beyond his normal five senses. In short, biofeedback gives an individual information about his physiological functioning that was previously unavailable to his conscious mind.

Feedback is a term coined by early radio pioneers in the early 1900s. The word biofeedback was coined in the 1960s to describe laboratory procedures then being used to train experimental research subjects. Norbert Wiener, a mathematician and founding father of feedback research, gave it this definition: "a method of controlling a system by reinserting into it the results of its past performance."

The principle behind biofeedback is not new. In British colonial India during the eighteenth century, army physicians and civilian administrators reported that Yogis could voluntarily control so-called involuntary body functions such as heart rate and pain (lying on a bed of nails). The Yogis claimed this ability came from extensive practice of certain mental, physical, and emotional disciplines.

In the 1950s Kamiya, Brown, and Green discovered how an individual can rapidly learn voluntary control of certain physiological processes by using information gathered from physiological measuring instruments. While Kamiya was doing research on sleep and dreaming, his subjects learned to use information from an electroencephalograph (EEG) machine to change their state of mind. They were able to achieve the alpha state, the most relaxed state possible while awake.

After moving his research to the University of California Medical Center in San Francisco, Kamiya developed a prototype which has become the standard for current alpha training machines. When attached to the machine, subjects could hear a specific tone when they achieved the alpha state. He later observed that after practice they could maintain the alpha state on their own.

In the late 1960s, Dr. Neal Miller, a scientist at Rockefeller University in New York, was able to teach laboratory rats to regulate their blood flow while they were paralyzed with a muscular relaxation medication. At the same time Dr. Elmer Green and his co-worker, Alyce (Mrs. Green), were working on experiments at the Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Kansas, teaching people to warm their hands by means of biofeedback. Prior to these experiments it was thought the nervous system was divided into voluntary and involuntary functions. It was believed that critical functions ,such as heartbeat, respiration, and blood flow were unconscious or involuntary while walking, talking, or writing were under voluntary control.

The idea behind biofeedback is simple, and most people have probably used it without even knowing it. If you take your temperature or step on a scale you have used it. The thermometer tells whether you have a fever, and the scale indicates if you have gained weight. Both devices "feed back" information about your body's condition. Armed with this information you can take steps to improve your condition. The body's built-in feedback systems enable us to live safely and comfortably in our surroundings by providing signals that tell, bodily systems when to activate and when to shut down. These natural feedback systems allow us to adapt to changing environmental conditions.

Biofeedback has numerous uses in behavioral medicine and medical applications that unite body and mind. Physical therapists use biofeedback to help stroke victims regain movement in paralyzed muscles. Psychologists use it to help tense and anxious clients learn to relax. Specialists in many different fields use biofeedback to help their patients cope with pain.

Detection of stress is one area where biofeedback is very valuable. It is generally agreed that stress and tension held within the body are not healthy and contribute to so-called stress-related disorders like high blood pressure, ulcers, heart attack, and migraine headaches. Since many people are not always aware when they are under stress, biofeedback provides a method of insight otherwise unavailable.

The biofeedback machine is not a "miracle device" that an individual hooks himself up to and from which he then receives a "miracle cure." Biofeedback is only meant to facilitate the process of an individual's learning how to deal with problems in his own body. This allows the person to take responsibility for his own health rather than look for a "cure" from an outside source. The role of the biofeedback practitioner (trainer) is to guide and help the client interpret information from the biofeedback machine. The client is then able to identify and become aware of what is happening in his body at the time he is under stress.

A person with a tension headache discovers which muscles are contracting to cause the pain. And, by practicing relaxation techniques while on the biofeedback machine, he can learn what it feels like to be relaxed and how to relax the particular muscles causing the pain. Through repetition and reinforcement from the practitioner, the client learns how to achieve the desired state of relaxation.

Clinical biofeedback techniques are now widely used to treat an ever increasing variety of conditions. These include migraine headaches, tension headaches, other types of pain, stomach and intestinal disorders, cold extremities, high and low blood pressure, abnormal heartbeat rhythms, epilepsy, paralysis, and other movement disorders.

Other alternative therapies

• Acupressure
• Acupuncture
• Alexander Technique
• Ayurveda
• Biofeedback
• Chelation Therapy
• Hydrotherapy
• Kinesiology
• Magnetic Therapy
• Massage
• Meditation
• Naturopathy
• Reflexology
• Shiatsu
• Yoga