How to de-stress your brain using biofeedback

De-stressing and Biofeedback

Once upon a time, I had a little girl named Annika come into my life. From about the time she was 12 months old I knew I had a sporty girl on my hands — she learned to kick a soccer ball and walk at the same time.

Now 14, she loves nearly all sports, is crazy competitive, and is super high energy. Then last fall, while retrieving a ball in the back of a soccer goal, someone fired on goal and took her by complete surprise, beaming her squarely on the side of the head and knocking her over.

My older daughter called me right away and my heart sank as she said, “Mom, Annika has a concussion.”

Oh no. Oh no.

This was her second concussion.

I immediately got on the horn and got her into the two people I thought could help her the most: her godmother Kim Dewey who is the best massage therapist on the planet, and a BodyTalk practitioner named Sandra Weinrich who does brain balancing using a tapping technique. I wanted to keep her body from establishing this trauma mode as a new way to be as much as I could in this acute injury phase. More about both ladies in future blogs.

Concussion after effects

We got her western medicine doctor’s eventual clearance, and she returned to soccer.

However, I began to notice two things: she wasn’t doing well in school and she wasn’t wearing her glasses anymore. The other thing I noticed was that she was constantly agro – got mad instantly, and snapped at both her sister and I at the drop of a hat.

Such a short temper, and no matter what I used to try and soothe her, it backfired. Was it food or low blood sugar? No. Was it lack of exercise? No. Was it stress and being a teenager and her first semester of high school? Well, maybe, but it still seemed a bit severe. Was it sleep? Maybe, and she complained of waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to go back to sleep.

Why couldn’t she calm down?

I got her a tutor. I got her a second tutor. I made sure she ate protein constantly to stabilize her blood sugar, and encouraged her to sleep more. I bugged her about her glasses and she still wouldn’t wear them. Finals were looming and it was looking disastrous for her. She was clearly very stressed- almost in a panic- and nothing seemed to help.

Then I finally connected with the magical Ruby Nantz.

I had been hunting her for some time– I was given her name as an exceptional biofeedback specialist a few years ago and finally tracked her down to get Annika an appointment. Anything to try and de-stress this kid. I had to threaten to take away nearly everything to get Annika to agree to the appointment. She’s stubborn on top of everything else!

Hang on: Biofeed-what?

This is NASA research coming in to help the common man. Remember Apollo 13? Houston was trying to track the vitals of the astronauts to make sure they were happy and healthy. Things like heart rate, respiration, etc. You’ve seen it in every space movie… whenever the astronaut is in a danger place, and hyperventilating, and sucking down too much oxygen… all the sensors are lighting up and telling him/her to calm down! Well, turns out the sensor lead wires were itchy. The astronauts would yank them off. The scientists back home needed another way to track vitals.

Enter biofeedback.

Quantum Biofeedback works on retraining your brain with frequency as it responds to stress. There are several different wavelengths in the brain- alpha, delta, beta, and theta.

The goal is to bring you into theta mode: this is the calm, excellent memory and recall, zen-like inner consciousness.

Annika’s theta wavelength score was 6. It is supposed to be closer to 100.

Yikes.

We had some balancing to do!

Quantum Biofeedback uses the Galvanic skin response…like a lie detector test. The device gives a readout on reaction in severity. She looks at what might be stressing her so it can be released.

Ruby had Annika sit with ankles and hands uncrossed while she put straps on her head, ankles, and wrists which connected her with the machine.

Her setup was this: a laptop, the biofeedback machine, and the wires. Pretty quick and easy setup.

At first, Annika sat still while Ruby ran tests. Then she got sleepy, so we helped her lie down. Ruby smiled. “it’s all a part of the process,” she said. All the while, her brain was being scanned, checking the frequency, and balancing the frequencies.

Fascinating.

Then she woke up. Sat up. Ruby smiled again. She said to Annika, “Why don’t you try studying something now that you need for your finals this week.” She watched the two hemispheres of her brain connect and talk to each other. “Good,” she said.

Guess what her suggestion for studying was? Just like my blog from last week, her suggestion was to study something for 45 minutes, and then go exercise for fifteen minutes. “That brings it into muscle memory,” she said. Sound familiar? Ruby isn’t even Finnish! 🙂

Apparently the CIA uses that fact in teaching new languages. Did you know you can learn a new language in three weeks? Exercise while you learn!

Would you like to contact Ruby and get into the Theta Groove? She works in the Portland Metro area. Here is her email: [email protected]