Learning biofeedback! Wondering...
Check out this Biofeedback article from Mayo Clinic (click here!)
This short article is a good introduction to biofeedback.
I started learning biofeedback last week with the hope that learning to relax and relieve anxiety might help me some of my physical and psychological ailments and my general state of hyper-alertness.
The first session with the biofeedback therapist was just to go over forms he had emailed me which I had filled out. We talked about my goals for treatment. One thing I'm interested in is neurofeedback as well - I think that could be extremely helpful. But for now I'm just doing biofeedback training. If I go for neurofeedback, I'll find some helpful links for you on the subject.
The first actual biofeedback session was a week ago. First, he asked me about how I feel stress in my body. That was not as easy a question to answer as it would seem. I am used to feeling tense, so trying to mentally recover these sensations was a trick. I thought maybe my jaw got tense, I frowned, my shoulders tensed.
He attached sensors to my fingertips, my wrists, and he put a belt around my rib cage. I sat facing a computer monitor. He set up the display so I could see everything we are trying over time to control: hand temperature, hand sweat, pulse, and rhythm of breath. My hands were very warm, which is a sign of relaxation, and they had very little sweat as well, another good thing. My breath was shallow and a little rapid, as I was to discover later, and my pulse was rapid as well.
So here I am happily looking at all this interesting information go by - the rise and fall of my breath, especially, and the steadiness of my temperature and sweat. Then he asked me to briefly remember a time of stress. All I had to do was imagine myself at work and pow! Temperature dropped! Sweat increased! Pulse sped up! Breaths sped up! I could see the immediate feedback on the screen. OK, so I'm persuaded that this stuff really works.
For the rest of the session I worked solely on my breath. We found a good rate of breathing - 6-1/2 seconds per breath - and I practiced breathing in such a way that it matched the pattern on the screen. Up and down, up and down. I learned that it is important to allow a slight pause at the top and bottom of each breath. While I just focused on the breath, the therapist recorded the session on the computer. Then I stopped the conscious breathing and we looked at my charts from that 5-minute session. As my breathing steadied, my heart rate slowed, and my skin and sweat levels remained steady at good levels. But I felt that I was not drawing in enough oxygen. So we did a 1-minute session in which I breathed as deeply as felt comfortable for me, while still remaining within the 6-1/2 seconds per breath, and my heart rate immediately improved. So we adjusted how I should practice breathing over the following week.
This week, the therapist added sensors to my forehead to measure tension there. We started with my hand temperature and sweat being good. I did a little bit of conscious breathing while looking at the monitor. Then he showed me the line that indicated the tensison in my forehead. Actually, it also measures tension in your jaw and throat as well, as I later discovered. We did a little work with me watching the screen and practicing tensing and relaxing my forhead and jaw. The feedback goes wild when you even so much as swallow!
Then he put the CD in the computer and the music began - a very relaxing New Age-y CD called simply "Yoga." (I should add that the room was very dimly lit, to help with relaxation.) He then programmed it to play whenever I was relaxed below a certain level; whenever the forehead sensors detected tension, the music would stop. At first this was frustrating. I couldn't feel any difference in my body whenever the music would stop. He eventually had to raise the level of tension to go by so I would not be completely frustrated.
So then he had my lie back in the comfortable reclining chair with my feet up and close my eyes. All I had to do was breathe deeply the way I had been taught and try to keep the music going.
Okay, so "try" was the word he did not want me to use! Don't try to relax, he said, just let yourself relax. He suggested remembering a time of special pleasure or relaxation, or to think of someone I love very much.
I remembered two Labor Day weekends ago, I was staying with my brother. On the Saturday, the whole crew of us went hiking on the nearby state trail that follows the Little Red Cedar River. I was too fatigued from illness to hike very far, so I set myself up in a comfortable chair that had a footrest, armrests, a place to put your water bottle - the whole works. I had intended to read or write. But I ended up slipping into a reverie of the sounds around me. Bit by bit I heard more and more of the gentle sounds around me. The quiet river just a few yards away down the bank; the sounds of children shouting to one another in the distance. Bit by bit I heard more and more until, after a long time, I finally heard the quiet sound of the wind going through the cedars. Pure bliss. I sat there for a full hour until my family returned. For the first time since falling ill a few years before than, I felt totally refreshed.
As I remembered this, and tried to recreate that serenity (there's that word again), I head the music playing and often turning off for short bits. Slowly I began to actually feel which part of my head was causing the sensors to shut off the music. The number one culprit was the jaw and the back of the throat. When I kept my throat as open and steady as an organ pipe as I breathed, the music stayed on. Whenever my jaw pulled back, the throat closed, and the music would go off.
While practicing by myself later in the afternoon, I remembered a bit of advice from meditation instruction for mindful breathing. Let your tongue lie loose at the bottom of your mouth, but have the tip of your tongue gently touch the roof of your mouth just behind the front teeth. When you do this, you keep the tongue from shutting off the throat.
But the beautiful part of practicing by myself was that I remembered the day after my riverside meditation. We all went tubing down that same river. A leisurely float down the shallow, lazy river. I loved it. And then two special things happened. First, a doe and her youngster decide to cross the river just ahead of me and my nephew. They calmly splashed across and disappeared into the thicket. I hadn't been that close to a deer in a long time, and the deer I had always seen before were either standing at the roadside waiting to cross or dead at the roadside because of supremely bad timing. But here this gentle scene.
But it got better. My nephew and I were far ahead of the rest of the family. Then I noticed a bald eagle circling over our heads. Without warning, it dropped to the river just a few yards ahead of my nephew then swooped back up. It was fishing. It circled above again, then dove again. On the fifth or so try, it caught a fish and flew away. I was in awe.
So as I practiced by myself in the afternoon, I remembered the deer and the eagle. Then I began to recall other close encounters with wild animals that were so beautiful they made time seem to stand still. Other deer, other eagles (there's a nest near my home), the red fox that patrols my garden, a woodchuck that started trying to dig a hole beneath my home - now there was an animal not easily intimidated. It could be three feet away from me, and it would just look at me, then calmly continue on its path. The catbird that fell to the patio when I was nine years old. It had flown into my bedroom window. I rushed downstairs and outside to see if the bird had recovered. It was sitting upright but unsteady. I put my cupped hands near the bird, hoping to catch it. But to my surprise, it stood up and walked into my hands! I instinctively closed my hands around it, keeping it warm as it recovered from shock. Then, when it felt better, it wiggled in my hands. I opened them, the bird stepped onto the deck, then flew away.
Yes, it was relaxing by submitting myself to a sense of wonder. And perhaps that the lesson I learned today, the big lesson. Moments of wonder - and the remembering of them - are life-giving. It is good to be full of wonder.
Maybe that's why healthy babies and young children can withstand such extreme changes in their bodies as they grow ever so fast. They are filled with wonder. Just watch them!
I agree with Barbara Taylor Brown when she says in her latest book that her favorite parts of the Bible are not the theology, but the places of wonder. Angels appearing and saying "Behold!" Jesus healing a person who then is filled with the Spirit. Miracles. It's a mystical faith, not a theological one.
So perhaps all this dry, technological therapy is triggering much deeper changes - that is my hope.
This short article is a good introduction to biofeedback.
I started learning biofeedback last week with the hope that learning to relax and relieve anxiety might help me some of my physical and psychological ailments and my general state of hyper-alertness.
The first session with the biofeedback therapist was just to go over forms he had emailed me which I had filled out. We talked about my goals for treatment. One thing I'm interested in is neurofeedback as well - I think that could be extremely helpful. But for now I'm just doing biofeedback training. If I go for neurofeedback, I'll find some helpful links for you on the subject.
The first actual biofeedback session was a week ago. First, he asked me about how I feel stress in my body. That was not as easy a question to answer as it would seem. I am used to feeling tense, so trying to mentally recover these sensations was a trick. I thought maybe my jaw got tense, I frowned, my shoulders tensed.
He attached sensors to my fingertips, my wrists, and he put a belt around my rib cage. I sat facing a computer monitor. He set up the display so I could see everything we are trying over time to control: hand temperature, hand sweat, pulse, and rhythm of breath. My hands were very warm, which is a sign of relaxation, and they had very little sweat as well, another good thing. My breath was shallow and a little rapid, as I was to discover later, and my pulse was rapid as well.
So here I am happily looking at all this interesting information go by - the rise and fall of my breath, especially, and the steadiness of my temperature and sweat. Then he asked me to briefly remember a time of stress. All I had to do was imagine myself at work and pow! Temperature dropped! Sweat increased! Pulse sped up! Breaths sped up! I could see the immediate feedback on the screen. OK, so I'm persuaded that this stuff really works.
For the rest of the session I worked solely on my breath. We found a good rate of breathing - 6-1/2 seconds per breath - and I practiced breathing in such a way that it matched the pattern on the screen. Up and down, up and down. I learned that it is important to allow a slight pause at the top and bottom of each breath. While I just focused on the breath, the therapist recorded the session on the computer. Then I stopped the conscious breathing and we looked at my charts from that 5-minute session. As my breathing steadied, my heart rate slowed, and my skin and sweat levels remained steady at good levels. But I felt that I was not drawing in enough oxygen. So we did a 1-minute session in which I breathed as deeply as felt comfortable for me, while still remaining within the 6-1/2 seconds per breath, and my heart rate immediately improved. So we adjusted how I should practice breathing over the following week.
This week, the therapist added sensors to my forehead to measure tension there. We started with my hand temperature and sweat being good. I did a little bit of conscious breathing while looking at the monitor. Then he showed me the line that indicated the tensison in my forehead. Actually, it also measures tension in your jaw and throat as well, as I later discovered. We did a little work with me watching the screen and practicing tensing and relaxing my forhead and jaw. The feedback goes wild when you even so much as swallow!
Then he put the CD in the computer and the music began - a very relaxing New Age-y CD called simply "Yoga." (I should add that the room was very dimly lit, to help with relaxation.) He then programmed it to play whenever I was relaxed below a certain level; whenever the forehead sensors detected tension, the music would stop. At first this was frustrating. I couldn't feel any difference in my body whenever the music would stop. He eventually had to raise the level of tension to go by so I would not be completely frustrated.
So then he had my lie back in the comfortable reclining chair with my feet up and close my eyes. All I had to do was breathe deeply the way I had been taught and try to keep the music going.
Okay, so "try" was the word he did not want me to use! Don't try to relax, he said, just let yourself relax. He suggested remembering a time of special pleasure or relaxation, or to think of someone I love very much.
I remembered two Labor Day weekends ago, I was staying with my brother. On the Saturday, the whole crew of us went hiking on the nearby state trail that follows the Little Red Cedar River. I was too fatigued from illness to hike very far, so I set myself up in a comfortable chair that had a footrest, armrests, a place to put your water bottle - the whole works. I had intended to read or write. But I ended up slipping into a reverie of the sounds around me. Bit by bit I heard more and more of the gentle sounds around me. The quiet river just a few yards away down the bank; the sounds of children shouting to one another in the distance. Bit by bit I heard more and more until, after a long time, I finally heard the quiet sound of the wind going through the cedars. Pure bliss. I sat there for a full hour until my family returned. For the first time since falling ill a few years before than, I felt totally refreshed.
As I remembered this, and tried to recreate that serenity (there's that word again), I head the music playing and often turning off for short bits. Slowly I began to actually feel which part of my head was causing the sensors to shut off the music. The number one culprit was the jaw and the back of the throat. When I kept my throat as open and steady as an organ pipe as I breathed, the music stayed on. Whenever my jaw pulled back, the throat closed, and the music would go off.
While practicing by myself later in the afternoon, I remembered a bit of advice from meditation instruction for mindful breathing. Let your tongue lie loose at the bottom of your mouth, but have the tip of your tongue gently touch the roof of your mouth just behind the front teeth. When you do this, you keep the tongue from shutting off the throat.
But the beautiful part of practicing by myself was that I remembered the day after my riverside meditation. We all went tubing down that same river. A leisurely float down the shallow, lazy river. I loved it. And then two special things happened. First, a doe and her youngster decide to cross the river just ahead of me and my nephew. They calmly splashed across and disappeared into the thicket. I hadn't been that close to a deer in a long time, and the deer I had always seen before were either standing at the roadside waiting to cross or dead at the roadside because of supremely bad timing. But here this gentle scene.
But it got better. My nephew and I were far ahead of the rest of the family. Then I noticed a bald eagle circling over our heads. Without warning, it dropped to the river just a few yards ahead of my nephew then swooped back up. It was fishing. It circled above again, then dove again. On the fifth or so try, it caught a fish and flew away. I was in awe.
So as I practiced by myself in the afternoon, I remembered the deer and the eagle. Then I began to recall other close encounters with wild animals that were so beautiful they made time seem to stand still. Other deer, other eagles (there's a nest near my home), the red fox that patrols my garden, a woodchuck that started trying to dig a hole beneath my home - now there was an animal not easily intimidated. It could be three feet away from me, and it would just look at me, then calmly continue on its path. The catbird that fell to the patio when I was nine years old. It had flown into my bedroom window. I rushed downstairs and outside to see if the bird had recovered. It was sitting upright but unsteady. I put my cupped hands near the bird, hoping to catch it. But to my surprise, it stood up and walked into my hands! I instinctively closed my hands around it, keeping it warm as it recovered from shock. Then, when it felt better, it wiggled in my hands. I opened them, the bird stepped onto the deck, then flew away.
Yes, it was relaxing by submitting myself to a sense of wonder. And perhaps that the lesson I learned today, the big lesson. Moments of wonder - and the remembering of them - are life-giving. It is good to be full of wonder.
Maybe that's why healthy babies and young children can withstand such extreme changes in their bodies as they grow ever so fast. They are filled with wonder. Just watch them!
I agree with Barbara Taylor Brown when she says in her latest book that her favorite parts of the Bible are not the theology, but the places of wonder. Angels appearing and saying "Behold!" Jesus healing a person who then is filled with the Spirit. Miracles. It's a mystical faith, not a theological one.
So perhaps all this dry, technological therapy is triggering much deeper changes - that is my hope.
posted by Elizabeth | 5:15 PM
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