NeuroFeedback, NeurOptimal and Electroencephalography

It's time for a little update.

Recap: France and I rented the machine for 1 month on March 13 ==> 19 days so far.

We decided to offer this type of treatment to our children and some friends. And one of our children asked if two of her friends could also benefit from this kind of treatment.

Number of people participating in the experience: 12

Here is a brief summary. To protect the privacy of others, I will use random letters to represent them and will use the same letters when the experiment is over for the final report.

DN: 15 treatments. Significant improvement in her sleep quality. Calmer, more intuitive, better feeling as a therapist, frees herself from certain family programs and past lives. Very, very excited about the results in her present life. She has at least five other treatments planned.

MD: 5 treatments. She was skeptical and thought of taking only five treatments. Finally she has decided to take 5 more treatments. She has seen a beginning of change but will share her impressions with us more at the end.

MN : 4 treatments. It worked a lot on the emotional level. Fluctuation in her daily energy level. She has also planned to take at least 5 other treatments upon her return from her cruise.

GN: 3 treatments. No comment yet but decided to rent the machine with her boyfriend for a week. Serious car accident with PTSD.

JS: 5 treatments. No comments for the moment. She accompanies her daughter LL.

LL : 3 treatments. Child with great difficulty. She was born without a corpus callosum. Let us note that this child never wanted to draw and that since the first care, she draws what completely surprised her mother JS.

JL: 15 treatments. She sleeps better, more energy and it worked at the emotional level in the awareness of his family behaviors. Daughter of France. She wants to take at least another 5 to 10 treatments.

CH : 11 treatments. She sleeps much much better and she has not had a full night of sleep for over 50 years following an assault trauma. Calmer and she starts to respect her rhythm. She had a dream that allowed her to free herself from her trauma.

KR : 7 treatments. Daughter of France. She is surprise to see that her concentration is better during his current hospital internship. She has at least three more treatments planned.

LM: 5 treatments. Child also with great difficulty. Grandson of France. Started using the toilet, so he doesn't use diapers anymore. He talks a lot and he is able to say clearly some words. Teachers at his special school have noticed these changes. He has had a couple of very good nights sleep and her mom is very encouraged by the results. He should still receive at least 3 to 5 treatments.

France: 19 treatments. As soon as she can, she will share her impressions and feelings with the group.

Gandalf : 23 treatments ( 4 in 2 weeks, one month break and 19 in 19 days). After trying a lot of things, a nervous tic following a car accident where I had been hit and propelled into the air when I was 8 years old finally disappeared. Another trauma of my childhood in terms of discomfort has also disappeared. It worked at the emotional level and that allowed me to fix some programs that consumed a lot of my energy. Much calmer and so much less nervous that when I was lying down and I put my hand on the belly of France she felt a great nervousness as if my hand was still restless. Now, when I put my hand on her belly, she feels a very calm sensation. Very very happy with the results and I plan to take at least 10 more treatments. Hoping that the results, the new paths are really there to stay.
 
Turgon said:
I've been listening to this podcast today with Val Brown and Dave Asprey and in it, he uses the example of school or studying. Paraphrasing what Val Brown said, say a person is studying for a big exam but doesn't really know what to study for specifically in order to pass, the feedback to correct that isn't given until after taking the test and receiving our grades for it. Which he says, is too late for the brain to have actually made the necessary changes and focus on what was important that would have helped pass. He says the same thing works with trauma's. The brain starts to follow the pathway of a trauma, or programs/narratives, and the brain isn't aware of it until we are immersed and start re-experiencing the lived terror, as he called it. So as the felt experience and memories of trauma's or programs start to surface during a neurofeedback session, your brain is getting real-time feedback to what's happening and being given a chance to correct itself before submerging too far into whatever it is that is coming to surface that prevents someone from being in the present. At least that's how I understood it.
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Speaking of too late feedback, there is something that I was thinking about video feedback. I already mentioned the possible difference in the parts of the brain that video and audio feedback affect. However, I also think that there can be a difference in the feedback lag that the person is receiving, which might explain why the video feedback is not as much effective as audio.

I think that the problem with video feedback is that it has too big lag. The cause of that problem lies in the monitor technology, and this is the reason why so many PC gamers prefer buying specialized monitors that have a low input lag. You can see example of it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjECJ9AJOxI

The solution to that problem would be to output the neurofeedback video to the low input lag monitor (and monitors are generally better that TV's in that regard). Here is a list of monitors and TV's according to their input lag: https://displaylag.com/display-database/

Of course, that would require spending money on buying a new monitor, if you don't already have one, so the next solution that you could also try to improve the video feedback is free. And that is to play the video during the session that has 60 frames per second, instead of usual DVD/Blue-ray movie that has only 24 frames per second. The logic for that would be that the more frames per second you have, the more fine grained feedback you will receive. And for that you can use videos from Youtube that have option for 720p60 or 1080p60 in "Settings -> Quality".
 
For sessions 4 & 5, I decided to focus less on the sensations in my head area and just close my eyes, and focus on breathing. I'm not so sure about what's happening internally now, and whether my previous analysis about the system's effects on my nervous system were correct.

An interesting thing happened yesterday, where I was out with my father for lunch. I was thinking about groceries that I wanted to buy (we were planning to go to the grocer after lunch), and what I wanted to cook. The thinking seemed to slowly become more and more intense, ruminative and began to have a tone of desperation in it. I then thought - what is happening? Am I slipping into a "trauma vortex" or a contraction here? I kept awareness on the emotions underlying the thoughts, they kept slipping away, but I kept chasing them on, and bypassing/denying the hold of the thinking. After a while of this, connecting back to that anxious feeling beneath - I felt somewhat calmer and in a way, victorious. I also started engaging with my father and the waitstaff which helped me regain a sense of normality. Interestingly, as I got up, I remember feeling quite a bit of relief and lightness - which tells me that what's going on up here in my head is very much linked to the body, and often in ways that I hardly am cognizant of.

Another emotional memory happened just before sitting down for lunch with my dad. I felt anger towards him. It was because he was moving slowly as we were exiting the parking lot, and that he couldn't keep up with me. Luckily the worst thing that happened was that I stopped holding the door for him a second too early as we were entering the mall. No damage done but it's interesting to see this come up again. I used to have this anger for my father's perceived weakness come up more frequently in the past. With that anger also comes the guilt for feeling angry which normally would throw me into another loop. That didn't come up this time - I was able to be more emotionally aware, essentially. However, there is still a lot of noise (mainly scattered and fragmented thoughts) surrounding the emotions (be they primary or secondary) which obscures a clear link to feeling.

Yesterday I had the idea of starting some simple physical exercises. I was also auto-suggested a posture correction routine on YouTube which produced in me a literally whole-body reaction, which seems to be telling me that I needed to reconnect to my body. As I watched the video - not doing anything, just watching - I started this intense yawning and getting the feeling of some energy being released from my muscles. It sort of seems to mean that my head has been keeping my body in an unhealthy postural state, and it has been going on for a week or more, I think. I also noted a huge shift in personality and quality of thoughts after the physical exercise and some of these postural correction exercises. I recently had a debate with my brother about the virtues of top-down control versus bottom-up body-based awareness - with his argument culminating with the statement "Get outta your head" :-[. I've gotta say that he's right that I did need the bodily connection. It's slow but my relationship with my brother is getting better as well - it may sound odd but it is mirroring my relationship with my own body.

As a matter of fact, in one of his videos Val Brown mentions that he suggested Yoga to one of his earlier clients as one of the ways to consolidate the experience gained from NO training. That's another body-centered work, which Val Brown himself seems to have some background in. Anyway, just thought I'd throw it in there.

I'm not going to be able to do any sessions next week. Dennis, the trainer/practitioner is on a trip out of state, and I'll be going on a short trip to meet a family friend and to attend an old schoolmate's wedding. So, I will continue with session 6 the week after next.

Also, I got a call from the project manager of the construction project that I am working in during the 5th session - I called him back and he asked me where I was. I evaded the question a bit, because I was worried that he wouldn't be very happy about the fact that I was away on working hours (I had already discussed this and got my manager's approval, but not the project manager) but he kept inquiring, so I told him. It didn't turn out bad at all but I remember feeling very anxious and in fact, terrified "of being found out" during that conversation. I distinctly remember that last session as being a very hectic day and managed to reach home at only 12 am because of the traffic and rainy weather. I'm not very surprised when these things happen any more, I just have to take it as they come and roll with the punches.

This is the video on the postural correction:

https://youtu.be/g-7ZWPCWv0U
 
Gandalf said:
I will give more details later on but France and I have rented one for 1 month and so far I have done 17 sessions in 17 days and it is doing marvels. My goal is now to do 30 sessions which means one every day. I might try a couple of days with 2 sessions in the same day too.
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That sounds really good Gandalf. Let us know how the twice a day sessions go, as I am thinking of doing that as well.
 
Merci à tous de vos partages qui sont si intéressants.
Tout particulièrement le rapport de Gandalf avec les enfants...

Thank you all for sharing that are so interesting.
Especially Gandalf's relationship with children...
 
Wow Gandalf, how amazing. Thanks to share all these experiences with your friends. This is superb.
 
loreta said:
Wow Gandalf, how amazing. Thanks to share all these experiences with your friends. This is superb.
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That is amazing - so great to hear about such amazing transformations! :thup:


Had my 7th session on Tuesday and the past couple of weeks have been rough going. Glad others have mentioned that sessions 5-10 could get a bit rocky as this sure has been. The anxiety is still lessened but have been feeling very hyperactive, both physically and mentally with bouts of insomnia – either taking ages to get to sleep, waking up at odd hours or just tossing and turning during the night because my mind just won’t get quiet. Over the past two nights though, things have quieted down and I am sleeping much better and remembering more dreams which are quite vivid.

Also, experiencing some emotional detox with bursts of anger. It seems that a lot of buried emotions are surfacing that have long needed processing. That said, what’s interesting is that I sense the presence of an observer who is calmly watching the emotional ups and downs to keep me from identifying too strongly. In the past, it was more difficult and scary to feel such strong emotions, but now I can let myself feel them, acknowledge what’s behind them without automatically trying to dissociate in various ways.

Had an interesting thing happen last week during a conversation with my daughter – it was tense because we were discussing some uncomfortable things going on in the family. Despite the fact that we were both in agreement on what was going on, at one point during the conversation, I felt an urge to break connection, to dissociate in some way from the intensity. But I caught myself in that moment and made a conscious effort to stay present. It was such a revelation because I don’t remember ever noticing that so clearly before; it’s very encouraging.
 
As some others have reported, I’ve started getting sleep issues around the 4th session. Though at first, I didn’t have any problem falling asleep. I’d also sleep the night, usually waking up once during the night to use the bathroom, then go right back to sleep – which is normally my pattern. The issue is that the next day, I’d feel as if I had been up all night. It’s not that I would feel ‘groggy’ but more like ‘spaced out’ and mentally exhausted.

After the 5th session I started to experience the falling asleep issue, where I felt too awake to go to sleep. I decided to take some melatonin, just a small amount (about 0.6mg), and that seemed to do the trick. Fell asleep in about 15min. I normally avoid melatonin because even a bit too much leaves me very groggy for the whole day and it's very difficult to wake up from. The small amount I took was enough to get me to sleep without the melatonin ‘hangover’. I slept well and woke up refreshed the next day. However, that didn’t last long. The next night, I also had trouble getting to sleep, so I did the same thing. Next morning, woke up again feeling like I didn’t sleep all night, even though I slept over 8 hours and even had long involved dreams! That same pattern continued but around the 6th session I stopped feeling super awake before bed and was able to fall asleep without melatonin, unfortunately, still felt like I haven’t slept in the mornings.

Last night I did my 7th session. I was hoping that something might have changed, as the previous 3 sessions my divergence scores went up. This time, it went down, and thought there might be some correlation to the sleep issue. But I also woke up as if I haven’t slept. So that’s probably not connected to it.

What I suspect is that whatever is going on in my brain, whatever it is it wants to do, happens in the night. Either my brain is slow at working out what it needs to, or there’s just a lot there in subconscious, or it is overstimulating me and the effects last a long time. I dunno. But it leaves me tired the next day. So my guess is that by the time I do the next session 2-3 days later, it may be that whatever is happening isn’t finished what it needs to do and it’s too much. My gut feeling is that I need to space them out more to something like once a week. Although it seems like for the majority it is better to do them more frequently, I’m not sure in my case I should be doing that. So I think I’m gonna give it a week and see what happens.

Besides the sleep issue, it is difficult to say whether what I’ve noticed the last couple of weeks is due to NO or because I’ve been going about my day mentally tired. I would say what I notice now is not so much as an expanded range of emotions, but more like the intensity is stronger. Both negative and positive emotions are more pronounced and sit with me longer, but also fluctuate as mentioned before. Lately I was feeling at times withdrawn and just wanting to be alone. I normally enjoy being around people and interacting with others, so noticing this was strange. But it could just be because I’m feeling cranky from waking up feeling unrested. But it’s not all negative – I also have been feeling less of the ‘inner critic’ holding me back. I feel like I can write or say what I want to say or feel without too much fear attached to it. There’s lots I want to say but often hold back because I think it’s stupid and so don’t say anything. So I think that’s improved a bit, but it’s not like I’m gonna go out and write a novel or anything. :P

Thinking about how this works, it looks like one of the many things that training with NO will improve are the connections in the brain. That improved connection, would allow men for example, to experience deeper emotions and heightened intuition (ie, 'feminine' qualities) and women, 'masculine' qualities (eg, assertiveness, decisiveness). Though on the whole, that greater integration would allow one to experience a fuller, richer life - with more freedom to ‘be’. Once the brain isn’t constantly fighting to maintain equilibrium, perhaps this new found energy could be used to do more productive things, stuff that leads to one’s aims and generally improve their quality of life... maybe. It’s just a theory and it could be that I’m being too optimistic about it. But we’ll see!
 
aleana said:
Had an interesting thing happen last week during a conversation with my daughter – it was tense because we were discussing some uncomfortable things going on in the family. Despite the fact that we were both in agreement on what was going on, at one point during the conversation, I felt an urge to break connection, to dissociate in some way from the intensity. But I caught myself in that moment and made a conscious effort to stay present. It was such a revelation because I don’t remember ever noticing that so clearly before; it’s very encouraging.
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That's terrific that you were able to notice and head off a pattern like that Aleana. Did your daughter notice a difference in your interactions as you stayed present? It must have changed the tenor of the conversation.
 
Awesome report, Gandalf! Maybe you can suggest that the children with difficulties do more sessions than originally planned? Those results are already pretty amazing, so why stop? Anyway, it's so good to hear that it's helping your loved ones, and yourself!

annp said:
In the past, it was more difficult and scary to feel such strong emotions, but now I can let myself feel them, acknowledge what’s behind them without automatically trying to dissociate in various ways.
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That's great! I think that just taking that "edge" off of certain emotions makes a world of a difference in how we deal with things, and how we can cope, not to mention then having more "room" to correct the thinking errors associated with those paralyzing emotions. There is still a lot of work to do, but this is a huge help, IMO.
 
Chu said:
Awesome report, Gandalf! Maybe you can suggest that the children with difficulties do more sessions than originally planned? Those results are already pretty amazing, so why stop? Anyway, it's so good to hear that it's helping your loved ones, and yourself!
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That is exactly what we have suggested. ;-)
 
Pretty amazing reports everyone! It's all very promising!

I too want to give a report too. Overall I felt lots of differences after NO. I've already mentioned feeling less anxious, but this goes to a very deep level, where something seems to have shifted and I have the impression that I can just "be" without so much worrying all the time. For me, this has been huge and I can see the effects in my life and interactions with others. And others have mentioned it too (that I seem "happier") (And I feel more "natural" in general). As others said, this doesn't mean that I don't feel negative emotions, or even anxiety and fear sometimes, but there's a big difference in how much these emotions seem to hold me back. And another thing is that I find myself laughing more when I see something funny, but truly laughing, like from the belly, not just smiling as I usually did.

I'm really impressed by this so far. But I also want to say that even if NO seems to be helping me a lot, I also think that there's more to my improvement than just that, and I think that it comes combined with other recent events in my life that have shifted my perspective and inspired me deeply, plus all the recent readings we've been doing which brought much more understanding about how our minds work and how we can work with it.

Now, besides all these nice things, last week I had a bout of anxiety on Friday and it was quite intense. But also different in a very subtle way. In a moment I started feeling as if all the anxiety that wasn't there came to me again all at once, and even though I did feel quite terrible, all this emotion seemed to remain mostly in my body, I could feel myself shaking (very subtle, not strong shakes) and the general sensations associated with fear, but I wasn't making catastrophic ideas about it, or becoming desperate. I felt it in my body, it lasted for a few minutes and then I was OK. I also did pipe-breathing and that helped.

During the weekend I was a bit depressed and pessimistic. And then yesterday I had my 6th session and I can say that overall my mood is much better and I'm feeling more balanced than the last few days. So I think that the NO is moving lots of things but the effects don't last the whole week and maybe that's when the contraction comes. I guess that I could do more frequent sessions, but I also think is a good exercise to learn how to deal with contraction/expansion better and work on the issues that arise during the process.

fabric said:
Thinking about how this works, it looks like one of the many things that training with NO will improve are the connections in the brain. That improved connection, would allow men for example, to experience deeper emotions and heightened intuition (ie, 'feminine' qualities) and women, 'masculine' qualities (eg, assertiveness, decisiveness). Though on the whole, that greater integration would allow one to experience a fuller, richer life - with more freedom to ‘be’. Once the brain isn’t constantly fighting to maintain equilibrium, perhaps this new found energy could be used to do more productive things, stuff that leads to one’s aims and generally improve their quality of life... maybe. It’s just a theory and it could be that I’m being too optimistic about it. But we’ll see!
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That's very interesting fabric! I've been thinking about this too because I kind of felt like incorporating more of those good masculine qualities, so it could be one way of explaining those changes, although I don't know if that would be the case for everyone. Maybe it depends on what each person needs for more balance too, or it brings up traits that were already there and were repressed for some reason.
 
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