Talking to the Body: 'Soft' Biofeedback During BWE

Something that separates Neurofeedback from Brainwave Entrainment (BWE) is that the latter is a stimulus given 'to' your brain (choose-a-frequency), and the former is simply information 'about' your brain (change yourself to make the information change). One is doing something to you and you are reacting, the other is you doing something and the other thing is reacting.

One problem with BWE is that since it does not have EEG biofeedback (BF) monitoring involved, you don't actually know how your brain is responding to a given stimulus. I mean you might notice you feel more relaxed or more anxious but that is not specific enough in this case. This becomes a bigger issue when you understand that while humans are all pretty 'similar in general' -- alpha range frequencies are alpha for everybody "generally" -- we are all pretty 'unique in specific' -- some people will respond very clearly to 10 Hz and others to 9 Hz and some to 11.27 Hz. If one had BF info they could see what frequencies their brain responded to most notably or not at all.

Because BWE does not have BF you have to "guess in the dark". Or experiment extensively, and hope the result is clear to you, and because frequencies appear to be affective/effective to the point of the second decimal, that means even a 2 Hz range could in theory be 200 optional degrees of possibility.

Effective BWE, contrary to the "using bineural and using lots of frequencies" commercial myth I've been previously marketed at to believe I guess, is best done with a single frequency (or if using 2, using different kinds of tones, or a different kind of stimulation such as light + sound). So you can see that if you are left to sheer experimentation, in a second decimal point step, in a range of base frequencies of 0 to (I don't even know the top number but it's in the thousands at least, although MOST entrainment is done between 3-50 it appears), that could take forever.

But it made me wonder about Biogram Theory, about muscle testing, even about the most simple biofeedback. It made me wonder about Richard Bandler's NLP lectures related to mental tools and visualizations.

Why is it that one would be doing a session at X frequency for 20-30 minutes, and then the next day another and so on? Would it not be more constructive to get the mind suggestible, then tell the mind what you want to do, then go through the options so the mind can experience each of them briefly, and then just ASK the mind which is best? Now, if you have to speak, move, write something down, that will pull Beta into the mix I believe even if your eyes stay closed but hopefully at that point it's less an issue. You could ask the mind to show you a certain kind of picture(s) to represent a given answer or status. You could ask for a 5-star rating display or a thermometer or a numbered dial, anything that would tell you something about each frequency point in response to whatever criteria you are asking it to measure or relate to.

So for example you'd make a session that verbally explained you would be walking through a given set of frequencies. You take off the ramp (the auto-setting that 'graduates' one frequency to the next) so that the shift from one to the next is more noticeable. You give a note keying off the attention when the change to the next happens. You tell your body that you want it to experience these and then tell you which of those is (check one): most healthy; or best for absorbing suggestions about topic XYZ; or best for the brain adapting a frequency following response; or whatever the desired outcome is.

In theory, you should be able to 'map' your mind's opinion about all of it. Even for the higher frequencies you could do the suggestion part in lower frequency with a sort of post hypnotic command to show the visualization type responses during the later time.

Using a Biogram approach (finally, all my hypnosis-nlp-biofeedback-biogram work from years past is finding some use again!), you could design a mental tool that would be even more specific. For example you could create a scale from 0-100 and put the number of the frequency on it so it represents (for example) 8.00 to 8.99 Hz. You could add a little section off the side for 'not applicable / not on this scale.' Then you could simply ask your body to show you with a little dot or something, what frequencies would be best for dealing with _____. You could give it a gradient for example, use the color scale from red to violet with red the least and violet the most, or some other format like that. Using this approach you could get information on multiple points at once including variances in those points. Then you would know better what frequencies to use for your own unique brain for whatever.

Biogram also does a type of clearing. The only tech I know that addresses this same idea is Scientology although differently and I think with a lot less science approach (though I do think their palm-on-body, focus-attention-here is a very good technique). In Biogram you can scan your body using a biofeedback monitor, with instructions to your body to raise the tone or react when you reach a part of your body that 'has repressed or stored biochemical related to subject X'. Or, you can simply tell it to react to how much the overall body has related to that concept or injury or whatever, and then in either case, you work on having the body release that biochemical and put it in the waste disposal systems of the body. So it occurs to me you could in theory if you have problems to work out ask your body to to show you the frequencies which you "most need" to work with in order to release anger/fear about ___ or increase positive feelings or strength in ___ or whatever.

I mean the thing is right now there is not so much research--sure, lots, but monumental amounts left to be done even on a lot of basics--plus each person is unique--plus there are multiple different areas of frequency that seem to work on the same stuff (might be harmonics of the same number for example, or...?).

So if there were a way to use the amazing ability of 'mental tools' and 'visualization as biofeedback' to essentially DESIGN biofeedback into the process of brainwave entrainment, I think one could accomplish a great deal. I have worked with this concept in the past without the benefit of braintech and it was very successful so I suspect that with braintech it could be even more successful.

The odd thing is out of everything I have read I have not seen a single note or mention that addresses this kind of thing. I wonder if it's possible that my past work with biogram, which is a unique approach and distinct theory limited to the man I studied with for it, combined with my NLP background, has simply given me the idea which albeit kind of obvious just hasn't occurred to anybody else.

PJ

.