The path to personal and spiritual development can be cleared and illuminated through the discipline of biofeedback training. Biofeedback helps clients learn the self-regulation skills to cope with discomfort and pain, and in so doing, create new psychophysiological patterns that cultivate self-knowledge, self-confidence, intuition, and faith. In turn, clients find themselves freer to make choices that correspond with their deepest values, and transform their lives in congruence with their highest goals.
This case study in advanced mind/body training conducted at the Bio Research Institute (BRI) documents the developmental changes experienced by a client after extended training in multimodality biofeedback.
Celia, a single 46-year-old woman with 5 grown children, came to BRI complaining of severe tension and migraine headaches. She hoped that biofeedback would relieve her pain and help her "learn what triggers my emotions and how to quiet my mind."
Celia worked for the post office, and had been referred to BRI by a co-worker. During the past year, she had taken Fiorinal, codeine, Cafergot and hormones. She also used feverfew as an herbal remedy for her migraines. She had attended group psychotherapy, and was a member of a metaphysical church.
Celia's migraines had begun 7 months before, accompanied by nausea and pulsating pain on the left side of the head that lasted for 3 days at a time. To combat these symptoms, she had tried acupuncture, medication, and a jaw splint. She also described undergoing mild panic attacks when she was in public places.
Feeling that most of her life was overscheduled, Celia complained that she didn't "have time to do the things I want--to enjoy life." I asked if she could do one thing at a time and really focus her attention on it, and she replied, "No, I'm always worried about getting through on time, so I can cope with what's coming next." She could not leave her work at work; she "always knew I had to go back."
It was important for Celia to have time by herself, but it was not easy for her to take what she needed because it made her feel guilty. I asked how her work added or detracted from her home life, and she stated, "I have no energy, no life, no fun."
Celia's most important relationship was with her boyfriend She had been in this relationship for 5 years, and said that it was changing--"I'm holding in my feelings more, and I don't feel like being physically intimate." When I asked how easy it was for her to express her love, she said it depended on the person. When I asked what happened when she tried, she said, "I beat myself up mentally if I can't express it the way I want."
It was not easy for Celia to ask for help, and she felt scared and afraid of rejection when she tried. She saw herself as being more self-critical than self-accepting, and said that it was not easy for her to know what she wanted and then ask for it because she felt guilty thinking of herself. She told me she was currently experiencing a great deal of emotional stress and problems in her life.
Celia enjoyed hiking and walking on the beach, but she replied "none" when I asked how many hours she gave herself for these each week. I asked, "What new learnings or personal growth experiences have you undertaken in the past year?" and she replied, "I would like to quit my job and take courses to find out what I enjoy."
I explained to Celia that biofeedback is a learning process rather than a treatment, in which she would discover how she carried tension in her mind and body and gradually learn how to self-regulate body/mind activity, thereby freeing up energy to be used more productively. She would learn about her patterns of activation through measurement of temperature, skeletal muscle activity, sweat gland activity, heart rate, respiration, and right and left hemisphere brain waves. I described the training strategy we use at BRI, called BioIntegration, in which individuals are empowered through multimodality training with clear goal zones to achieve a rapid understanding of how they function in life and how life impacts them. I showed her the special instrumentation designed at the Institute that would accelerate the release of psychophysiological patterns of distress and help her transfer the skills she learned in clinical sessions to her everyday life.
Celia's initial measures revealed gross overactivation of the skeletal muscles (EMG), irregular respiration, excessive brain wave activity in the beta bandwidth (EEG), very low hand temperature, and depressed heart rate.
Since Celia's presenting complaint was migraine/tension headaches, a traditional biofeedback practitioner might have trained her in one or two channels of temperature or EMG (to address blood flow or muscle tension that might be causing the pain). At BRI, clients learn to coordinate awareness and activity simultaneously in several modalities. In Celia's case, this was fortunate, since the results of EMG training during the first ten sessions were mixed at best. Although her readings were lower by the tenth session than they had originally been, they did not approach the goal zone and did not show any clear pattern of reduced tension.
However, viewed in the light of many subsequent sessions, these readings revealed a pattern that repeated at consistently lower levels. This pattern also shifted physiological location, appearing first in the scalp and jaw readings, then reappearing many weeks later in the shoulder muscle readings.
This switching of activity patterns between jaw and scalp and shoulder EMG activity was also revealed in the readings taken during individual sessions. These patterns indicate Celia's particular psychophysiological mechanism that is activated periodically and that lasts for minutes and for weeks, possibly years. Over time, Celia learned to reduce system-wide activation to desirable levels.
Conclusions about Celia based on the traditional eight or twelve sessions of training would be startlingly different from those implied by advanced training. For example, the first several sessions of temperature training not only failed to increase hand temperature, they appeared to reflect a lessening of the relaxation response. Yet over the entire course of training, the client was able to achieve highly desirable levels of hand temperature. In the same way, EMG activity decreased over the first several sessions, but by no means as significantly as it did over the remaining sessions. The fact that patterns of increasing and decreasing activity appeared first in one channel, then weeks later in another suggests that such patterns serve to preserve an enduring personal strategy for survival that exists on a cellular level. Although these patterns are clearly ingrained and capable of switching location, Celia's case demonstrates that with sufficient training they can be changed, to the lasting benefit of the client.
Celia's psychological condition changed as significantly as her psychophysiological systems changed over the training period. She quit her job midway through her course of training, and for a few months she focused primarily on training, while including more pleasurable activities such as visiting with friends and reconnecting with family in her life. After approximately 10 sessions of training, she reported reduction in the frequency and intensity of headaches, and by the twentieth she reported being virtually headache free. Her anxiety at being in public situations also gradually disappeared.
As she became more adept at psychophysiological self-regulation, she summoned the courage to attempt a number of pursuits, including joining a women's group, studying Aikido, participating in a week-long self-exploration workshops and taking courses at the community college (this in spite of her previous belief that she would never be able to function in a college setting). In addition, she enrolled in and completed massage school and began seeing clients.
In her interpersonal relationships, Celia became much less dependent on others for approval and redirected her investment of energy away from the men in her life and towards herself. She took the risk of living alone for the first time in her life.
Celia began making more "right choices" in her life after learning that she was able to make significant and beneficial changes in her psychophysiological patterns and freeing herself from the discomfort caused by chronic system overactivation. These choices were "right" in the sense that they were congruent with her intuitive self-knowledge, which emerged as chronic sympathetic outflow began to subside as a result of training.
Celia's advanced training revealed patterns of psychophysiological activity that suggest why it may be so difficult to transcend established strategies for survival. Her progress toward her training goals revealed repeating patterns of system activation that diminished over time, but not without a struggle.
This struggle may be thought of as the effort of the self to transcend problematic states of consciousness that develop in response to various stressors and psychophysiological strategies for survival commonly developed during childhood and maintained thereafter.
BioIntegration provides the opportunity for clients to make increasingly subtle connections between psychological states and mind/body activity. In Celia's case, the realization of these connections led her to expand her focus beyond her presenting physical symptoms and generalize the skills she had developed to her broader life.
As she reduced the amount of energy required to maintain old patterns of inappropriate system activation, she developed the confidence and strength to make significant changes in her life, including leaving an unrewarding job, terminating an unsatisfying relationship, and exploring new areas of interest and avenues of personal growth.
As this case indicates, advanced biofeedback training not only results in a deepening of psychophysiological knowledge and skills, but provides a possibility for transformational change. Multisystem, multimodality training is a powerful means of addressing presenting complaints, and when pursued in depth, offers a framework for profound personal development..