Traditionally, the concept of education involves a specific orientation toward learning as involving concentrated effort, often accompanied by boredom and discomfort. Within the paradigm of biofeedback training and education as presented here, however, learning is seen as a natural response to pleasurable experiences -- this is why such extensive measures to enhance the aesthetic appeal of training have been taken at the Bio Research Institute. At BRI, it has been observed that education and training are really two sides of the same coin, and that increased conceptual understanding enhances the mind/body training process, which in turn leads to a higher level of comprehension. For this reason, the areas addressed in the following section extend beyond what is usually thought of as the educational arena, that is, formal schooling, to encompass all aspects of life in which increased knowledge leads to fulfillment of individual potential.
Biofeedback education and training at BRI is based on the belief that such activities occur most efficiently in pleasant, encouraging surroundings, and that they require a philosophical shift on the part of the client. This is a shift from the culturally dominant belief that it is only through conscious effort and pain that success may be achieved (no pain, no gain), to an understanding of passive volition, which involves "not trying" in order to attain control of psychophysiological systems (with pleasure comes greater gain).
Such a philosophical shift is facilitated, for example, by repeated exposure to shifting numerics at the bottom of the computer screen displaying psychophysiological charts or graphs, and the trainer's repeated calling of the client's attention to his or her current state. Information presented in this way, without emphasis on consciously trying to manipulate or change the body systems involved, gradually "sinks in" and empowers the client to gain control over these systems. This runs contrary to traditional education practice, with its emphasis on testing, conscious effort and punishment and reward. Indeed, how quickly training proceeds at BRI is related to the depth of the client's belief that conscious effort is the only path to achievement.
As has been discussed, the philosophical bias of western civilization has led to a fractionated view of human existence, in which the fact that the human organism operates as a whole is frequently lost. This is reflected in traditional biofeedback training by the tendency simply to equate headache with a need for EMG training. At BRI, the multimodal approach to psychophysiological monitoring allows the practitioner and client access to much more information, and alternative methods of achieving the desired goal. In addition, BRI's commitment to learning through positive experiences is a vital element of biofeedback training. In order to achieve new psychophysiological patterns, individuals must overcome their basic resistance to change, which may be accompanied by an understandable reluctance to deal with painful issues (even though we may not address these issues in training). Self-esteem may also be at stake, for seeking change may be associated with something being wrong or broken in the mind of many clients. In addition, the speed at which observable change takes place may seem too slow. The strategy for dealing with such impediments at BRI is to make the training process so inherently enjoyable and rewarding that clients become motivated by a desire to pursue the training for its own sake, and the resultant benefits are seen as byproducts of the process.
If this attitude toward learning were incorporated into existing educational systems, some significant changes would occur. For example, the emphasis on the brain's left hemisphere capacities (such as verbalization, rote memory, etc.) would be augmented to include a more global learning approach that deliberately cultivated the right hemisphere as well. Experience at the BRI has suggested that learning is facilitated when individuals are encouraged to create self-regulated comfortable learning strategies.
In addition, mind/body training from an early age would promote the development of specific capabilities most appropriate to the client at hand. Increasingly, we recognize that specific regions of the brain contribute to specific functions. Enhancement of activity within certain regions of the brain, through pleasurable and entraining EEG feedback strategies such as educational video games, would stimulate the child to learn in specific disciplines, creating more "gifted" children by allowing them to develop the various parts of the brain that contribute to the development of academic and artistic skills.
Further, such mind/body training would be directed towards facilitating appropriate levels of arousal during the learning process, thereby preventing the psychocellular association between learning and unpleasant, uncomfortably focused effort, in short, preventing the development of an inappropriate physiological strategy for learning.
The potential applications of mind/body training, specifically biofeedback training, within traditional educational systems include the utilization of psychophysiological laboratories within primary and secondary schools, which children would attend as regularly as other classes. Mind/body training would be incorporated as part of the regular curriculum. Students from an early age would become familiar with their own physiologies and responses to various stimuli. Such training would be particularly useful for teaching stress education to children at a young age, to prevent stress-related accidents and the development of stress-related disease, and set the stage for psychophysiophilosophic development throughout the child's life. The goal of training would be to increase each child's self-knowledge, and empower him or her to take responsibility for self-development.
Advanced mind/body labs geared to facilitate the development of complex psychophysiological capabilities would be directly useful in helping children learn more information more quickly, and integrate it more efficiently with other information. In addition, by having physiological feedback available while studying, students would develop a broader sense of how they actually felt about what they were learning.
From a technical standpoint, biofeedback used in the laboratories and classrooms would be very different from that available today in universities and private practice. In the classroom, work stations equipped with comfortable chairs and monitors would be available for each child, with sensors for different systems embedded in the chairs themselves, providing information with minimal preliminary hookup procedures and restrictive sensor applications.
A multi-media classroom with course materials stored on laser discs would augment the traditional classroom. Educational topics would be presented by teachers from a master station. Documentary-like programs on various subjects would be accompanied by sound and/or dialogue at each work station. For example, when learning about the geography and animal life of Africa, students might see and hear a pride of lions, and later discuss their observations of animal behavior. While watching the film, they would also see a portion of the screen dedicated to questions about the lesson, to which they could respond either by typing on a keyboard or writing the answer on an electric sketch pad. Students working individually could choose to listen to the questions over a speaker and respond verbally or in writing.
Accompanying the educational presentation would be a portion of the screen in which the student's own psychophysiological activity was displayed. This biofeedback information would supply a felt-sense of contact to the material being presented; the student would be aware of how he or she was responding to the information. This awareness would extend far beyond what is currently available to students. Instead of being limited to the self-knowledge that they are either bored or interested, students would have a far more precise sense of the way in which they were interacting with the material being presented, and let them link their consciousness states, i.e., interest level, to their physiological states: are they drifting, peaking, or appropriately activated?
Study skills would be enhanced when students learned which levels of mind/body activity were most appropriate for them personally in relation to individual subjects; they would develop an economy of use for various physiological systems when studying particular curricula. If students had an awareness of their psychophysiological states while studying, they would be able to avoid both over- and under-arousal; they would be able to catch themselves when their attention was fading, or when they were "trying" so hard that they defeated their purpose (as in the case of test anxiety).
The inclusion of mind/body information with various areas of study would also aid in the student's overall integration of knowledge. For example, since their psychophysiological states would be reflected numerically, mathematics would have an immediate meaningful application, and simultaneous graphic displays of the same information would stimulate right-brain activity.
With practice in matching appropriate levels of mind/body activity to specific subjects for optimal learning, children would develop the capacity to shift between specialized states of consciousness with grace and ease. This ability would generalize beyond the classroom, enhancing the individual's ability to respond optimally in other life situations. Teachers assisted by psychophysiological monitoring of students would be aware of collective physiological responses occurring even when the class was quiet, and could take advantage of this by going more deeply into facets of the client that stimulated particular responses in the students. These responses would provide a data base leading to refined academic programs geared to student interest and excitement. Individual students would benefit from teachers being aware when their interest began to diminish, and/or times when the student showed inappropriate activation not conducive to learning.
Teachers provided with this kind of information would be able to extend classroom discipline beyond the maintenance of order in the classroom. It would be possible to promote genuine cooperation and interdependence between students through mutual participation in enjoyable feedback systems, i.e., instead of being sent to the principal's office or the "time out" room, students who found it difficult to get along could both participate in the creation of a mandala in the psychophysiology lab, with both parties driving the biomonitor, simultaneously lowering their arousal levels after the conflict.
I suspect that such an educational system with such a psychophysiological component would significantly change our concepts of child development and maturity. It is exciting to imagine what children who had experienced such refined self-awareness from a young age might be like by the time they left school and entered the work force. Instead of being limited by the parameters of primary consciousness, in which much of the individual's life energy is spent in constant adjustment between inappropriate levels of arousal, such children would have highly developed secondary consciousness, and a ready ability to adjust their psychophysiological responses to life events. This ability to meet the environment with optimal, "relaxed yet alert" consciousness would foster increased use of the subtler human capacities such as intuition and creativity, which are currently most often overwhelmed by the cruder and more immediate characteristics of autonomic consciousness, such as competitive pack-animal behavior, etc.
The stages of human development that traditionally elicit particular social concern, such as adolescence, would be made more comfortable if children were trained from an early age to identify and cope with psychophysiological change. Mood swings, outbursts and misbehavior that are usually attributed to genetically programmed hormonal changes would be more manageable if the young individual were accustomed to being aware of mind/body phenomena and adjusting psychophysiological arousal to meet the needs of the situation. This would empower these young individuals and reduce their alienation from the rest of society by giving them body-centered tools to cope with physiological change.
In western culture, it is becoming increasingly difficult for adults to provide the kind of guidance that can help children navigate the ever-more-complex world in which we live. Many of the situations facing children today were not faced by their parents and teachers, and it is hard for an adult to serve as a "guiding light" in a world where he or she has had no experience comparable to that which the child is facing. If children were encouraged to develop their decision-making abilities through enjoyable mind/body education and training, they would be better able to cope with the multitude of complex stimuli and decisions that confront them. Such abilities to make better choices would also support them in dysfunctional family situations, creating the possibility that they would be able to break the cycle instead of repeating with their own children what their parents had done to them.
One way to begin experimenting with the educational model suggested above would be to incorporate psychophysiological monitoring within some classes at the university level. Because the discipline of psychology would clearly benefit from the potential learnings available from such a practice, it would make sense initially to include this psychophysiological component in some psychology classes.
Currently, psychology is taught and experienced largely as a mental process. Professors lecture, students listen and read, and then the class discusses what has been said and read. Although feelings and emotions are significant parts of the client matter of psychology, they are most often approached verbally, through discussion.
Psychophysiological monitoring would offer students and teachers a chance to be aware of their feelings and emotions in a more refined, quantifiable manner, at the precise moment that they occurred. This would provide a new and important dimension to the study of psychology.
A practical strategy for incorporating a psychophysiological element in the classroom, such as in a group process class, would be to periodically utilize a sophisticated biosystem along with an individual who had a good understanding of psychophysiology. Students would be able to observe firsthand how their feelings actually take place as physical events in their bodies.
One of the major complaints about using humans as subjects of psychological study is that they are unreliable due to their inability or disinclination to report subjective states accurately. With the aid of a psychophysiological monitor reflecting levels of activation, reliability would be increased because there would be quantifiable proof of physiological change when it occurred. The potential for error in self-reporting of feelings and responses would be reduced because, although the particular emotion involved with the changing physiology would not be specified, it would no longer be possible to an individual to ignore or be unaware of subtle physical responses being measured.
In the field of sports, physiological training could be used to help participants mimic premier athletes. For example, complex mind/body measurements might be taken of these athletes during their performances so that students might examine how their physiologies work in real time (during the sports event) and allow for optimization of the individual performance. This would yield training templates that others could use to train/retrain their physiologies to work at more optimal performance levels.
Musicians would benefit from psychophysiological training to relieve stage anxiety (as would athletes and others performing in public). Templates of optimum performances might be made for musicians in much the same manner as described above, so that students might be able to learn the mechanics of various instruments much more quickly than is now possible. Fine motor movements necessary to the playing of instruments could be monitored and feedback provided that would promote mastery of particular pieces. Eventually, neural teaching through stimulation of muscles that control the fingers, for example, to make correct movements will assist individuals learning to play various instruments.
Within the arts, the ability to drive visuals and create music in real time, that is, to create images and sounds through psychophysiological activity (such as brain wave recording and computerized graphic displays) rather than "by hand," will provide a means of achieving art work without the years and years of practice that now is required to develop the physical technique necessary to achieve such results. Such abilities would open the field of artistic expression to those who are not now recognizably talented, and also to those who are physically unable to perform the manipulations otherwise necessary for the production of art. Perhaps more significantly, the kind of art that we will be producing will be very different. It will be possible to express ourselves in artistic media through our psychophysiological systems that drive various visual displays, i.e., the creation of a mandala that corresponds to changing EEG patterns. Art therapy could make great use of such strategies, since they would allow immediate reflection of the individual's state of being as it changes in real time, and reflects psychic contents. Further, collective art forms would be more practically possible, since many people could work together simultaneously on the same image, and this might have particular therapeutic value within the family context.
Medical repair aided by advanced mind/body training would exceed the pain management done today, eventually leading to the regeneration of various systems, as well as the preservation of body systems well beyond current limits due to controlling the effects of stress.
Finally, spiritual development would be enhanced by extensive mind/body training (incorporated in one's way of life), just as it has traditionally through the disciplines of meditation, physical training (such as yoga asanas), and intense self-scrutiny as practices in various religions. The difference would be that the individual seeking this kind of development would be less restricted by considerations of time, and less forced to choose between spiritual practice and accomplishment of other life tasks involving participation in the secular world. Through systematic sensitization to increasingly subtler psychophysiological activity throughout one's lifetime, beginning in childhood, it would be possible to develop a spiritual sensitivity that until recently has only been accessible, if at all, through years of study.
As human society becomes ever more complex, it is increasingly clear that our generalized approach to daily living is limited in that it does not provide for optimum use of the human capacity for specialized focus. We are aware that different tasks require different applications of energy, i.e., the truck driver focuses his attention and utilizes his energy differently than the legal researcher, but we do not have a refined understanding of the psychophysiological states that would be most beneficial and productive for each endeavor.
Below is a discussion of particular specialized states of consciousness which correspond to different psychophysiological states. Some of these are common in our society, some are increasingly cultivated as useful, and some might be deliberately developed as a means of promoting personal and cultural evolution.
Various pathological states associated with mental disorders, although not usually thought of as specialized states of consciousness, may be considered reflective of particular consciousness states that have specific psychophysiological correlates. For example, physiological strategies for survival developed during childhood form a kind of specialized state, in that the individual consciously or unconsciously develops a unique mind/body matrix that requires years of "training" (practice) to establish. This can be as common as bad posture resulting from a childhood fear of being noticed, or as complex as multiple personality disorders, in which the individual develops a range of specialized states in response to traumatic life events.
The state of being "relaxed yet alert" is another specialized state in which an individual is able to maintain a level of alertness while exhibiting a relatively quiet physiology. This involves training to decouple autonomic responses that would otherwise automatically occur when the mind is in a heightened state of alertness. The generalized physiological response inherent in humans is that when the mind is alert, the body is alert; when the mind is quiet, the body is quiet.
I suspect that the relaxed yet alert state is the initial platform for launching other specialized states of consciousness that mankind will find beneficial, e.g., learning states to facilitate education, self-exploration, and spiritual development.
One of the goals of BRI has been to explore a wide range of consciousness states in order to gain a psychophysiological understanding of the further boundaries of the human experience. For example, a specialized state of consciousness experienced by an individual who exhibited unique psychophysiological activity in relation to "healing states" is described below.
G. S., a healer who had studied in a variety of spiritual disciplines to develop a specific healing technique, demonstrated his approach repeatedly at BRI. He exhibited unique and remarkable psychophysiological measures as well as a phenomenological description of these states.
It is clear that we unconsciously develop specialized states in response to various life events, and these become our generalized means of dealing with our environment. Through advanced mind/body training, it is also possible to deliberately develop and enhance specific, beneficial states of consciousness, making them more available for use in daily life.
I suspect that the process of developing particular templates for training specialized states of consciousness to facilitate learning in various areas of life would lead us to capabilities exhibited only occasionally by a few individuals, or never seen before. Rather than training to achieve specific states (to remedy problems or develop learning skills), it is necessary to explore advanced mind/body training for the sake of discovering and expanding our boundaries. Research to develop templates for the psychophysiological activities of specialists in various fields (such as musical virtuosos) would include investigation of specialized phenomenological states such as those typically categorized as parapsychological.