What Is Biofeedback Training?

If you know how to ride a bike you're already skilled at using one form of biofeedback.  Learning to go straight ahead and stop, rather than ending up in the flower bed or scraping your elbow on the sidewalk, involved learning to notice signals about your state of balance coming from your inner ear, muscles, and eyes.   Gradually, you developed an ability to respond to these signals by making small muscle movements that kept you upright. You   didn't think about which muscles to move, you just noticed what worked, and learned to do it consistently.   After a while, this learning became so ingrained that you stopped even being aware of the constant process of reading body signals and responding accordingly.  You just did it.

Biofeedback training, like riding a bike, involves developing the ability to self-regulate some aspects of your body's functioning that you normally cannot consciously control.   You do this by making subtle physical or physiological adjustments in response to a continuous flow of information from your body about how you're doing (feedback).

The aspects of your body's functioning that are of particular interest in biofeedback training are your states of arousal and attention.    For example, if you become so stressed when taking a test that you are unable to recall what you've learned you are over-aroused and unable to focus your attention on conscious recall.   In contrast, if you habitually fall asleep while reading, or exhibit a flat disinterest in virtually everything around you, you are under-aroused.

What Is Biofeedback Used For?

BFT is currently being used as an effective treatment for a number of concerns, including attention deficit disorder, chronic pain, sleep disorders, anxiety and depression, substance abuse recovery and recovery from brain injuries.   In the Counseling Center it is being used to provide assistance for:

• Stress Management
• Anxiety
• Depression
• Optimal Performance

BFT sessions are one-to-one interactions with a trained professional and charges are the same as those for other individual counseling services.   At present, these charges are $15.00 for an initial BFT intake assessment, and $30.00 per session thereafter.

Concerns such as depression and stress are sometimes understandable responses to difficult life circumstances.   In these situations BFT can help you manage your symptoms but other actions are probably necessary to resolve the source of the problem.   Counseling is likely to be more effective in getting you “unstuck” in such circumstances.  Similarly, if your body is sleep deprived, BFT will not "trick it” into getting by with less.  BFT is more likely to be the treatment of choice when you are experiencing a more chronic problem that seems to be more or less unresponsive to changes in life circumstances.

For most forms of BFT, there are no known negative side effects.   Neurotherapy, which is BFT using brain wave patterns, can sometimes produce short-term reactions such as increased or decreased sleepiness, headaches, or agitation.  Such reactions disappear within hours or, at most, days.

BFT begins with an initial assessment or “intake”.   During this session your trainer will gather some information about your concern and your history, and use sensors placed on the surface of your skin to monitor baseline levels of aspects of your physiology that might be used in training.  On the basis of this information, your trainer will make a recommendation as to whether BFT is likely to be helpful, and, if so, what kind of training might be most effective for you.  Your trainer may also suggest additional or alternative responses, such as personal counseling or medical referrals.   You can then make a decision about how you wish to proceed.

BFT is an emerging technology and there are presently few generally available print resources that provide useful introductions.   There are, however, a number of good sources of information available on the web.  Here are some useful sites: