Hartmann Thom - The Healing Power of Neurofeedback: the Revolutionary LENS Technique for Restoring Optimal Brain Function

The
HEALING POWER
of
NEUROFEEDBACK

The Revolutionary LENS Technique for Restoring Optimal Brain Function

STEPHEN LARSEN, Ph.D.

FOREWORD BY THOM HARTMANN

With contributions by Carla Adinaro, A.R.I.A. Cert. Wendy Behary, L.C.S.W. Lynn Brayton, Psy.D. Curtis Cripe, Ph.D. Mary Lee Esty, L.C.S.W., Ph.D. Thomas E. Fink, Ph.D. Sarah Franek, M.T.P. Beth Hanna, R.N. Kristen Harrington, M.A., L.M.F.T., A.I.B.T. Sloan Johnson, M.A. Robin Larsen, Ph.D. Joan Piper Mader, M.A. Len Ochs, Ph.D. Karen Schultheis, Ph.D. Evelyn Soehner, M.A. Theresa Yonker, M.D.

Healing Arts Press

Rochester, Vermont

This book is dedicated to Dr. Len Ochs: Inventor, Mentor, Healer, and Friend, and to a whole emerging generation of biofeedback clinician/technicians, of which he is an exemplar.

Len Ochs, clinical psychologist trained in biofeedback who originally developed LENS, the Low Energy Neurofeedback System

I am done with great things and big plans, great institutions and big success. I am for those tiny, invisible, loving human forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillaries....

WILLIAM JAMES, A LEADING NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN PHILOSOPHER AND PSYCHOLOGIST

The greatest thing, then, is to make the nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.

WILLIAM JAMES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This is a book about a revolutionary healing modality: the LENS type of neurofeedback, a gentle, noninvasive approach to healing that is, as of yet, unknown to most professionals and to the public. It is truly the most exciting development I have seen come down the pike in thirty-five years of practice as a biofeedback clinician, but it is far from a monolithic technology. During the second half of the twentieth century, as electronics grew in sophistication and power, so did biofeedback. As new equipment developed, new generations of clinicians sprang up who made better use of it to help people suffering from a myriad of problems. The best of this equipment, such as the hardware and software used in applying the LENS treatments, emerged and continues to emerge from the minds and hearts of skilled biofeedback therapists. The field has thus evolved under our fingers, as it were, as we continue our quest to find newer and better ways of helping people with neurologically based problems, or people who are simply in need of better ways to cope with living in a stressed-out culture.

I wish therefore to acknowledge people from both the clinical and technical domains, who made our journey possible. First Dr. Hans Berger, who died without seeing the flowering from his original discovery of brain waves, and Barbara Brown, who brought this whole new exciting field to the public in the 1970s. Next I would like to acknowledge the great early pioneers and visionaries, many of whom have been both mentors and friends: Elmer and Alyce Green, Steve Fahrion and Patricia Norris, Dale Walters, Matthew Kelly, Barry Sterman, Joel and Judith Lubar, Nancy White, Susan and Siegfried Othmer, Les Fehmi, Joe Kamiya, Tom Budzynski, Ken Tachiki, Erik Peper, Gary Schwartz, Jean Houston, Liana Mattulich, and Lynda and Randy Kirk.

Many peers and associates enriched my development as a biofeedback clinician in one way or another: Mary Jo Sabo, Jim Giorgi, Adam Crane, Jay Gunkelman, Rob Kall, Sebern and John Fischer, Margaret Ayers, Val Brown, Tom Collura, Joe and Ann-Marie Horvath, Darlene Nelson, Cory Hammond, Jim Robbins, Lynda and Michael Thompson, Tom Brownback and Linda Mason, and Carol Schneider.

I thank my wonderful Stone Mountain staff of power pixies and neurofeedback clinicians (I wont tell you whos who) including Carrie Chapman and Alexandra Linardakis, and Beth Stewart; and I also thank Pat Boyer; and Dr. Willie Yee, for his ongoing clinical wisdom in helping us to understand the medical implications of biofeedback treatment, and his wife Elizabeth Lee for advice and counsel on research methods and statistics. I also thank Richard Brown and Patricia Gerbarg for a never-ending flow of interesting cases, and much professional advice and warm friendship.

The Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback (AAPB) and the International Society for Neurofeedback and Research (ISNR), as well as FutureHealths Winter Brain conferences, have provided us with a forum for our research and clinical presentations and peer-collaboration in our developing field. The HeartMath Institute, Rollin McCraty, and Carol Thompson, in particular, have helped my training as a licensed HeartMath provider, and helped me to formulate my knowledge of how HeartMath and neurofeedback intersect.

Much of the technical knowledge for the development of the systems used in treatment emerged from Len Ochss dialogues with Jan Hoover and Bob Grove of J&J Technologies, the manufacturers of some of the best biofeedback equipment in use today.

Many experienced clinicians have joined us for long hours of clinical dialogue and case-conferencing, whether or not they contributed essays or case studies to this book: Mary Lee Esty, Karen Schultheis, Kristen Harrington, Theresa Yonker, Anton Bluman, Carla Adinaro, with her wonderful way with our four-legged relatives, Catherine Wills, Bob DeVinney, J. Lawrence Thomas, David Yourman, and Katherine Leddick, Phyllis Goltra, and Ann Lee. Susan Hicks was enormously helpful with number crunching our clinical outcomes study, as were Jodie Schultz and Tara Johannesen. I also thank Elsa Baehr, Marvin Berman, Rodney Linquist, Evelyn Soehner, Tom Fink, Curtis Cripe, Sloan Johnson, Lynn Brayton, Robert Boddington, Beth Hanna, David Alexander, Sarah Franek, and Corey Snook.

Mike Quick has been remarkably openhearted about sharing his experience, and helping in many other ways, as have Alan Carey, Joe Rock, Susan Moran, Walter and Shirley Lechnowski, Joe, Samantha and Nancy Michaels, Gabby Kearns, Craig Linet, Dan McMillan, and Cindy Lambo,

I profoundly apologize to anyone I have failed to acknowledge (due to ADD, or ARCD, age-related-cognitive-decline), who has contributed to this book or the development of the LENS.

Last but not least, I want to acknowledge my wonderful partner and friend, Robin Larsen, who has followed me every step of the way from mythological studies to scientific ones; through the looking glass from archetypes to computers and back again. In her management of editorial details, overseeing the art for this book and securing the requisite permissions, she has been nothing less than awesome.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD