Madam Toastmaster

Fellow members and guests

As a learning support teacher part of my job is researching and looking for alternative methods to help my students with many of their long-term memory issues. A few years ago I happened to meet a really lovely man called Anthony who specializes in neuro biofeedback therapy.

To fully understand neurofeedback, you need to have a basic understanding of brain waves. Scientists have found five main patterns of brain waves that we normally cycle in and out of throughout the day or night: alpha, beta, delta, gamma, and theta. While all brainwave states are essential they should be experienced appropriately — at certain times and in a certain proportion. For example, alpha waves occur when you are relaxed. Beta waves are associated with alertness, but when maintained too long lead to feelings of fear and anxiety.

Neurobiofeedback teaches you to consciously control your brain waves to achieve a more desired brainwave state. The process involves the use of electrodes that are applied to your scalp so that the neurobiofeedback therapist is able to listen to your brainwave activity and extract information about certain key brainwave frequencies. All of the information that is gathered is presented back to the individual in the form of a video game or movie. You are essentially taught how to effectively play the game or watch the movie while using your own brain waves. The end goal of all the sessions is that over time you will eventually begin to shape your brainwave activity promoting healthier frequencies and diminishing the other less healthy ones. It has successfully been used to help treat a wide variety of disorders such as ADHD, insomnia, anxiety, addiction, autism, and much more

At the end of my initial chat with Anthony, he suggested that I experience this therapy myself so that I could see its value first-hand. While I was definitely intrigued I told him that at this point in time I simply did not have money for that. Anthony then proceeded to offer me what was probably one of the most generous gifts I have ever been given. He gave me the opportunity of having 2 to 3 biofeedback sessions a week free of charge, which ultimately lasted for a good couple of months. Needless to say my overall experience with Anthony was invaluable to me and I learnt so much myself during this time.

During that period I had only been working for myself for a couple of years and I was still struggling quite a bit financially. I often felt incredibly overwhelmed and stuck in a perpetual state of worry about how I was going to make ends meet and pay off my debts. One of the activities that Anthony gave me to work on at home was the use of regular daily meditations. I did try following them, but at times I felt incredibly frustrated by them. I continually came up with excuses as to why I hadn’t done them regularly. I was stressed, I didn’t have enough time in my day, and I was too tired to wake up any earlier. I am embarrassed to admit that after a few months I began to feel rather frustrated at this man who was continually telling me that I needed to actually do some work myself. He just didn’t seem to be getting how stressful my life was and how I really didn’t need the added stress of finding time for mediation.

Fast forward 5 years later and I couldn’t be more appreciative of this wonderful, persistent man that refused to give up until I got his point. As a person that has struggled quite a bit with anxiety and stress the use of daily meditation has had a profoundly impacted on my life. I recently listened to a video by neuroscientist Dr Joe Dispenza where he so beautifully explained how mediation can affect our overall health and well-being. In his talk, Dr Dispenza talks about the role of habits in our life. A habit is a redundant set of unconscious thoughts, behaviours and emotions that are acquired through repetition. A habit is something that we have done so many times that our body now knows how to do it better than our minds. So if you think about how a person wakes up in the morning and immediately begins to think about their problems.

These problems are circuits or memories in your brain that are connected to people, things and certain times or places. If your brain is a record of the past the moment you start your day you are already thinking in the past. Each one of these memories also has an emotion, so the moment you recall a memory you also hook into the emotion that is attached to that particular memory. When a particularly stressful event happens in our lives what we end up doing is recalling the event over and over again because our stress hormones are trying to tell us to pay attention to what happened because we want to be prepared if it happens again. According to Dr Dispenza most people spend 70% of their lives living in this stressed survival mode, always anticipating the worst case scenario based on a past experience.

What we are so often doing is selecting the worst possible outcome and then unconsciously programming our bodies into a state of fear and anxiety. Our bodies do not know the difference between a real emotion of a real event actually happening or a conjured-up fear that we are simply reliving in our minds. The problem is the more we fire and wire a negative circuit in our brain, the more it becomes hardwired and the harder it is for us to change. When it comes time for us to actually want to start letting go of a particular negative emotion our bodies are so conditioned to it that it makes it almost impossible for us to let it go and hence we come up with all sorts of excuses and reasons why we can’t or don’t want to change. This is why the unknown is often so scary for us…our minds might be eager but our bodies just don’t want to even go there.

Meditation is thus one of the most powerful tools that we can use to start empowering our minds and breaking away from deep-rooted bad-habits and even healing illnesses. The act of closing your eyes and starting to mentally rehearse the desired actions or behaviours we wish to demonstrate means that, if you are truly present, then yet again your brain will not know the difference between what you are imaging and what you are experiencing. So in this way, you will begin to store new positive neurological programs in your brain. Now your brain is no longer a record of your past, it is a map to your future. Meditation enables us to slow down our thinking mind. We feel more calm, peaceful and grounded. We begin to have more time between our thoughts which means we can ultimately begin to choose our thoughts and actions more skillfully.

I find it pretty funny when I look back at all the excuses that I came up with “not to” actually give meditation a go. Nowadays I find that on the days that I do actually mediate, rather than having ‘less time as I always thought I would I actually seem to have more….on those days it literally feels like time slows down and I am consciously more aware of myself watching my negative thoughts and behaviours.

So I will leave you with this final thought that I once heard from Abraham Hicks.
“Quite simply you wouldn’t start on a long-distance journey without putting petrol into your car…..so why wouldn’t you want to refuel your brain in the same way?”

Thank you for your time.

Madam Toastmaster