Dr. Erik Peper is an internationally known expert on biofeedback (applied psychophysiology), holistic health and stress management. Since 1976 he has taught at San Francisco State University where he was instrumental in establishing the Institute for Holistic Health Studies, the first holistic health program at a public university in the United States. Dr. Peper is President of the Biofeedback Foundation of Europe and past President of the Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback (AAPB). He holds Senior Fellow (Biofeedback) certification from the Biofeedback Certification International Alliance (BCIA) and was the behavioral scientist (sport psychologist) for the United States Rhythmic Gymnastic team in the early 1980's. Dr. Peper lectures and teaches frequently through-out the world and has a biofeedback practice at BiofeedbackHealth in Berkeley, CA.
This is part 3 of a 3 part interview with Dr. Peper discussing how the tools of bio and neurofeedback are utilized to enhance sport performance, age appropriateness, technological advancements and simple products available for consumers.
SZ: What are some simple products an athlete can purchase to practice self-regulation techniques at home?
EP: Before I list the products let me say that biofeedback is helpful for concentration training, muscle training to minimize misdirected efforts and users can also benefit from this for injury recovery. Inexpensive devices I recommend are portable devices, and those that can be used with a laptop or desk top computer. These devices show heart rate variability. When attached to a finger or ear sensor the athlete can see their heart rate going up or down. They can learn to breathe at about six breaths a minute which helps them with sympathetic/parasympathetic balance. In addition, the equipment helps the athlete learn mindfulness training, staying present without trying. Devices include, Stress Eraser, HeartMath/EmWave for Desktop, Thought Technology/GSR2, MyCalmBeat (app for I-pads/pods, droids).
SZ: You mentioned the uses for these products are helpful for centering oneself, concentration, muscle training to minimize misdirected efforts and injury recovery.
EP: Heart rate variability is useful for recovery, quickly letting go, and being centered while temperature feedback devices show that control is possible. The athlete holds an inexpensive temperature device and quickly learns that her or she can increase finger temperature by passively or actively visualizing. If the athlete breathes slowly or can imagine his hands are heavy and warm, very often the temperature will rise. If the athlete breathes quickly and hyperventilates usually the temperature will drop. Women tend to have cooler hand temperatures then men and it’s often said they have poor circulation. In fact the cooler temperature occurs because they are more thoracic breathers. When women tend to breathe diaphragmatically their hands warm up. The concept of warming is used to treat injury. Warming can also be used by athletes or musicians who need tactile dexterity in their performance. When the fingers are warm the performer has better control. Although it takes awhile to learn, with extensive practice, performers learn this as a routine. First it’s learned in a safe environment, once it’s over learned they practice in environments that resemble playing conditions, then progressively apply it in more challenging playing conditions.
SZ: You co-author a chapter in the recently published book, “Biofeedback and Neurofeedback Applications in Sport Psychology.” There is a sentence that says, “Each sport may require a different set of physiological and psychological states to be triggered in order for the individual to perform in that sport.” Can you give an example?
EP: There is a significant difference between a 100 meter race and a marathon. In the 100 meter competition the runners must have great explosiveness at the beginning of the race - how quickly they can explode out of the blocks the more successful they will be. In a marathon it makes no difference how the runners begin since there is a significant amount of time within the race to catch up. It’s a different type of race. In a marathon the runner has to focus on resource management. The runner must hold their focus for a great length of time.
There is a big difference between individual sports versus team sports. In skiing or skating although snow conditions may vary more than the ice conditions the athletes are performing independently of others and this is also true for running. Compare running, skiing, skating, golf to team sports such as baseball, soccer, football, hockey, basketball where it’s an interactive dynamic between team-mates and opponents. Some sports require continued output while some sports like golf are performed for a moment then there is a long recovery period while in soccer there is a short window of time to recover between movements.
SZ: How will 3d virtual reality simulation coupled with bio or neurofeedback impact sports training in the near future?
EP: It will be superb. Let’s use the example of baseball, 3d will allow the player to simulate seeing a type of pitch coming and practice hitting or catching the ball. It can especially be useful to increase the environmental factors so that there is no novelty. 3d can make the training situation experience quicker and more real.
SZ: And introduce more variables?
EP: Yes. Years ago Pavlov said, “novelty interferes with performance.” You will be able to train the athlete to hold their attention. If the athlete is celebrating he’s not attentive. If he’s depressed or anxious he’s not attentive. If he’s distracted by something in the playing environment he’s not attentive. The challenge for the athlete is to stay on task. 3-d can simulate all those situations which could distract the athlete.
SZ: You’ve worked in this field for a long time. Do you have any favorite quotes, stories or tips that have guided you on your professional path of expertise?
EP: I am totally persuaded that we have more potential than we often know. The limits of our mental abilities are limits of our experience. I have become more impressed with with the power of our own language. Our own language is the unconscious self-suggestions and forms the template of future performance.
SZ: Dr. Peper thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to share you knowledge and experience.
*Featured guests are not current nor former clients of Susan Zaro
This article can also be read at www.examiner.com
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Monday, December 19, 2011
Dr. Erik Peper discusses Bio & Neurofeedback: Part 2
Dr. Erik Peper is an internationally known expert on biofeedback (applied psychophysiology),holistic health and stress management. Since 1976 he has taught at San Francisco State University where he was instrumental in establishing the Institute for Holistic Health Studies, the first holistic health program at a public university in the United States. Dr. Peper is President of the Biofeedback Foundation of Europe and past President of the Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback (AAPB). He holds Senior Fellow (Biofeedback) certification from the Biofeedback Certification International Alliance (BCIA) and was the behavioral scientist (sport psychologist) for the United States Rhythmic Gymnastic team in the early 1980's. Dr. Peper lectures and teaches frequently through-out the world and has a biofeedback practice at
BiofeedbackHealth in Berkeley, CA.
This is part 2 of a 3 part interview with Dr. Peper discussing how the tools of bio and neurofeedback are utilized to enhance sport performance, age appropriateness, technological advancements and simple products available for consumers.
SZ: What age is bio or neurofeedback effective for young athletes to begin using as a training tool?
EP: I don’t think there is any systemized data on this. I can only speculate. Some people can work with young children and some cannot. I would say by 5 or 6 years old biofeedback techniques can be used fairly easily. You have to make it fun. I’ve worked with children 8 years old and younger. You can teach them to warm their hands by using visualization and teach them to shift their breathing. The critical part is that biofeedback equipment shows the child that they have control. That the shifts that they are making in their bodies with breathe and visualization is something that can be quantified. It is in the seeing the change that they believe and know control is possible and there is an effect.
SZ: When a child is anxious because he is distracted by worrying about outcomes engaging the child in a visualization or having them focus on their breathing interrupts their worry thought processes by redirecting their attention to an internal awareness.
SZ: An individuals brain continues to grow well into their 20’s. Does the developmental growth stage of brain development affect the usefulness of utilizing bio or neurofeedback?
EP: In youth neuroplascity is more possible. On the pragmatic side the brain is growing and changing into our mid 20’s. It means I can give biofeedback feedback of electrical patterns produced by the brain (electroencephaphy feedback/neurofeedback) which are equally behavioral patterns, thinking patterns or blood flow patterns in the brain. The learning process seems quicker when the person is young although it may relate more to just doing the practices without judgement with a playful attitude.
SZ: You are saying at a younger age it’s more effective.
EP: It’s much easier to teach a new habit than to inhibit an old one. When you think of sports athletes have done the same movement thousands and thousands of times. When you are attempting to alter the move you have to first undo it. It’s totally possible and that’s the exciting part. However, it is easier to learn a new movement than correct an over learned response. What makes athletes really easy to work with is there is less of a question of “Should I do it?” Instead, if they experience and know it is useful, they are more likely to ask, “How many times should I do it?”
SZ: To implement the change?
EP: The athlete is more willing. They understand the concept and the type of attention it takes. The underlying theme for some beginning athletes and I’ve worked with many of them, is that the one’s who struggle often are trying too hard. Part of doing well in a sport is having a certain type of trust in your skills.
Years ago I worked with a woman who had to pass a physical for her job that required a running test. She would quickly run out of breath and it affected her ability to pass this part of her test. As I observed her I could see that she was breathing very rapidly and high in her chest and people who breathe like this often hyperventilate. They may run a couple of blocks then are too out of breathe to continue. First in the lab I taught her how to breathe lower, she could do it walking but not running. After teaching her to breathe lower and slower while walking and running in place, we would go to a track and I would run behind her and remind her to breathe lower. I essentially became her biofeedback machine. After a few practices on the track she was able to transfer her awareness and breathing mastery to do it for herself. She mastered breathing more diaphragmatically without effort by attending to her breathing while running. She passed her physical.
SZ: What technological advancements in the equipment utilized in bio and neurofeedback have made instruments easier for qualified professional administrators to use with clients?
EP: The computerized systems have become very small. I can take a laptop with me to the location of the athlete. I can use a system of telemetry and see how the person behaves in real time while engaged in their sport. The systems can keep track of multiple signals at the same time and easily quantify the data. What athletes like is feedback, it quantifies what is going on and it demonstrates mastery. They want to know that they are doing better and the equipment can measure how they are doing. More recently there has been a trend to track heart rate variability. We used to think that a heart rate of 60 beats per minute was a good sign. It’s now known that a healthy heart rate should have variability. When the heart beat can go up and down by itself that is a sign of health.
SZ: Why is this a good sign?
EP: The heart should be responsive to the demands of the body. If it no longer can quickly speed up or slow down then damage may occur. Health is flexibility with the ability to respond to the demands of the body and environment as well as rapidly allowing recovery. The heart rate changes, commonly called heart rate variability, is easily demonstrated by taking a fairly large breath the heart rate would tend to speed up its natural rhythm. That is sympathetic activation. Then during the exhalation the heart rate slows down again it’s shutting down the sympathetic activation, which is called parasympathetic activation. What you want to see is a heart rate variability balance of sympathetic and parasympathetic. Heart rate variability is used to track an athletes ability to center themselves and recover/regenerate after exerting themselves within a physical performance such as scoring points, between races, etc. The key is to learn to monitor and modulate the appropriate energy level needed for a performance. For example gymnasts have to learn to modulate their energy level. They have to check in and notice if they are too tight, too anxious or too relaxed and if so bring that level down to or up to where it’s most effective to perform well. They can’t worry about falling. If they worry about a performance they are not present and usually perform worse. This type of destructive worrying can be identified during mental rehearsal of the performance when the athletes brain waves are monitored, as has been discovered by Vietta S. Wilson Ph.D. in her work with athletes. When a gymnast is connected to an EEG (electroencephalograph) during the relaxation and mental rehearsal and if there is a 18hz pattern in the recording the biofeedback/neurofeedback practitioner can interpret this as a worry spike. Other biofeedback can also be used to identify unaware muscle tension patterns.
Muscle tension is monitored and also given feedback with an EMG (electromyography). EMG’s are useful in practicing mental rehearsal as it can indicate the subtle body responses associated with imagery of a performance. For example in baseball a player can imagine taking a perfect swing at a fastball. The player will see it, and feel it yet the observer may not see any muscles twitch a tiny bit as the athlete is visualizing the movement. The EMG can record the very low level muscle tension which is invisible to just looking at the athlete. If the EMG registers movement from the players muscles then it's likely that the visualization is effective. If no EMG activity is observed in the appropriate muscles that should have been activated by the specific motor skill movement of the performance, then you would then go back and work to train the athlete to visualize more effectively.
Next: Dr. Peper shares ideas for simple biofeedback products and the impact of 3D virtual reality combined with biofeedback.
*Featured guests are not current nor former clients of Susan Zaro
This post can also be read at www.examiner.com
BiofeedbackHealth in Berkeley, CA.
This is part 2 of a 3 part interview with Dr. Peper discussing how the tools of bio and neurofeedback are utilized to enhance sport performance, age appropriateness, technological advancements and simple products available for consumers.
SZ: What age is bio or neurofeedback effective for young athletes to begin using as a training tool?
EP: I don’t think there is any systemized data on this. I can only speculate. Some people can work with young children and some cannot. I would say by 5 or 6 years old biofeedback techniques can be used fairly easily. You have to make it fun. I’ve worked with children 8 years old and younger. You can teach them to warm their hands by using visualization and teach them to shift their breathing. The critical part is that biofeedback equipment shows the child that they have control. That the shifts that they are making in their bodies with breathe and visualization is something that can be quantified. It is in the seeing the change that they believe and know control is possible and there is an effect.
SZ: When a child is anxious because he is distracted by worrying about outcomes engaging the child in a visualization or having them focus on their breathing interrupts their worry thought processes by redirecting their attention to an internal awareness.
SZ: An individuals brain continues to grow well into their 20’s. Does the developmental growth stage of brain development affect the usefulness of utilizing bio or neurofeedback?
EP: In youth neuroplascity is more possible. On the pragmatic side the brain is growing and changing into our mid 20’s. It means I can give biofeedback feedback of electrical patterns produced by the brain (electroencephaphy feedback/neurofeedback) which are equally behavioral patterns, thinking patterns or blood flow patterns in the brain. The learning process seems quicker when the person is young although it may relate more to just doing the practices without judgement with a playful attitude.
SZ: You are saying at a younger age it’s more effective.
EP: It’s much easier to teach a new habit than to inhibit an old one. When you think of sports athletes have done the same movement thousands and thousands of times. When you are attempting to alter the move you have to first undo it. It’s totally possible and that’s the exciting part. However, it is easier to learn a new movement than correct an over learned response. What makes athletes really easy to work with is there is less of a question of “Should I do it?” Instead, if they experience and know it is useful, they are more likely to ask, “How many times should I do it?”
SZ: To implement the change?
EP: The athlete is more willing. They understand the concept and the type of attention it takes. The underlying theme for some beginning athletes and I’ve worked with many of them, is that the one’s who struggle often are trying too hard. Part of doing well in a sport is having a certain type of trust in your skills.
Years ago I worked with a woman who had to pass a physical for her job that required a running test. She would quickly run out of breath and it affected her ability to pass this part of her test. As I observed her I could see that she was breathing very rapidly and high in her chest and people who breathe like this often hyperventilate. They may run a couple of blocks then are too out of breathe to continue. First in the lab I taught her how to breathe lower, she could do it walking but not running. After teaching her to breathe lower and slower while walking and running in place, we would go to a track and I would run behind her and remind her to breathe lower. I essentially became her biofeedback machine. After a few practices on the track she was able to transfer her awareness and breathing mastery to do it for herself. She mastered breathing more diaphragmatically without effort by attending to her breathing while running. She passed her physical.
SZ: What technological advancements in the equipment utilized in bio and neurofeedback have made instruments easier for qualified professional administrators to use with clients?
EP: The computerized systems have become very small. I can take a laptop with me to the location of the athlete. I can use a system of telemetry and see how the person behaves in real time while engaged in their sport. The systems can keep track of multiple signals at the same time and easily quantify the data. What athletes like is feedback, it quantifies what is going on and it demonstrates mastery. They want to know that they are doing better and the equipment can measure how they are doing. More recently there has been a trend to track heart rate variability. We used to think that a heart rate of 60 beats per minute was a good sign. It’s now known that a healthy heart rate should have variability. When the heart beat can go up and down by itself that is a sign of health.
SZ: Why is this a good sign?
EP: The heart should be responsive to the demands of the body. If it no longer can quickly speed up or slow down then damage may occur. Health is flexibility with the ability to respond to the demands of the body and environment as well as rapidly allowing recovery. The heart rate changes, commonly called heart rate variability, is easily demonstrated by taking a fairly large breath the heart rate would tend to speed up its natural rhythm. That is sympathetic activation. Then during the exhalation the heart rate slows down again it’s shutting down the sympathetic activation, which is called parasympathetic activation. What you want to see is a heart rate variability balance of sympathetic and parasympathetic. Heart rate variability is used to track an athletes ability to center themselves and recover/regenerate after exerting themselves within a physical performance such as scoring points, between races, etc. The key is to learn to monitor and modulate the appropriate energy level needed for a performance. For example gymnasts have to learn to modulate their energy level. They have to check in and notice if they are too tight, too anxious or too relaxed and if so bring that level down to or up to where it’s most effective to perform well. They can’t worry about falling. If they worry about a performance they are not present and usually perform worse. This type of destructive worrying can be identified during mental rehearsal of the performance when the athletes brain waves are monitored, as has been discovered by Vietta S. Wilson Ph.D. in her work with athletes. When a gymnast is connected to an EEG (electroencephalograph) during the relaxation and mental rehearsal and if there is a 18hz pattern in the recording the biofeedback/neurofeedback practitioner can interpret this as a worry spike. Other biofeedback can also be used to identify unaware muscle tension patterns.
Muscle tension is monitored and also given feedback with an EMG (electromyography). EMG’s are useful in practicing mental rehearsal as it can indicate the subtle body responses associated with imagery of a performance. For example in baseball a player can imagine taking a perfect swing at a fastball. The player will see it, and feel it yet the observer may not see any muscles twitch a tiny bit as the athlete is visualizing the movement. The EMG can record the very low level muscle tension which is invisible to just looking at the athlete. If the EMG registers movement from the players muscles then it's likely that the visualization is effective. If no EMG activity is observed in the appropriate muscles that should have been activated by the specific motor skill movement of the performance, then you would then go back and work to train the athlete to visualize more effectively.
Next: Dr. Peper shares ideas for simple biofeedback products and the impact of 3D virtual reality combined with biofeedback.
*Featured guests are not current nor former clients of Susan Zaro
This post can also be read at www.examiner.com
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Dr. Erik Peper discusses Bio & Neurofeedback
Dr. Erik Peper is an internationally known expert on biofeedback (applied psychophysiology), holistic health and stress management. Since 1976 he has taught at San Francisco State University where he was instrumental in establishing the Institute for Holistic Health Studies, the first holistic health program at a public university in the United States. Dr. Peper is President of the Biofeedback Foundation of Europe and past President of the Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback (AAPB). He holds Senior Fellow (Biofeedback) certification from the Biofeedback Certification International Alliance (BCIA) and was the behavioral scientist (sport psychologist) for the United States Rhythmic Gymnastic team in the early 1980's. Dr. Peper lectures and teaches frequently through-out the world and has a biofeedback practice at BiofeedbackHealth in Berkeley, CA.
This is part 1 of a 3 part interview with Dr. Peper that discusses what is bio and neurofeedback? How these tools are utilized to enhance sport performance, age appropriateness, technological advancements and simple products available for consumers.
SZ: You are an expert in the field of biofeedback and also work with neurofeedback. What events captured your interest to bring you into this field of study?
EP: There are a number of events that captured my interest. One there was an opportunity to study with some remarkable people who weren’t athletes but studied pain control. In 1971 I studied an interesting person who voluntarily put a skewer through his cheeks and through the sides of his body and reported zero pain.
SZ: You studied this?
EP: Yes, here was a person that took a skewer and we made the skewers by taking bicycle spokes, sharpened and sterilized them. The first thing he did at the lab, this was at NYU, he dropped the sterilized spokes onto the floor took his dirty shoes, which he had been walking around with outside and he sterilized the spokes in his own terms by taking his dirty shoes and rolling over these at that time sterilized spokes. Once the spokes were really messed up with all these outside germs then he began his skill demonstration.
SZ: This person took a skewer and poked it through his cheek?
EP: Through one cheek and out the other and also another one through one side of his body through the flesh and out the other side.
SZ: This person did this exhibit for the sake of doing it?
EP: He did it more for the concept you can have voluntary control. I had heard about this skill initially through the New York Academy of Sciences where the discussion was can you have voluntary control? This was the era where people did not even believe you could warm your hands with voluntary control, through the use of imagery. This idea was very much in
dispute at the time. Through the years I’ve known other people who could do this discipline. Recently, at San Francisco State, a 62 year old Japanese yogi, Mr. Kawakami with thirty seven years of experience practicing various forms of yoga demonstrated this discipline. Mr. Kawakami, pushed unsterilized skewers through his tongue. Sitting calmly with skewers in his tongue and throat, he showed no signs of discomfort; rather he radiated peace. Removal of the skewers left neither open wound nor bleeding.
SZ: Why did he choose to demonstrate this discipline?
EP: A major reason people with this type of mind control do this is often for themselves to point out they’ve learned these meditation techniques, and feel they need to prove it to themselves. and second reason yogi Kawakami wanted to do this was to demonstrate to his students that the limits of their beliefs are the limits of their experience. If you have other beliefs you may have other outcomes. (Yogi Kawakami is founder and chief executive director of own school of yoga and the Institute for Research of Subconscious Psychology in Fukuoka and Tokyo, Japan).
SZ: These people have conditioned themselves for this particular exercise.
EP: They have learned how to control their attention. Any good sports performance is where you are able in most cases to control your attention and not have negative thoughts or distracting thoughts. Historically athletes went to a sport psychologist when they were performing poorly. That is still often the case, but the field has shifted to how can you use these concepts of Sport Psychology to optimize performance? A slightly different way of thinking. When you look at the word “motor rehearsal” that’s the use of imagery and if you talk with top athletes as a rule they generically say, “when I am in competition, it’s 95% mental control.” If athletes are standing in a line with their competitors in most cases at the top level of sport all the athletes can win. In most competitive sports there isn’t that much unique difference and so the key is how is the athlete thinking? If you think of psyching out in sports where the athlete could basically win but somehow gives up. We came up with a series of strategies to try and shift that.
When I think of peak performance one skill for athletes is mental rehearsal, how can you show athletes how to use their brains in a sense to improve their performance, and how can you teach them to recover quickly during and after performances? I learned this in a sense not from sports initially but around 1971 I worked with a well known Opera singer who was singing at the Met. After a performance the performer would be excited which is normal. The performer would go out for a late dinner around 11pm and having another performance the next day there wasn’t enough recovery time. The question became how do you recover more quickly? This is a theme in sports regardless of where you are, what happens, whether you win or lose, you need to be able to shift back.
One of the uses of bio and neurofeedback are for recovery and regeneration both on the cognitive side, letting go of whatever happened and the physical side getting your body to recover. It involves learning to let go of muscle tension and breathing slower.
SZ: The terms biofeedback and neurofeedback can seem a bit mysterious for some people. Please define the terms in simple form.
EP: Let me start by saying feedback is just immediate information usually about what is going on. When someone plays basketball and they take the ball and are trying to shoot it through the hoop. They receive immediate visual feedback. If they miss the target they keep adjusting, by throwing higher, lower, sideways etc. They may get coached by people who have other hints and eventually they get it right and make it in the hoop. They keep doing this until they become better at the skill. That is what feedback is.
Biofeedback is monitoring what happens in the body and displays it back on a device. The person then can either use that information or not. A classic example of biofeedback is if a person goes to a doctor and they take his blood pressure and the machine reads back that the person has high blood pressure. If the doctor just writes down “high blood pressure” then it’s just information for the doctor. If the doctor on the other hand tells the person to sit quietly and take a couple breaths. Now the blood pressure is taken again and the persons blood pressure drops. The person can see that they did something that affects the blood pressure. Biofeedback is really ongoing measurements of some process in the body where the person can see changes, or that there aren’t changes. Hopefully as in this example with information the person can try new things to affect their blood pressure. Different biofeedback systems can monitor, heart rate, muscle tension, brain wave activity.
Example: In class I have my students perform an exercise where they are instructed to relax, let their arms hang and bend forward to touch their toes. I ask them if they are relaxed and most students say “yes.” But if you are observing them from the side you will notice many students are slightly lifting their heads. They don’t notice they are doing this. We then place electrodes on their necks while they are standing. There will be a little bit of tension on their neck because the neck muscles have to hold their head’s up. I have them hang forward and touch their toes again, the muscle tension in their neck should be close to zero, little muscle activity, however ten out of eleven health students will register significant muscle tension in their neck when they are saying they are relaxed. All we do now is add an auditory sound which is the biofeedback and I tell the students when they are doing the exercise that if they are relaxed there will be no auditory sound when they are bending forward. What typically occurs is that the student will life their head many times and each time they will trigger the auditory tone which gives them information that they are tensing their neck muscles. But the average student can learn to shift and do this correctly with about five minute of practice, even without prior training.
Often people are unaware of tension patterns in their body and that makes sense because they are interacting in the world. They are not focusing on what is happening within their bodies.
SZ: They have an external focus.
EP: Correct. What biofeedback does is make the unaware aware. The undocumented documented. One of the early pieces we observed in biofeedback is that people are highly unaware of what they are doing. They aren’t aware they are shifting position or shaking. They don’t observe their internal language where they may be using lots of buts, and negatives.
SZ: How is neurofeedback different?
EP: Neurofeedback is a subset or specialization in the field of feedback where you only record from different areas of the skull. Historically there wasn’t a separation between the two practices. A practitioner would do muscle feedback, heart rate feedback, temperature feedback and brain feedback. In 1995 the field separated. The neurofeedback scientists record with different electrodes on the head and look at these patterns. From my perspective the two, bio and neurofeedback are not really apart. Neurofeedback is a specialization. However the brain and body are one. Changes in the body affect your brain. Changes in your brain affect your body.
*Featured guests are not current nor former clients of Susan Zaro
This article can also be read on www.examiner.com
This is part 1 of a 3 part interview with Dr. Peper that discusses what is bio and neurofeedback? How these tools are utilized to enhance sport performance, age appropriateness, technological advancements and simple products available for consumers.
SZ: You are an expert in the field of biofeedback and also work with neurofeedback. What events captured your interest to bring you into this field of study?
EP: There are a number of events that captured my interest. One there was an opportunity to study with some remarkable people who weren’t athletes but studied pain control. In 1971 I studied an interesting person who voluntarily put a skewer through his cheeks and through the sides of his body and reported zero pain.
SZ: You studied this?
EP: Yes, here was a person that took a skewer and we made the skewers by taking bicycle spokes, sharpened and sterilized them. The first thing he did at the lab, this was at NYU, he dropped the sterilized spokes onto the floor took his dirty shoes, which he had been walking around with outside and he sterilized the spokes in his own terms by taking his dirty shoes and rolling over these at that time sterilized spokes. Once the spokes were really messed up with all these outside germs then he began his skill demonstration.
SZ: This person took a skewer and poked it through his cheek?
EP: Through one cheek and out the other and also another one through one side of his body through the flesh and out the other side.
SZ: This person did this exhibit for the sake of doing it?
EP: He did it more for the concept you can have voluntary control. I had heard about this skill initially through the New York Academy of Sciences where the discussion was can you have voluntary control? This was the era where people did not even believe you could warm your hands with voluntary control, through the use of imagery. This idea was very much in
dispute at the time. Through the years I’ve known other people who could do this discipline. Recently, at San Francisco State, a 62 year old Japanese yogi, Mr. Kawakami with thirty seven years of experience practicing various forms of yoga demonstrated this discipline. Mr. Kawakami, pushed unsterilized skewers through his tongue. Sitting calmly with skewers in his tongue and throat, he showed no signs of discomfort; rather he radiated peace. Removal of the skewers left neither open wound nor bleeding.
SZ: Why did he choose to demonstrate this discipline?
EP: A major reason people with this type of mind control do this is often for themselves to point out they’ve learned these meditation techniques, and feel they need to prove it to themselves. and second reason yogi Kawakami wanted to do this was to demonstrate to his students that the limits of their beliefs are the limits of their experience. If you have other beliefs you may have other outcomes. (Yogi Kawakami is founder and chief executive director of own school of yoga and the Institute for Research of Subconscious Psychology in Fukuoka and Tokyo, Japan).
SZ: These people have conditioned themselves for this particular exercise.
EP: They have learned how to control their attention. Any good sports performance is where you are able in most cases to control your attention and not have negative thoughts or distracting thoughts. Historically athletes went to a sport psychologist when they were performing poorly. That is still often the case, but the field has shifted to how can you use these concepts of Sport Psychology to optimize performance? A slightly different way of thinking. When you look at the word “motor rehearsal” that’s the use of imagery and if you talk with top athletes as a rule they generically say, “when I am in competition, it’s 95% mental control.” If athletes are standing in a line with their competitors in most cases at the top level of sport all the athletes can win. In most competitive sports there isn’t that much unique difference and so the key is how is the athlete thinking? If you think of psyching out in sports where the athlete could basically win but somehow gives up. We came up with a series of strategies to try and shift that.
When I think of peak performance one skill for athletes is mental rehearsal, how can you show athletes how to use their brains in a sense to improve their performance, and how can you teach them to recover quickly during and after performances? I learned this in a sense not from sports initially but around 1971 I worked with a well known Opera singer who was singing at the Met. After a performance the performer would be excited which is normal. The performer would go out for a late dinner around 11pm and having another performance the next day there wasn’t enough recovery time. The question became how do you recover more quickly? This is a theme in sports regardless of where you are, what happens, whether you win or lose, you need to be able to shift back.
One of the uses of bio and neurofeedback are for recovery and regeneration both on the cognitive side, letting go of whatever happened and the physical side getting your body to recover. It involves learning to let go of muscle tension and breathing slower.
SZ: The terms biofeedback and neurofeedback can seem a bit mysterious for some people. Please define the terms in simple form.
EP: Let me start by saying feedback is just immediate information usually about what is going on. When someone plays basketball and they take the ball and are trying to shoot it through the hoop. They receive immediate visual feedback. If they miss the target they keep adjusting, by throwing higher, lower, sideways etc. They may get coached by people who have other hints and eventually they get it right and make it in the hoop. They keep doing this until they become better at the skill. That is what feedback is.
Biofeedback is monitoring what happens in the body and displays it back on a device. The person then can either use that information or not. A classic example of biofeedback is if a person goes to a doctor and they take his blood pressure and the machine reads back that the person has high blood pressure. If the doctor just writes down “high blood pressure” then it’s just information for the doctor. If the doctor on the other hand tells the person to sit quietly and take a couple breaths. Now the blood pressure is taken again and the persons blood pressure drops. The person can see that they did something that affects the blood pressure. Biofeedback is really ongoing measurements of some process in the body where the person can see changes, or that there aren’t changes. Hopefully as in this example with information the person can try new things to affect their blood pressure. Different biofeedback systems can monitor, heart rate, muscle tension, brain wave activity.
Example: In class I have my students perform an exercise where they are instructed to relax, let their arms hang and bend forward to touch their toes. I ask them if they are relaxed and most students say “yes.” But if you are observing them from the side you will notice many students are slightly lifting their heads. They don’t notice they are doing this. We then place electrodes on their necks while they are standing. There will be a little bit of tension on their neck because the neck muscles have to hold their head’s up. I have them hang forward and touch their toes again, the muscle tension in their neck should be close to zero, little muscle activity, however ten out of eleven health students will register significant muscle tension in their neck when they are saying they are relaxed. All we do now is add an auditory sound which is the biofeedback and I tell the students when they are doing the exercise that if they are relaxed there will be no auditory sound when they are bending forward. What typically occurs is that the student will life their head many times and each time they will trigger the auditory tone which gives them information that they are tensing their neck muscles. But the average student can learn to shift and do this correctly with about five minute of practice, even without prior training.
Often people are unaware of tension patterns in their body and that makes sense because they are interacting in the world. They are not focusing on what is happening within their bodies.
SZ: They have an external focus.
EP: Correct. What biofeedback does is make the unaware aware. The undocumented documented. One of the early pieces we observed in biofeedback is that people are highly unaware of what they are doing. They aren’t aware they are shifting position or shaking. They don’t observe their internal language where they may be using lots of buts, and negatives.
SZ: How is neurofeedback different?
EP: Neurofeedback is a subset or specialization in the field of feedback where you only record from different areas of the skull. Historically there wasn’t a separation between the two practices. A practitioner would do muscle feedback, heart rate feedback, temperature feedback and brain feedback. In 1995 the field separated. The neurofeedback scientists record with different electrodes on the head and look at these patterns. From my perspective the two, bio and neurofeedback are not really apart. Neurofeedback is a specialization. However the brain and body are one. Changes in the body affect your brain. Changes in your brain affect your body.
*Featured guests are not current nor former clients of Susan Zaro
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