Biofeedback

Biofeedback operates on the notion that we have the innate ability and potential to influence the automatic functions of our bodies through the exertion of will and mind.

Stress affects your muscles by causing them to tense and tighten. This, in turn, can produce other aches and pains, such as headaches or backaches.

By helping you to become more attuned to your internal body functions, biofeedback teaches you to control certain unhealthy conditions. Muscle biofeedback equipment, for example, can measure the tension of your muscles and relay this information to you. By focusing on this information, your mind becomes less preoccupied with the problems causing stress, which in turn causes fewer messages to be sent from your brain to your muscles telling them to stay tense. You can use the information from the biofeedback instrument to make connections between the information and the way you feel. This increases your awareness of your own muscle tension and helps you learn to recognize tension when it first begins. Biofeedback training also teaches you ways to control the tension before other symptoms have a chance to develop.

Please refer to Holisticonline.com biofeedback therapy section for more details on how biofeedback works.

Biofeedback is more effective if you combine it with relaxation techniques, self hypnotism and psychotherapy. In this way you not only learn how to control your reactions to stress but you can explore the causes of the stress and your thoughts and behavior that contribute to it.

Risk, Cautions and Contraindications - BioFeedback