By Larissa Gough and Doug Henderson, PhD

Biofeedback is the most exciting and potentially farthest-reaching discovery ever to emerge from biomedical research. The more understanding and information a person has about his illness or his predispositions toward illness, the more he knows about how his body functions and how to prevent and cure illness, the better he realizes his capabilities to achieve and maintain his own well-being.  A large part of this new understanding about relationships between human abilities and their role in health and illness is being formalized in the new therapeutic approach called biofeedback.

Biofeedback is the process for learning voluntary control over automatically regulated body functions.  The term biofeedback was conceived as a shorthand expression to describe the process of “feeding back” physiological information to the individual generating the information.  Physiological activity is monitored and the signals of physiologic information are amplified and displayed on a monitor, so that the individual can see his biological activity. Giving biological information to the client is empowering and creates awareness of how stress impacts the body. The surprising effect of observing internal, biological events is that the client, almost without knowing it, can use that information to change those biological events by an act of intention or decision.  He can, as hundreds of biofeedback studies have now demonstrated, learn to exert voluntary control over any internal biological function capable of being monitored.  And he can learn how to normalize disturbed body activities.

Biofeedback is a process for treating human illnesses by engaging complex mental processes (sub-consciousness) to regulate and normalize even the most complicated functions of the human body. When the mind receives information about itself and the body, information about how it reacts to stress and how it can return to well-being, mental faculties of awareness, understanding and control are aroused to action to restore the mind and body to a state of balance and relieve the effects of stress.

Biofeedback is both an art and a science.  The success of biofeedback treatment depends as much upon the client as upon the therapist. Biofeedback is a partnership between client and therapist.  The key is communication and the exchange of information.  Biofeedback is most effective as a treatment when both client and his therapist have a solid understanding of the biofeedback process, why it can be effective, what its critical elements are, and possibly most important, an understanding that they are working with a quite different human capability than ever before believed existed.  Some people find it difficult to believe that we may actually possess the mental capabilities to absorb information about internal states and use that information to bring internal functioning up to optimal levels.

As a therapeutic device, biofeedback entails a radically different therapist-client relationship than is traditional. Biofeedback therapy is a learning process.  The practitioner must understand the process, not solely in terms of physiology or psychology, but he must also understand the biofeedback process in terms of the client’s very individual and subjective participation.  For the client, biofeedback is not only a new experience, but his role in the treatment process is quite different from the traditional role of the client; he is no longer a passive object, but an active participant in the treatment and is the critical element in the success of biofeedback.  The client possesses the therapeutic power; what he needs to activate this inherent normalizing mechanism, this “inner physician”, is information.

The concept of higher mental activity (sub-consciousness) as the controller and normalizer of all physiological systems can be viewed as a definition of the stress-reduction concept. Biofeedback is essentially a therapy for the mastery of stress by bringing into awareness certain stressors and learning how to control stress by becoming aware of its intensity and avoiding the danger of exceeding our natural stress level.

Biofeedback is an unprecedented therapy.  The mind and body ailments that respond to biofeedback treatment span the entire spectrum of illnesses human beings suffer: emotional, psychosomatic, and physical disabilities. The uniqueness of this treatment lies in the fact that the therapeutic process takes place in the mind of the client.  It is the client whose mind does the work; the therapist and machines give him the right information and guide and assist him.  Probably no discovery in medicine or psychology compares in breadth of applications or in scope of implications to the biofeedback phenomenon. More important than its multiple uses, more important perhaps then its universality is the fact that an individual assumes, or at least shares, responsibility for his/her own health or illness. The implications of the biofeedback phenomenon are so vast that there is no question that it will stand as the landmark in changing attitudes about mind and body, about health and illness and about human consciousness.

The SCIO (Scientific Consciousness Interface Operating System) is without a doubt the world’s most sophisticated biofeedback technology in the world today.

Since all matter is molecular, and we are molecular, these molecules vibrate and have frequency, in which case they can be amplified and monitored.  The client’s responses to approximately 9000 specific frequencies are measured 110 different ways within a 3 minute period and an incredibly accurate energetic profile is displayed on a monitor.

However, what makes the SCIO particularly unique is that its technology contains approximately 250 wellness modalities and therapist now has the opportunity to energetically balance out any unusual frequencies before they ever become a symptom.  In doing so, subtle energies are employed to gently return the client toward energetic balance and wellness (homeostasis).  As the body returns to balance, stress is reduced, relaxation follows and the emotional issues impacting dis-ease and trauma are reduced, allowing the immune system to operate at optimum efficiency.

Whether your objective is to heal, learn or perform at optimum efficiency, it is essential to reduce internal and external stress, become more and more relaxed and develop an awareness of how to control life’s stressors.  This process is empowering.  You can learn to control stress rather than have it control you.