WHAT IS THE ZONE?
The Zone at the Neurotherapy Center of Washington (NCW) is space dedicated to free use of biofeedback equipment by our
clients to use at their convenience. The purpose for this service is to help our clients enhance their capacities to regain healthy
functioning by strengthening coping skills and to practice the tools they are learning from our clinicians.
The basic philosophy of biofeedback practices is to not need to continue the use of equipment that is really only a teaching device.
Such equipment is there only to help us learn to establish control over imbalanced aspects of our physiology that can keep us stuck
in some less than healthy way of functioning. Therefore it is the belief of the staff of NCW that our clients should not have to buy
equipment that they would not need to use once skills are learned. The space is quiet with comfortable supportive chairs. After an
initial introduction to the use of a device you are invited to use the equipment at your convenience.
At the present time we have available the Stress Eraser, Resperate, emWave, Journey to The Wild Devine and Inner Tube, as well as a variety of stress
reduction CDs. These all address problems related to anxiety, high blood pressure, chronic muscle tension, inability to sustain
attention, irritability, impulsiveness, and inability to deal well with stress.
StressEraser is a pulse oximeter that measures your pulse rate and the amount of oxygen in the blood. This is vital information for
determining the stress level in your nervous system. In particular it reflects the activity of the vagus nerve that is instrumental
in responding to both physical and emotional stress. The StressEraser feeds back information that tells you directly how your system
is dealing with stresses in your life, and interactively guides you to a healthier state.
See: www.stresserase.com
emWave is a device similar to StressEraser, working on the same principles to help you learn to reduce your physical reaction to stress.
See: www.emwave.com
Resperate is an adjunctive treatment that helps to lower high blood pressure by correcting unhelpful breathing habits. It guides you
in an interactive monitored breathing session, helping you to become active in your own treatment. It is also extremely effective in
helping people struggling with high anxiety or panic attacks by teaching how to increase the beneficial function of the calming side
of your nervous system. For those feeling overwhelmed by life it is a gentle guide to learning your own skills to smooth out reactions
to daily life problems. See: www.resperate.com
The Journey To The Wild Divine is a computerized program with beautiful graphics that strengthens the ability to reduce stress and find
an inner balance. This equipment reads 2 measures of your physiology. This interactive technology then challenges you to find your
own mastery techniques that will be tools you can use the rest of your life.
The computer reads your heart rate and skin conductance. These are important indicators of internal stress level. In other words it
provides a window as if you were looking inside your skin. There you can get a measure of the workload with which your body is dealing,
and how well your system is meeting those demands. Is it being stretched toward a breaking point? Is it telling you through a high
level of reactivity, expressed as anxiety, that it needs a break? The program guides you to even stronger states of control enabling
you to change habits that can be costly to ones health. It is possible to become creative in dealing with day-to-day events when we
are flexible inside and out.
Inner Tube is a computerized program that uses the same hardware as The Journey to the Wild Divine but offers a different graphics experience.
Your ability to relax controls the speed of the spaceship on the screen as well as the music volumn and fog. You get to choose whether you want to system to
respond to heart coherence, skin sweat or both. See: www.SomaticVision.com
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