Author Archives: Tamera

Neurofeedback and hypnosis are amazingly powerful tools. Their limitation, though, lies in the fact that they are not capable of fixing nutritional deficiencies, and nutritional issues often accompany the reasons that people seek my services.

Whatever your reasons for seeking to change yourself through brain training or hypnosis, making healthy food choices and perhaps healthy supplement choices can accelerate your progress to your goal. The trouble is, it’s hard to know the right thing to do, and it’s hard to access the right foods if you don’t know what to do. Most grocery stores are full of digestible (and perhaps not-so-digestible) food-like substances that carry little or no nutritional value. Then, to make matters worse, there is so much noise in the world of nutrition—fad diet advocates hawking their programs or products, food advertising on television, doctors who lack nutrition training, and even friends and relatives with shaky advice. Where do you turn?

Certainly, functional medicine doctors and nutritionists are a good start. If you’re looking to educate yourself and make decisions through reading what experts have to say, though, anything by Michael Pollan is worth your time, especially his books In Defense of Food and The Omnivore’s Dilemma. He condenses his advice to the following: eat real food, not too much, mostly plants. It’s stunning in its simplicity. His work is my favorite.

I am also fan of the following books that have been helpful to my clients in the past. I am listing these in no particular order:

The Anti-Anxiety Food Solution, by Trudy Scott. Ms. Scott, too, has simple advice on food consumption, and she also has a section on boosting brain function using amino acids such as GABA, tryptophan or 5-HTP, tyrosine, DPA or DLPA, and glutamine.
Gut and Psychology Syndrome, by Dr. Natascha Campbell-McBride. I’ll be honest, the GAPs diet takes effort to adhere to for any length of time. That said, her thousands of patients can attest to how effective this nutritional therapy is at helping ADHD, autism, depression, and even schizophrenia.
The ADHD and Autism Nutritional Supplement Handbook, by Dana Godbout Laake and Dr. Pamela Compart. Dana Laake’s nutritional approaches to healing are famous, and frankly, even readers without ADHD and autism could benefit from her supplement and nutritional advice.
Potatoes not Prozac, by Kathleen DesMaisons, PhD. Dr. DesMaisons talks about sugar sensitivity and its impact on physical and emotional well-being.
The Mood Cure, by Julia Ross. Ross is a pioneer in nutritional therapy for improving mood. Her book includes many examples of supplement use, particularly amino acids.
Your Body’s Many Cries for Water, by Dr. F. Batmanghelidj. Dr. Batmanghelidj explores the impact of unintentional chronic dehydration on stress and physical disease.
Healing the New Childhood Epidemics, by Dr. Kenneth Bock and Cameron Stauth. This book explores the foundational patterns to cure rather than symptom suppress a variety of disorders, including ADHD.
Power Up Your Brain by Dr. David Perlmutter and Alberto Villoldo or Grain Brain, by Dr. David Perlmutter. Dr. Perlmutter is a household name to many people. His work on the impact of food, especially wheat, on brain health continues to be cutting-edge.
Nutrient Power—Heal Your Biochemistry and Heal Your Brain, by William Walsh, PhD. The title speaks for itself in that the author explores the physiological bases of brain health.

These books are good starting points, and there are many other worthy titles you can find. When choosing your reading material, avoiding trendy diets and fads while sticking with common sense nutritional science (ie, Michael Pollan’s work) is a good plan.

And, of course, my work to help you self-regulate your brainwave energy patterns and your subconscious beliefs are excellent ways to help you change your life. Nutrition is just one piece of the puzzle. You can eat a whole wheelbarrow full of spinach, but you’ll likely still want other tools to improve your quality of life and sense of well-being.

P.S. If you are local, I believe I have at least one copy of each of the above-mentioned books in my office if you would like to borrow them.

Neurofeedback Can Improve Self-Esteem

Posted on June 11, 2021by:

Neurofeedback performed on subjects who had recovered from major depressive disorder resulted in an improvement in self-esteem, according to a study published in the journal Neuroimage: Clinical and summarized in EurekAlert, a publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Their results were measured using fMRI scans and were a “proof of concept” experiment. The study was important not just for the improvements in self-esteem that the researchers found, but because it shows difference in brain wiring as a result of neurofeedback training.

You can read the original study here and the EurekAlert summary here.

Keep in mind that fMRI is expensive and used in research. Actual neurofeedback practitioners almost never have fMRI at their disposal.

Hypnosis: Online or In Person?

Posted on May 25, 2021by:

Hypnosis No Comments

Until COVID came along, most hypnosis instructors were opposed to conducting sessions online, and certification boards also frowned upon the idea. Once the pandemic lockdowns occurred, that changed as people realized that sessions conducted online are just as effective and sometimes an even better experience than in-person sessions. In fact, it is now possible to get trained and certified in conducting online hypnosis sessions.

If you are considering hypnosis but aren’t sure whether to choose in-person or online sessions, here are a few things to consider:

Online sessions don’t require commuting anywhere, which can be a huge time savings.

Online sessions can be done with anyone, anywhere in the world, so you can choose your practitioner based on what feels like a good match instead of who is closest to your home.

Online sessions can be less stressful in many ways, including the fact that you don’t have to worry about getting sick.

Because there is no need for a mask in an online session, it’s easier for me to read facial expressions and customize what needs to be said accordingly.

The biggest down side of online sessions is, of course, losing internet connection midstream. It happens sometimes, but truly, it’s easy to resolve and still get good results.

Another down side is not having that interpersonal connection that one gets from meeting in person. For local folks for whom this is a concern, I often suggest doing hybrid sessions in which the first session is held in my office, then the rest online.

Finally, if you are in a home in which you cannot escape family/roommate interruptions or pets that insist on being with you, in person sessions may be a good option.

The one key element of online sessions is to choose someone who is trained and certified to provide this service, because the process is a little different than in person. I do have this training and certification.

I have grown to like online sessions very much and have participated both as the hypnotist and the client. I have received great benefit from my own online sessions as the client and so know well how it feels on the other end of the computer screen.

If you’re considering hypnosis but are not yet ready to meet in person or live far away from my office, we now have well over a year of experience that shows online sessions are an excellent and fully effective choice. Give me a call, text, or email to get started now.

Your Brain on Nature

Posted on May 24, 2021by:

Your Brain on Nature, by Dr. Eva Selhub and Dr. Alan Logan, is an exciting exploration of the many ways that being in or near the natural world improves our health. I found myself wanting to underline so many paragraphs as I read that if I had done so, most of the book would have been highlighted. As a result, I want to recommend that you find a copy of this book to glean the parts that are most important for you.

Among the study results that the authors shared and I found fascinating are:

The presence of green plants, even something as small as potted plants in an office, lower blood pressure and heart rate, and the presence of plants amplify alpha-wave activity. Alpha waves are associated with a meditative, calm state.
Time in nature or with indoor plants also improves cognitive function.
Plants can reduce one’s subjective experience of pain. Their use in hospitals—including rooms with views of nature out the window—were like drops of morphine for the brain.
Even photographs of plants are beneficial to brain health.
The smells of nature reduce the production of stress hormones, reduce feelings of anxiety, and boost natural killer cells, meaning that immune system function improves.
The sounds of nature lower stress and improve sleep.
In ancient Rome, health care providers recommended garden walks for those struggling with mental illness and got good results. In modern times, many Japanese partake in Shinrin Yoku, or forest bathing (walks in forests) to restore themselves mentally and physically.
Companion animals, as any pet lover will affirm, are good for both mental and physical health.

With so many benefits, it’s obvious that the authors want you to break away from your screens and spend more time in green spaces outdoors, and to integrate the natural world into your indoors life as much as possible.

For more details, and to find some of the many other wonderful facts this book contains that I have not shared here, please find a way to read or listen to it. I have a copy in my office to share if you are local and want to borrow it.

Neuroplasticity and Recovery in Children

Posted on May 19, 2021by:

The limits of what we know about neuroplasticity continue to be astounding. First recognized in the 1960s but rejected by neuroscientists until the 1990s, the concept that the brain created new neurons and could recover from injury has only been mainstream for the past 25 years or so. Since then, what we are learning about the miracles of the brain continue to grow and evolve.

For example, a St. Louis-area boy had a stroke as a newborn that was not discovered until he was a teenager. His brain compensated for the dead tissue on the cortex of his brain to the point that, with the exception of some motor movement, the severity of his brain injury was hardly noticeable. Brain scans revealed significant loss of functioning brain tissue in the boy that doctors described as on the edge of what is compatible with life, yet he has lived and continues to live a normal life.

You can read about this boy’s amazing story and see copies of his brain scans on the Washington University School of Medicine’s website, here.

Can You Combine Neurofeedback with Hypnotherapy?

Posted on May 7, 2021by:

Hypnosis Neurofeedback No Comments

I’ve long contended that neurofeedback is not a stand-alone tool, because it works best when used in combination with working on other aspects of health such as sleep hygiene, dietary improvements, movement, time in nature, psychotherapy, medical treatments, etc. About a year ago, I started wondering whether neurofeedback combined with hypnosis would work well, too.

There isn’t much in the scientific literature that explores combining neurofeedback with anything else, so it is no surprise that I am aware of no published research that explores the combination of neurofeedback and hypnosis with just neurofeedback or just hypnosis. Common sense, though, tells us that spending time walking or hiking in fresh air helps us sleep better, and better sleep leads to better dietary choices the next day, along with improved cognitive functioning and mental health. Similarly, it makes sense to me that working on electrical energy patterns in the brain along with working on subconscious processes is going to create a similar synergy.

I’ve tinkered with offering hypnosis and neurofeedback simultaneously, but that is not what I’m doing now. Instead, I am offering my neurofeedback clients the opportunity to change a few of their appointments to hypnosis sessions. We normally aim for 40 sessions of neurofeedback, and after 20 sessions, my trainees have the option to start including once-a-week hypnosis.

Of course, the combination isn’t necessary to achieve results, but the impression I have so far is that results can be broader and more powerful by using both hypnosis and neurofeedback as tools to help you reach your goals.

If this is something that might be of interest to you, you may either mention it at the beginning of neurofeedback training or at any point along the way. As usual, my work is customized for the person and is not rigidly based on formulas, the need to move multiple clients through a clinic environment, or anything other than the desires and goals of the people who come for training.

For my hypnosis clients, we can get started with a brain map while you’re still doing hypnosis, but unless you have extra hours to dedicate to your self-improvement for a few weeks, it is probably better to complete your hypnosis sessions before launching into neurofeedback training.

Want to know more? Schedule a consult. Either online or in person is fine.

Brain Changes During Hypnosis

Posted on March 27, 2021by:

Brain Science Hypnosis No Comments

Researchers from the University of Turku in Finland and the University of Skövde in Sweden found that under hypnosis, individual parts of the brain operated more independently than they do during a normal waking state. Their single-person study, which was published in the journal Neuroscience of Consciousness and summarized in Neuroscience News, adds to the debate about whether and how neural processing varies when in hypnosis. You can read the Neuroscience News study here and the study itself here.

Learning from Our Predecessors

Posted on March 21, 2021by:

As in any field, it is important to keep up-to-date with what is happening in the world of neurofeedback. I found the opinions expressed by one of the more famous names in the field during a recent podcast to be interesting and worth sharing. If you, too, are interested in the science of what neurofeedback strives to achieve, follow this link to a conversastion with Jay Gunkelman, who has been reading and interpreting EEG measurements since the 1970s.

Now in semi-retirement, Jay points out things to listeners that us practitioners know well. For example, he laments the fact that neurofeedback is more broadly known, more greatly accepted, and more researched overseas than in North America. In addition, he points out the invalidity of the DSM (DSM stands for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and is what mental health care providers use to diagnose their patients and clients) and remarks upon how the DSM has little relationship to what is happening in the brain itself. He talks about how, despite this invalidity, many institutions fight strongly against moving from symptom descriptions to brain function as a means of diagnosis. He also provides an entertaining history of the field.

Despite not being a neurofeedback practitioner himself, he is worth a listen.

The hour-long interview isn’t for everyone. It has some technical language and terminology that many will find boring. Not me, though. I appreciate learning from those who paved the way for us. And, I know several of my current and former clients will also want to hear what he has to say.

Again, you can find the podcast here.

Hypnosis is NOT Mind Control

Posted on March 15, 2021by:

Hypnosis No Comments

One of the things that holds people back from trying hypnosis is the idea that the hypnotist is going to control their mind and make them do things they don’t really want to do. Fortunately, it doesn’t work that way.

During hypnosis, you are always in charge of yourself. You never relinquish the ability to think for yourself or act on your own.

That is a good thing, because it means that when you make positive changes in how you are thinking, acting, or being in the world, you have made those changes yourself. The role of a good hypnotist is simply to facilitate the changes you want to make. She does that by helping you remove the blocks that you have inadvertently put in your own way, and by removing those blocks you are able to achieve your goals faster and much more easily than you would if you tried to force the changes without cooperation from your subconscious mind.

You see, your conscious mind is only controlling a small portion of what you think of as yourself. Your subconscious and unconscious are actually in control of most of what you think, say, and do during any given day. Good hypnosis helps you tap into your subconscious and get it to align with what your conscious mind hopes to achieve.

This happens with your full cooperation and awareness. There’s no sleight of hand, no mind control, just personal empowerment. You get to decide what you want, and the hypnotist helps you get there. How cool is that?

Good Sleep Matters for Traumatic Brain Injury

Posted on March 13, 2021by:

A new study of veterans that was conducted at Oregon Health and Science University and published in the Journal of Neurotrauma shows that sound sleep is vital to healing traumatic brain injury. A summary in Science Daily indicates that veterans who slept poorly had more significant post-concussion symptoms than those who slept better. MRIs showed the ongoing damage among the poor sleepers. Researchers believe that the brain’s task of sweeping out waste during sleep is impaired with poor sleep and likely contributes to ongoing symptoms.

The Science Daily article also offers hope that sleep can be improved through shifts in sleep hygiene habits.

You can see the Science Daily summary here and an abstract of the study from the Journal of Neurotrauma here. The full study is behind a pay wall.

Real-Time Imaging of a Brain Learning

Posted on March 9, 2021by:

Researchers at the University of Göttingen in Germany captured real-time images of mice brains during learning activities. There is so much more to the article, including information on the absence of certain proteins that point to brain plasticity, but honestly, the images in the articles are simply phenomenal. How often does one see a brain when it is learning?

Read the Neuroscience News summary of the article here. The summary shows images taken from the article and enlarged to show the changes.

Read the actual article here. It includes still more images.

Enjoy! It’s pretty amazing.

Trauma, Brain Inflammation, and Neurofeedback

Posted on March 2, 2021by:

Some people think of athletes, movie stars, or musicians as celebrities. To me, that’s not quite right. Scientists, writers, and innovators fall into the category of celebrity for me. Today, I had the opportunity to listen to someone I think of as a bit of a celebrity. She is journalist Donna Jackson Nakazawa, and her work on neuroscience truly impresses me, in large part because it’s geared toward helping a general audience understand a complex topic. For those who aren’t familiar with her writing, my two favorites are The Angel and the Assassin and Childhood Disrupted.

Her talk today was on trauma and the brain. She explained, as she does in The Angel and the Assassin, that trauma sets the stage for what the conversation between the brain and the body will be, and that cells in the brain called microglia are actually immune cells and part of our body’s immune response. They are in constant conversation with the rest of the body.

Jackson Nakazawa reminded us that chronic emotional stress signals our immune cells the same way an environmental assault triggers the immune system. This is fine for a short-term response, but over time, it creates inflammation in the body. Inflammation, in turn, can lead to depression and auto-immune diseases. This creates changes in the architecture of the brain.

She also noted that the social isolation and chronic fear state that many have experienced since the coronavirus pandemic began is a form of trauma and is harmful for brain health.

What I appreciated is that this seminar didn’t end with an explanation of what she sees as the problem of how trauma creates physical health challenges in the form of inflammation. She said that there are at least 20 different approaches to helping calm the nervous system and send messages to the brain that the body is safe.

At the top of that list of 20 is: neurofeedback!

Not just because I liked that answer so well, but also because I have so much respect for her investigative work on neurons and brain health, I have signed up for a seminar with her to learn more about what she has found regarding the dance between the brain and the rest of the immune system. If the seminar is anything like this open chat was, I will be bringing wonderful new insights into both my work in neurofeedback and hypnosis.

I appreciate the opportunity to learn about practical, solution-focused approaches to well-being, and I’m pretty excited to share time with my kind of celebrity, too.

If you want to learn more about how neurofeedback may be a solution for calming your body and mind, give me a call. As of the time I’m writing this in early March, I’m pretty full, but depending on your scheduling flexibility, I may be able to fit you in.

The Master and His Emissary

Posted on February 25, 2021by:

Uncategorized No Comments

In 2009, psychiatrist and professor Iain McGilchrist wrote an amazing and highly detailed book called The Master and His Emissary, which is about the two hemispheres of the brain and how they operate together to help us be who we are. His work debunks much, if not most, of the popular understanding of the two hemispheres.

So, I felt excited when someone shared with me a link to an interview with McGilchrist on the NPR podcast Hidden Brain. The conversation is informative and yet understandable for non-experts. You can find both the interview and a transcript of it here.

Neurofeedback and Autism Study

Posted on February 24, 2021by: