Biofeedback for Stress Management and Stress Relief

Biofeedback is the widely-used and medically-accepted technique for teaching us to control stress, achieve relaxation, and channel talents and energies toward realizing our full potential.

Biofeedback is a way to measure the body’s physiological responses in real time, and a tool to learn to control them.

Biofeedback raises your awareness and therefore the possibility of conscious control of bodily functions such as the activity of brain waves, blood pressure, heart rate, skin temperature, sweat gland activity, and muscle tension.

Biofeedback is based on the idea, confirmed by scientific studies, that people have the innate potential to influence with their minds many of the automatic, involuntary functions of their bodies.

To help you develop this ability, a biofeedback uses signals from special monitoring equipment to enable you to use your thoughts and will to control your body and to teach you to control certain body functions and their responses.

Most often, biofeedback helps control stress response, by realizing when it’s underway and incorporate in your daily stress management routine relaxation techniques like deep breathing, visualization, meditation and deep muscle relaxation to calm their physiological stimulation.

By helping you learn how your body is currently functioning, biofeedback can help you to know which stress management techniques actually work for you and what to change.

Also, by showing you in ‘real time’ which relaxation techniques are working and which aren’t, you’re able to more easily grasp effective ways to relax your body’s physiology and incorporate healthier habits into your lifestyle.

Biofeedback can be particularly useful in treating stress-related conditions, as anxiety, tension headaches, pain, IBS, general stress, and several other conditions.

The dangers of chronic stress and burnout are well-documented. We have learned that chronic stress can be a trigger for many negative health symptoms, and biofeedback can offer a significant and palpable improvement in the way you feel and how your body function.

Biofeedback monitors and "feeds-back" how well you are succeeding at reducing your stress levels.

There are three main approaches to biofeedback:

• Skin temperature methods.
• Skin electrical activity methods.
• Muscle electrical activity.

It should e noted that biofeedack only measures stress; it does not to cure it.

You should use it in conjunction with other stress management techniques and lifestyle changes.

This feedback allows you to experiment with stress management techniques, and actually see or hear them taking effect on your body. It allows you to practice different ways of using the techniques and compare the results.

Small biofeedback machines are now available for use in the home.

"The StressEraser is a critical teaching tool – it's the best metrics available to measure, monitor and control your stress. It will change how you experience and solve stress. I use it every time in all my corporate training programs at Harvard."
- Mark A. Thornton, Meditation in a New York Minute: Super Calm for the Super Busy

"Anybody can pick one up and start using it and start feeling the benefits pretty quickly. The more time you spend in this parasympathetic mode versus the sympathetic mode, the healthier you're going to be."
- Dr. Claire Wheeler, 10 Simple Solutions to Stress

"I have found the StressEraser to be very helpful for patients with a variety of disorders that are exacerbated by stimulation of the sympathetic nervous system… It elicits the very same complex of physiologic responses that has been shown scientifically in repeated studies to maximize the functioning of the immune system."
- Dr. Lee Rice, The Wellness Institute

About the Author

Dr.Inese Millere , M.D. is lifestyle coach in holistic stress management and mindful eating for busy women after 40 who want to be Fit, Balanced and Ageless: to manage stress, stress eating, have a healthy and joyful relationship with food and enjoy healthy living and longevity.