Joan Von Niessen is a coach, but she doesn’t work with bats, balls, hockey pucks or skates.
Instead she is armed with sensors that can record brain activity and a range of programs tailored to the issues her clients wish to address.
Von Niessen has recently opened a new business in Salmon Arm, called Shuswap Biofeedback, which is a treatment technique in which people are trained to improve their health by using signals from their own bodies.
By providing clients with information about how their bodies are responding, clients can learn to bring their bodies into a more optimal, relaxed state that can reduce stress and anxiety as well as help manage health problems like depression, migraine headaches, epilepsy, autism, ADHD or stroke. Biofeedback techniques have also been used on high-performance athletes to achieve peak performance.
“In our society today, our balance between our sympathetic and parasympathetic systems can be thrown out of whack. Many people are living in a continual state of fight-or-flight, and our bodies were not meant to live like that,” says Von Niessen. “Biofeedback is a technique that helps people gain control of their bodies, by slowing the breath, relaxing the muscles and learning to flip the switch back to the parasympathetic system.”
Neurofeedback, which is a subset of biofeedback, involves directing brain activity into healthy patterns and, through repetition, these new pathways can become ingrained.
A registered nurse for 22 years, Von Niessen became interested in the area of biofeedback through her husband, who works at an alternate school and often deals with children with emotional and behavioural problems.
“It was frustrating that the only option was medication, and once the medication is stopped the symptoms return. Whereas neurofeedback is drug free, safe and has the potential to create permanent changes in the brain,” she says.
Von Niessen recently completed an intensive course in Florida.
Using sensors placed on the person’s head, Von Niessen can see a visual mapping of brain waves and then uses computer programs to direct the brain into optimum patterns. For example, a client would be directed to watch a Pacman game on a screen. As their brain waves begin to switch from an agitated to a calm state, the game becomes brighter and the Pacman moves more quickly around the board. This feedback encourages the person to continue to use their brain in that way. Another program shows a river scene, but as the person calms their breathing and thought patterns, the scene begins to become more colourful and other images start to appear.
But, she stresses, to visualize changes, participants need to commit to a program, generally 20 to 40 sessions, to see results. As well, extended health plans do not cover the service.
“It’s not a quick fix, this is a longer term therapy that is designed to create permanent changes,” she says.
The Shuswap Biofeedback clinic operates out of the lower level of the Maple Tree Medical Clinic.
For more information, contact Von Niessen at 250-804-3429 or view her website at www.shuswapbiofeedback.ca.
