Quick & Easy Stress Reduction Solutions – Part 4

In my last article I talked about how we can use our breathing to help us relax.  Here is the link my blog page where that article is if you missed it:  https://biofeedbackinternational.com/blog/

Here I will talk about another powerful relaxation tool that you can use with or without any physical tools.  Muscle relaxation is another tool you can use to quickly and easily relax.

Stress Reduction Solution #4 is Using Muscle Relaxation to Reduce Stress Book

We represent stress in our muscles.  As a reaction to stressful events we tend to contract our muscles and hold some excess tension in our muscles chronically.  This can lead to problems.

Muscles are intended to contract to either to cause movement of our body or to maintain posture.  A certain amount of muscle contraction is necessary to maintain posture so that you don’t fall over.  Additional contraction is necessary to move a part of your body.  Once the movement is over the muscle is supposed to go back to a resting state.

Muscles also contract in reaction to stress as part of the fight or flight response.  This is a normal reaction which is intended to prepare your body to respond physically to an emergency.   This is very helpful if there really is an emergency that requires a physical reaction like if a car jumped onto the sidewalk and you have to run for your life.  The extra tension in your muscles would allow you run faster, jump higher, and hit harder.  This reaction might save your life in a real emergency.

Here is the problem, your nervous system doesn’t tend to be smart enough to not react in the same way when you have a problem at work or you get stuck in traffic.  Your muscles contract as though you had to run, jump, or fight.  Since it is not necessary to react physically, that extra tension is not useful.  In many cases at least some of the extra tension doesn’t go away meaning that the muscles stay partially contracted for no useful reason.  When the muscles don’t go back to a resting state it can lead to pain.  The constant muscle contraction can also continue to send signals to the brain and nervous system to stay in an emergency mode which can cause you to feel stressed or anxious.  It can also be physically draining because the muscles are using resources and energy to maintain the contracted state.

Official Web Site: Best Stress Books | Reduce Your Stress

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Professional Peripheral Biofeedback BCIA Program

Professional Peripheral Biofeedback BCIA Program

Training Dates and Locations

Continuing Education Credit Available

Health Training Seminars, a division of Biofeedback Resources International is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Health Training Seminars maintains responsibility for this program and its content.
BCIA Certification Requirements

Professional Peripheral Biofeedback BCIA Program

JAN 17-19, 2019 – Miami, FL
April 12-14, 2019 – Hawthorne, NY
June 22-24, 2019 – Houston, TX
July 19-21, 2019 – Hawthorne, NY

Price: $1195

Our new style of seminar is designed to teach clinicians biofeedback fundamentals and cutting-edge applications. For better use of your time, the seminar will be a combination of 3-day classroom, home study and web-based training.

BRI Seminars Registration Form

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Biofeedback Resources International
109 Croton Ave, 2nd Fl, #5

Ossining, NY 10562-5102

FAX: 914-762-2281

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Professional Peripheral Biofeedback BCIA Program

This innovative seminar is designed to teach clinicians biofeedback fundamentals and cutting-edge applications. This program covers all 48 hours of the BCIA Didactic Biofeedback Education requirement through powerful demonstrations of biofeedback and adjunctive procedures, imaginative hands-on lab exercises with multi-channel computerized equipment, professional multimedia presentations and comprehensive review materials. This program integrates personal hands-on training with equipment with didactic presentation.

Participants will learn:

• • The foundations of biofeedback
  • Physiological basis and recording of surface electromyography (sEMG), temperature, electrodermal activity (EDA), respiration patterns (strain gauges and pCO2), electroencephalography (EEG), peripheral blood flow (BVP), heart rate and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) and economic biofeedback approaches (including incentive inspirometers and scales)
  • How to identifying artifacts and determining appropriate recording
  • How to record and interpret data
  • How to perform a psychophysiological profile and pre and post data comparison
  • The use of adjunctive techniques such as progressive relaxation t raining, autogenic training, imagery, guided breathing, desensitization, mindfulness training, quieting reflex.
  • The role of home biofeedback devices such as Freeze framer, Wild Divine and GSR2
  • Overview of clinical and educational applications

 Official Website: Behavioral Health Seminars

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Mindfield® eTemp | APA continuing Credits

The eSense Temperature is a small sensor for measuring your skin temperature with the microphone input of your smartphone or tablet (Android or Apple iOS.)

A free app by Mindfield® is included to display your skin temperature in different ways for biofeedback training. You can export the measured values via e-mail.

Handwarming training is an especially effective and common biofeedback method. The temperature of our hands is connected to our stress level: When we are stressed, we tend to have cold hands.

 The eSense Temperature sensor is attached to your index or middle finger, or held between index finger and thumb. Immediate feedback enables you to voluntarily increase the skin temperature in your fingers, thus increasing your peripheral blood circulation, leading to relaxation and stress reduction.

This is an easy and effective training to improve your well-being!

Background information on Skin Temperature


The skin’s surface temperature changes according to blood circulation through body tissue. The small blood vessels (arterioles) crossing through the tissue are surrounded by fibers of smooth muscle controlled by the sympathetic nervous system.

In a state of increased exertion, excitement and stress, these muscle fibers contract and narrow the blood vessels. This leads to a reduction of skin temperature because blood circulation through the tissue is reduced. By contrast, in a resting or calm state, the muscles relax and the blood vessels expand. The skin temperature rises.

Official Website: APA continuing Credits

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Quick & Easy Stress Reduction Solutions – Part 3

Sometimes you don’t have anything with you, no essential oils, no smart phone with relaxation app or relaxation music or biofeedback instrument.  You may not be able to go outside for a nice walk or sit by the lake to relax.  You could be in an office on the 25^th floor or in the subway feeling stressed.  What can you do to relax now?

In my previous article I talked about how spending time in nature can reduce stress and I shared a free relaxation video link.  To read that article and view the video click on this link: https://biofeedbackinternational.com/quick-easy-stress-reduction-solutions-part-2/#more-3637

Today we will discuss how breathing can be used relax.

Stress Reduction Solution #3 is Breathing to Relax
Since you were born you have been breathing.  If you believe in God and creation, when God created man He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and then man became a living soul.  When you stop breathing, you stop living.  So breathing is important, right? If breathing is so important then how you breathe might also be important.  Have you ever heard someone tell you to take a deep breath when you were upset about something?  You may not have believed them.  In fact you may have wanted to tell them to shut up or worse.  What if I told you that it can be shown scientifically that changing your breathing can directly affect your nervous system and change the activity of your heart.  The effect is measureable.  We can measure the changes in your heart rate and heart rate variability pattern when you change your breathing.  There are professional and home devices that can be used to show this.  Some of them connect to PCs, Mac computers, and smart phones and tablets.  These devices are very helpful for doing diaphragmatic breathing training because you can see the measurements of what you are doing and the responses that your heart has when you change your breathing.  There are also biofeedback sensors that measure your breathing.  A belt goes around your abdomen which stretches when you inhale and then goes back to normal when you exhale.  It measures how deep you are breathing and how fast you are breathing (breaths per minute).  Again, they are very helpful.  If you want to learn more about these devices and where to get them contact me.  What I want to do here is show you how you can use breathing exercises to calm and relax yourself quickly where ever you are.

Although our brain automatically monitors and regulates our breathing so that we don’t have to think about it, we do have the ability to override that control and change our breathing pattern.

Official Website: Stress Minimizing Books

More Info: Popular Stress Management Books

What is Biofeedback, Neurofeedback and Applied Psychophysiology?

"Wonderful opportunity. Positive learning environment. Technically on target, practical, good depth. I appreciated inclusion of theoretical and philosophical discussion. Super learning experience." - Dick A. Genardi, Ph.D., Director Behavioral Health Associates, Inc.,Dayton, Ohio


There have been scores of books written on Biofeedback, Neurofeedback and Applied Psychophysiology. We introduce you to those we feel are the best and most relevant of them through our training,website etc. New books for the general public and several for professionals have been published recently. Most of the focus at present is on Neurofeedback because it is the most dramatic and fastest growing type of biofeedback. One of those books is our own, MINDFITNESS TRAINING: Neurofeedback and The Process.

There have been thousands of scientific studies in this field - many of them published in the most refereed journals in their respective disciplines. Some world class scientists, practitioners and neurophilosophers believe that biofeedback and neurofeedback discoveries rank among the most important technological, educational and medical breakthroughs of the last several centuries. If you consider that self-knowledge and heuristic (self) learning are generally considered to be the most important skills most human beings can develop, then it is easy to understand why biofeedback is receiving so much attention.

The simplest explanation is that biofeedback is the use of instrumentation to feed back information about the psychophysiology (mind and body) of a human being to him or herself. Given this information most individuals can increase their control (self-regulation) of whatever activity is being monitored. Things begin to get exciting when we look into the implications of these extraordinary levels of control and what the benefits are to those learning these high levels of self-regulation.

The resulting profound mind/body changes are applicable to over four hundred common clinical disorders and the list is growing continuously. There are also extraordinary applications to Performance and Life Enhancement. This means there are many forms of biofeedback and many types of instrumentation. Some of the most common are: electromyograph (EMG) Electrical activity of the muscles (Voluntary Nervous System), Electroencephalograph (EEG) Electrical activity of the brain (Central Nervous System), Temperature (TEMP) Peripheral blood flow, Electrodermal Response (EDR, SCR, GSR, etc., Sweat Gland activity, Heart Rate (HR) including the extraordinarily exciting new field of neurocardiology), and Blood Pressure (BP) all Autonomic Nervous System measures. Applied Psychophysiology is the large field of study of the mind and body and the practical applications of that research. Biofeedback and Transactional Psychophysiology are important parts of this greater field.

More Info Click Here :  Biofeedback Equipment

ProComp Infiniti | EEG biofeedback

The ProComp Infiniti is an 8 channel, multi-modality encoder that has all the power and flexibility you need for real-time, computerized biofeedback and data acquisition in any clinical setting.

The first two sensor channels provide ultimate signal fidelity (2048 samples per second) for viewing RAW EEG, EMG and EKG signals. The remaining six channels (256 samples/sec) can be used with any combination of sensors, including EEG, EKG, RMS EMG, skin conductance, heart rate, blood volume pulse, respiration, goniometry, force, and voltage input.

ProComp Infiniti(TM) offers internal, user-activated calibration to ensure that you can always obtain the highest quality signal, without the costly downtime associated with factory re-calibration.

In short, the ProComp Infiniti covers the full range of objective physiological signals used in clinical observation and biofeedback.

Housed in an ergonomically designed case and requiring only a USB port, ProComp Infiniti can be used with any IBM-compatible laptop or desktop PC. What's more, ProComp Infiniti can capture data in real time by connecting directly to the PC via fiber-optic cable, or it can store data on a Compact Flash memory card for uploading later to the PC.

Official Website: Biofeedback Training Houston

More Info Click Here: Biofeedback Instruments 

WHAT STRESS CAN DO | Stress Minimizing Books

WHAT STRESS CAN DO: Harry L. Campbell - Whether it's your daily dealings at work or a pervasive concern for your physical safety, the stress you regularly experience may actually be more harmful than the threat that triggered it.

Book Price: $14.95

About biofeedbackinternational

Biofeedback Resources International ... Providing quality biofeedback instruments and professional training for over 25 years.

Mission: Foster self-knowledge and improve lives through innovation, continuous improvement of products, services, employee productivity and relentless efforts to deliver highest values at lowest prices.

Welcome! Since 1971, thousands of professionals and organizations have chosen our team for training, equipment and technical support. Word of mouth from satisfied clients has made us an international, full service leaders.

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The History of Muscle Dysfunction and SEMG

The history of muscle pain and dysfunction is viewed through the lens of a four factor theory of histologic (tissue related) issues, psychologic (emotional) issues, sensory motor (movement) issues and biomechanical (postural) issues. The historical antecedents of both bodywork and surface electromyography are reviewed.

Key words: Surface EMG, SEMG, bodywork, trigger points, posture, emotions, movement.

Note: Parts of this article have appeared in The History of SEMG, Jour App Psychophys and Biof, In Press.


Humans have had to deal with sore muscles since the beginning of time. Initially, muscle assessments and treatments were conducted by hand and during the last century, the use of electronic instruments came into play.

To put muscle function and the clinical use of Surface electromyography (SEMG) into a perspective of history, is seems prudent to utilize a broad nomothetic net or conceptual framework. In Clinical Applications for Surface Electromyography, Kasman, Cram and Wolf (1998) consider chronic muscle dysfunction from a four fold perspective: Histologic (Tissue related issues); Psychologic (Psychophysiology and Emotions), Sensorimotor (Movement) and Mechanical Dysfunction (Cumulative Trauma, Posture etc). In this article we will provide a brief historical overview related to each of these four areas. This will provide a deep background for the emergence of the clinical use of SEMG, including information on the history of body work, psychophysiology, rehabilitation and the emergence of electricity and SEMG instrumentation.

Official Website : Behavioral health seminars

More Info Click Here: Neurofeedback training Houston

Less Stress for the Holidays | How To Reduce Stress And Anxiety

The start of the holiday season is upon us.  This should be a wonderful time to look forward to and yet many people experience this as one of the most stressful times of the year.  What makes it stressful? The crowds and expense of shopping, the traffic, spending time with people who get on your nerves – shall I go on?  I’m sure you could easily add to my list.

What can you do to make it less stressful?

Give thanks. The season starts with the Thanksgiving holiday.  Take some time to actually give thanks for all of the things that you are blessed with.  All of us kind find at least a few things to be thankful for.  Here is a list of things you can pick through to find something that applies to you:


A place to live

Food to eat

A job

Family

Friends

Good Health

Sight

Clothes to wear

A car or bus or train fare

The ability to walk

Now I know there may be some who don’t have all of these things but I believe that there are few who don’t have at least one.

Spend some time thinking about what the holidays are supposed to be about.

Official Weebsite: Stress Minimizing Books

More Info Click Here: Guide To Stress Reduction

How Biofeedback Training Reduces Stress

Biofeedback training is an effective method for reducing the negative effects of stress.  There are many sources of stress including politics, natural disasters, terrorist acts, work, family, and financial problems, and traffic.  In this world of 24 hour TV and radio news plus news on our computers, we are constantly bombarded with stressful, negative information.  If that wasn’t enough we have smart phones, tablets, and smart watches with us at all times to make sure that we don’t miss anything.  Wherever we are we can stay up on what is happening.  Besides the information we get from news sources, we also get blogs and podcasts.  In addition to these stress sources, the people who we interact with who cause us stress are able to call, text, or email us 24 hours a day 7 days a week, 365 days a year.


Biofeedback Training Method of Reducing Stress

People need methods of reducing the negative effects of stress.  Many of the solutions that are offered are medications.  Even when they are effective they often come with unwanted side-effects.  Thankfully there are some non-drug methods of reducing stress.  Biofeedback training is one such method.  Biofeedback instruments measure muscle tension, skin temperature, skin conductance (sweat), breathing, heart rate, and brainwave activity.  With biofeedback training people learn to control the way their body reacts to stress by viewing a biofeedback device while they practice relaxation exercises..

Official Website: EEG biofeedback

More Info:  How Biofeedback Training Reduces Stress