October 6, 2025 • 24 mins
What if there was a way to retrain your brain for better mental health and emotional wellbeing? In this powerful episode, Jen sits down with Miriam to explore her transformative journey with neurofeedback—a cutting-edge therapy that's helping people overcome anxiety, depression, ADHD, and trauma naturally.
Miriam opens up about her personal struggles and the moment she discovered neurofeedback could change everything. You'll learn how this non-invasive treatment works, what to expect during sessions, and why it's becoming a game-changer for mental wellness.
Whether you're struggling with your own mental health challenges or supporting a loved one, this conversation offers real hope and practical insights. Miriam's story proves that healing is possible, and sometimes the most powerful solutions come from working with your brain's natural ability to rewire itself.
Join us for this inspiring conversation that could be the key to unlocking your brain's healing potential.
To learn more about renting a neurofeedback device please contact Jen at info@exaltedhealth.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:02):
Well, welcome back to the Regulate to Your Nervous
System podcast.
And I have my friend and mentor,uh Miriam Bellamy here with me
today.
Thanks for being here, Miriam.
Miriam is a licensed marriageand family therapist, and she is
the one that opened the doors tome for neurofeedback.
(00:23):
So I'm really excited to haveyou here today.
Thanks for being here.
SPEAKER_02 (00:27):
It's good to be with you.
SPEAKER_00 (00:28):
So share with us how, because you're a therapist,
had been a therapist for quite awhile when neurofeedback came
into your life.
Like, what was the catalyst thatbrought neurofeedback in?
SPEAKER_02 (00:38):
Uh it was my own health crisis, really.
It my own, and then also myyounger daughter wasn't doing
very well.
Um I had struggled for myselfwith chronic fatigue for 20
years.
SPEAKER_00 (00:50):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (00:51):
Um, daily massive crashing for almost 20 years.
SPEAKER_00 (00:56):
Yeah.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (00:58):
I had tried so many things.
Um, you name it, I tried it justabout.
And then my younger daughter, umreally around fourth grade or
so, something started sort ofdropping off for her.
She had problems as an infant.
She was failure to thrive, andum she'd gain weight, then she'd
(01:21):
lose weight, gain weight, loseweight, all that kind of stuff,
fall off the growth curve.
And then we hit fourth grade,and something started happening
for her for her level ofconfidence in school.
Um, her level her ability toread, write.
Um her what we found out laterwas her short-term memory was in
the like one percentile.
SPEAKER_00 (01:40):
Wow.
SPEAKER_02 (01:40):
And what that means is like you're copying numbers.
If you look at numbers six,seven, and eight, or whatever
the numbers are, and you youcan't remember what the numbers
were to copy them.
Yeah, imagine that kind ofstruggle.
Yeah.
So she hit middle school and shestarted failing, and um, there
were many, many, many thingsgoing on for her, lots of
anxiety.
And yeah, so I needed to dosomething different.
(02:03):
I was I just couldn't do itanymore.
I was fatigued and depressed,and um, I needed help for me and
for her.
SPEAKER_00 (02:09):
Yeah, and the mental load, um, I don't feel like it
gets talked about enough.
Like it's hard enough justrunning a family and carrying
the mental load.
And I think women in generaloftentimes carry a lot of that,
but then in addition to that,you're a therapist, so you're
pouring into other people allday long, which I can relate to
in my coaching practice.
Um, and there's a point whereyou're just your brain almost
(02:30):
just stops like functioning theway that it should, right?
SPEAKER_02 (02:35):
Yeah, oh, for sure.
SPEAKER_00 (02:37):
Yeah, you hit that burnout, overwhelm, shutdown.
So then how did neurofeedbackcome into your life?
How were you introduced to it?
SPEAKER_02 (02:43):
Uh, I was actually so one of the things I do as a
therapist, it's quite differentfrom the mainstream is I I
practice uh Bowen family systemstheory, um, my my own
integration of it, but it's verydifferent from attachment theory
and that kind of individualfocus that's in the mainstream.
So I was at uh a conference forsystems theory in uh DC, and
(03:04):
this was a leadershipconference, and there were these
top executives of differentcompanies getting up and talking
about their experiences asbecoming a leader, becoming a
more differentiated leader,right?
Yeah.
And they were talking about thisZengar neurotimal neurofeedback,
(03:24):
and they weren't trying to sellanything, they were just uh
talking about how this wasgetting right to their brain and
shifting how they saw things,uh, shifting their energy even.
They would talk about their ownhealth issues and that kind of
thing.
And it just people at the BowenCenter, they were people that I
really trust.
I'd been studying there for avery long time, and I just
(03:46):
thought I need something tochange.
And uh I learned, so I starteddoing some research.
I started just looking intoneurofeedback in general,
calling around town.
Uh, we lived in Fort Collinshere in Colorado at the time.
And neurofeedback just for mydaughter, because that just for
one of us, whether it was me orher, was going to be$2,500 just
(04:09):
for her for 40 sessions.
SPEAKER_00 (04:11):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (04:12):
And I had already sort of started learning a
little bit about neurotimal, andit was much more affordable, and
we could do it at home, andeverybody could get sessions.
Yes.
Um, and so I that's what I did.
I found um someone who rents theequipment, and and within 10
sessions for me, sorry, it wassix sessions.
It was after my sixth session, Iwoke up feeling rested.
(04:36):
And I, you don't realize howtired you are until you don't
feel tired.
Yes, like I have not, eventhough I knew I was fatigued, I
thought I was sleeping fine.
Yeah, I woke up rested, and Iwas like, I haven't felt rested
in probably 20 years at thetime.
Yeah, and that's so and I waslike, I'm gonna keep going with
it.
(04:57):
Like for Ella, this was over thesummer when we did this.
For Ella, um, we only did about10, 12 sessions for her during
that rental.
She went from um in her room,sullen, depressed, angry, to all
of a sudden she is out and doingstuff in the kit.
(05:18):
She's cooking for herself.
Wow.
She is incredibly affectionate.
She's mildly autistic, so shejust sort of had the coil from
affection.
All of a sudden, she's all overme.
I'm like, what the heck?
Get off me.
This is too much.
I'm kidding.
Yeah.
Um, and so that was over thesummer.
She started cleaning her room,Jen.
SPEAKER_00 (05:39):
Wow.
SPEAKER_02 (05:40):
Wow.
Like you couldn't walk through,there wasn't a path to walk
through before.
And she starts cleaning her roomon her own.
One of the iterations of thiswas eight bags of stuff.
Eight.
She clears out.
Another iteration was she had myuh her father pull the dresser
out so she could get everythingthat was thrown behind the
(06:01):
dresser.
Right.
Right, her rights.
Okay.
And then school started.
And instead of the two hours ofhomework that should have taken
her 30 minutes or that wastaking other kids 30 minutes.
SPEAKER_00 (06:13):
Sure.
SPEAKER_02 (06:15):
Where she was screaming, crying, so
frustrated, so confused, all ofa sudden she's quietly doing her
homework.
SPEAKER_00 (06:21):
Yeah.
On her own, independently.
SPEAKER_02 (06:23):
Yeah.
I think the similar thinghappened with your son.
SPEAKER_00 (06:26):
Yeah, it did.
Yeah.
We we started uh over Christmasbreak and we did it the last
week of a Christmas break, andhe went back to school.
And we'd only done, I mean,seven to ten sessions at this
point.
And all of a sudden his teachersare emailing me, being like, I
don't know what changed overChristmas break, but your kid is
so different.
Like he has really struggledwith executive functioning, he
(06:49):
struggles with being organized,he struggles with staying on
task.
And these are things that we'vedone years and years of OT
therapy, vision therapy.
And we'd seen gains with all ofthem, every single one.
But all of a sudden it wasconcentrated and we could do it
at home.
And we had done, I can'tremember if I shared this with
you, but we'd done neurofeedbackum about a decade before when we
(07:12):
were doing OT with him.
But during that time, uh, he hadto be, we had to go to the
clinic for OT appointments.
He had to be focused on a screenand he had to be visually
engaged, right?
And so for a kid that strugglesto sit still, and he was young
at the time, he was only likefour or five, um, struggles to
be engaged, struggles to focus,struggles to sit still, and had
(07:36):
to focus on the screen when hehad a visual tracking problem.
Um, although we saw some gains,we didn't see near the gains
that we saw in a week at home.
So that was one of the draws tome with um with the Zengar uh
Neurooptimal system is that Icould bring it home and we could
do it.
And that the the frequencyfeedback was audio.
(07:58):
So let's just talk a little bitabout how it works.
So, how does it how does it workfrom Miriam's perspective?
SPEAKER_02 (08:03):
Yeah.
So to me, it's another reason Iwent with Neurotimals because I
had been poked and prodded andhad stuff done to me for so many
years, mostly by really goodsame, but but not always.
SPEAKER_00 (08:15):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (08:15):
And you can have, you know, real problems when
someone makes a mistake or don'tthey don't know what they're
doing.
So with Neuroptimal, there's nopractitioner who's gonna mess
with my brain, right?
Feeling very messed with.
So that's the the core of how itworks is it helps you your brain
(08:36):
decide.
It gives your brain information,so your brain then decides, and
it taps into it's also part offamily systems theory is the
sort of a foundation of thattheory is resilience, it's about
personal responsibility.
Um, and so this just on aphysiological level was also
appealing to me.
Yeah.
Um it just taps into yourbrain's resilience.
(08:58):
And for people who, if they'relistening and they've been sick
for a while or struggling for along time, you start like me,
you start to lose faith thatyour body can figure it out.
And this was my body figured itout because it got the right
information.
SPEAKER_00 (09:14):
Yeah.
So it just provides the feedbackto the brain, and then the brain
knows what to do with it,essentially, right?
SPEAKER_02 (09:21):
Yeah, and think of it too.
Uh my one of my favorite ways ofexplaining it is you you walk
into the bathroom, you look inthe mirror, and your hair is out
of whack.
What do you do without eventhinking about it?
SPEAKER_00 (09:32):
Yeah, you fix it.
You fix your hair, yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (09:34):
That's what your brain is doing all the time.
Yeah, the brain is constantlytaking in data.
What's the temperature of theroom?
If it's really, really cold,your your body, your brain is
gonna get involved and sort ofmake sure you're as warm as you
can be, or it's gonna say, goget a sweater or whatever.
We're con your brain isconstantly monitoring for stuff
like that.
And so with Neurotimal, it justuh holds a mirror up to your
(09:57):
brain and your brain willself-correct.
SPEAKER_00 (09:59):
Yeah, it's so good.
So, one of my favorite thingsabout it is that there's just no
contraindications.
So, because I've had you knowchronic illness, I have been
either on medication orsupplements the majority of my
life, and that gets old, quitefrankly.
You know, there's more foodsthat I have to take away, more
supplements that I have to addin, et cetera, et cetera.
(10:20):
And what this does is that allyou do is attach it to your
brain, attach it to your scalp,attach it to your ears, and it
does the work for you.
There's no internal things thatyou're taking in, the frequency
is just providing the feedbackto your brain.
And for me, that was such arelief, right?
For people that have beenthrough chronic illness and just
done all of those things foryears and years and years, and
(10:42):
it can be exhausting, right?
Yeah, can you relate to that?
SPEAKER_02 (10:47):
It's not a I think chronic illness is a complicated
thing, so for me, it's notwasn't everything, but it was it
was the game changer.
I I have never had fatigue likethat again.
SPEAKER_00 (11:00):
That's amazing.
SPEAKER_02 (11:01):
But I do get acupuncture when I go through
something stressful or whatever.
Like, you know, I do takesupplements now, but it's not 20
or 30 a day, right?
SPEAKER_00 (11:09):
Same, same, yeah.
I went from you know, taking 20or 30 a day down to just a
handful, um, which has been solife-changing.
Yep, so good.
So it regulates the nervoussystem, but let's talk about
also balancing emotions becausethat is a gain that I have seen
not only in myself, in so manyof my clients, where like as a
(11:30):
therapist, we work through thewounds and things, and as a
coach for myself, same thing.
Work through the wounds, thelies that they're believing.
But then if if they've carriedthose for years and years, the
neuropathways that align withthose lies or wounds or traumas
or whatever are still verystrong, right?
And so believing the truth canbe a lot harder.
(11:53):
So, what have you noticed inyour clients with just like kind
of switching over to believingthe truth with the
neurofeedback?
SPEAKER_02 (12:00):
So I I have a marital example, a personal
marital example.
If I'd be great.
So uh God, how many?
I don't know how many years wehad been married at the time.
17 or 18 or something like that.
And I had built up a fair, well,both of us had built up a fair
amount of resentment.
(12:22):
And resentment, one definition Iheard from a friend of mine once
was resentment is yourresending, re-resending,
whatever, resending those sameold thoughts over and over, like
you just referenced.
Right?
He's this and he's that.
So this particular time I hadmade a decision, and it really
wasn't related to the marriage.
It was just, let me see if I'lldo 30 sessions in 30 days.
(12:45):
Well, that turned into 90sessions in 90 days.
So every single day for 90 days,I was doing sessions, and I was
in a session at one point, and Iwas angry, right?
That resentment was going.
I was going round and round, andall of a sudden, in the middle
of a session, it just was like Idon't know how else to describe
(13:06):
it, other than that, thosethoughts just melted away.
Stopped.
I I felt this opening in myheart.
It was just this massive exhale,and it was like, I don't have to
go there.
SPEAKER_00 (13:23):
Yeah.
That's so good.
SPEAKER_02 (13:28):
And that the resentment was gone, didn't fix
the marriage.
SPEAKER_01 (13:32):
I don't want to scare anybody, but well, I mean,
that's real though.
It might have helped, but Idon't know.
Anyways, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (13:39):
I mean, but if you can like you're gonna be better
off regardless if you can let goof resentment and anger, right?
SPEAKER_01 (13:46):
That's right.
SPEAKER_00 (13:47):
Yeah, yeah.
For me, what I've seen um isthat the highs don't get so high
and the lows don't get so low.
I don't feel like that rollercoaster anymore.
I feel so steady uh for thefirst time in my life.
And that is something I haveworked on for years and years
and years.
Uh, you know, my home lifewasn't fantastic.
(14:08):
There wasn't a lot of skillsthat I had growing up uh to
learn how to manage emotions.
Um, and so what that did is thatI stuffed everything down for
years and years, and we knowthat if we stuff things down,
they're gonna come out usuallyin an unhealthy way.
And I had worked on that foryears.
SPEAKER_02 (14:25):
That was a big part of my fatigue, I think the
emotional stuff.
I just couldn't deal with that.
SPEAKER_00 (14:29):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And even as a therapist, likeand myself as a coach, like I
have tools, but we're stillhuman beings, right?
And so having this additionaltool that can help just bring
balance and rational thinking ina whole new way that I had never
experienced before.
I hadn't been taught that, Ihadn't been modeled that.
(14:50):
Yeah, I had been working ongrowing those skills for
decades, and all of a sudden itjust felt easy when I started
neurofeedback.
All of a sudden, it just feltlike it all the tools that I had
been trying to build and worktowards and grow in just felt
easy and light.
Would you agree with that?
SPEAKER_02 (15:09):
Yes.
It yeah, so it can make therapynot needed, or it can make
therapy that a person is in waymore effective.
SPEAKER_00 (15:18):
Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (15:19):
I've seen that with kids, I've seen that with
myself.
SPEAKER_00 (15:22):
Um of the greatest testimonies I heard.
Um, I read the book years agowhen I was really getting going
in my practice, um, The BodyKeeps Score.
Um, and there's a whole chapteron that of uh a therapist, um,
the the guy that wrote the book.
I'm totally blanking on his nameright now.
And thank you.
(15:43):
Yep, um, something wildlyGerman.
Anyway, he uh has researched foryears and he does a whole uh
chapter on neurofeedback thatI'm just gonna share a little
bit about.
So they did several teststudies, and and they did not
use uh neurooptimal, the onethat Mary and my area talking
about.
But neurofeedback isneurofeedback, right?
(16:04):
There's our there's alldifferent advancements in um
technology and things thesedays, but the particular one
that they use, I just want to beclear, this one was not the
particular company Miriam and myare partnered with.
However, they had done a numberof case studies, and they had
some clients who, I like Italked about, had been through a
lot of trauma, um, who had beenin therapy for years.
(16:25):
And although they had seengains, they still felt like they
were on that emotional rollercoaster.
And the only thing that theychanged during this time frame
was that they addedneurofeedback for a certain
amount of time.
And during that time, all ofthese clients showed all of a
sudden, like all of these toolsthat they had been trying to
work through and trying to growin and trying to gain, but it
(16:47):
felt like an uphill battle.
All of a sudden, they felt likethey were on the top of the
mountain and they could, theyfelt like they'd arrived.
And again, don't mishear me,like we never actually arrive in
all of our growth and growing,but they didn't feel like it was
so hard to hold on to thehealing that they'd gained
anymore.
And after I listened to thatchapter, I was like, I'm 100%
(17:07):
in.
I'm 100% in because we all knowit's hard to grow and change,
and then life's still coming atus, and different things are
happening.
And all of a sudden, if you havethe emotional stability to deal
with it all, everything becomeseasier and lighter.
So that's right.
Yeah.
What's one of your favoritetestimonies from one of your
clients?
SPEAKER_02 (17:26):
Um I know you have your own family, but what about
what comes to mind is thisfamily I worked with in North
Carolina.
It was a foster mom, but she hadadopted these three sisters who
had had just kind of prettyhorrific uh early childhood
stuff.
SPEAKER_00 (17:44):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (17:46):
Um I think at the time she called, she the mom uh
renting the equipment, theyoungest, I think it was the
young, maybe it was the middleone, it was violent at home.
Um and to the point where theyfelt they had to send her away
um to a like an inpatient kindof a facility or whatever.
SPEAKER_00 (18:10):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (18:10):
Um, if I remember remember correctly, the mom
decided not to do that, and theystarted the neuro and completely
shifted it.
The older one, now I'mremembering, would get up five,
six times a night, wake up hersisters, walk around the house,
whatever.
Very quickly, she's sleepingthrough the night.
(18:32):
Wow.
Um, the youngest had theseticks, would um scratch herself,
bloody, um, rip hair out, thatkind of thing.
All that went away.
SPEAKER_00 (18:44):
That's so amazing.
SPEAKER_02 (18:45):
Right.
And and this is one of thefamilies where the older one in
particular just wouldn't go totherapy, just wasn't engage.
All of a sudden she is engagedin therapy.
SPEAKER_00 (18:55):
Wow.
SPEAKER_02 (18:55):
Getting along with friends in the program she was
enrolled in, things like that.
So this, yeah, it was.
I think we wrote up a whole casestudy on it, actually.
SPEAKER_00 (19:03):
That's incredible.
That's incredible.
Yeah, I would love to see it.
And and I think the the greatpoint in that is like this
doesn't replace therapy, itdoesn't replace coaching, it
doesn't replace all of theamazing tools that are out
there.
What it can do is make them muchmore effective, right?
Makes it much more effective.
SPEAKER_02 (19:22):
Life goes on, we have challenges.
There's that we get out of thatever, I think really kind of
hurts people.
Yeah.
It's both rails, you know.
SPEAKER_00 (19:34):
And yes, yes, and amen.
SPEAKER_02 (19:36):
My rails, if we if we only want to be happier, if
we can only be stuck in thepast, and yeah, that's so good.
SPEAKER_00 (19:43):
So good.
Um, my personal testimony, Ican't remember if I've shared
this part of it with you.
Um, when I started neurooptimal,I was just coming out of grief.
I lost both of my parents in avery short amount of time and
had to take care.
So my dad died, and my momimmediately got sick with
cancer, and we had to take careof her for like 18 months.
It was almost 18 months.
(20:04):
Um, and it was just horrific.
Like she was just circling thedrain the whole time.
It was very traumatic the wholetime and had a complicated
relationship with with both ofmy parents, love them dearly for
who they are, but also there wasa lot of there was a lot of
trauma in my childhood.
And so just kind of a verydifficult time.
And we're talking like two fullyears of just straight trauma.
(20:29):
And although I have a ton oftools and I was using all my
tools, I was dragging, right?
Like I was trying to run mypractice, trying to take care of
my family, walking through griefof losing both of my parents and
having to, you know, take a tonof time off of my business to
take care of them.
And I'm self-employed, and that,you know, that adds another
stressor.
(20:49):
And so anyway, uh, when westarted neurofeedback, um I was
just walking through thatseason.
And although I was handling itas best as I could, I was in
survival mode a little bit.
And I like I said, we started itover Christmas break, and within
just a handful of sessions, Ifinally felt like my brain like
re-engaged and I could feel joyagain because it was had been so
(21:11):
heavy and so challenging duringthat time that all of a sudden I
felt like, oh, I feel likemyself again.
And that's probably the commentI get most often from clients is
I feel like me again.
I feel like the me that I knewwas in there, but I just didn't
know how to access him or her,right?
SPEAKER_01 (21:31):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (21:31):
Um, I've seen it uh be incredibly valuable with
people that have struggled withsubstance abuse of all kinds,
right?
Because what we know as youknow, therapists and counselors
is a lot of time the actualsubstance has become an
addiction, yes, but what they'redoing is numbing um what they
didn't know how to deal with anddidn't have the skills or you
(21:53):
know places that that to dealwith them in a healthy way.
And all of a sudden, if theirbrain can handle that, it
becomes different, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Any last thoughts for anyonethat's listening to this and um
has questions aboutneurofeedback, neurooptimal?
SPEAKER_02 (22:16):
You know, one thought is that um it's kind of
what you said earlier.
There aren't anycontraindications.
It's the it's not going to hurtyou.
Um it is worth well worth thethe investment, the the risk,
you know, of not knowing if it'sgonna help you or not.
SPEAKER_00 (22:34):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (22:34):
I wish I had done it when my girls were little, even
on Ella when she was failure tothrive and going through
everything she medically.
Um, yeah, I would if I couldrace the clock or whatever turn
back time, I would absolutely goback and yeah, really would for
me as a mom too.
SPEAKER_00 (22:52):
Same.
I was overwhelmed my kids'entire young years, the entire
time.
And I didn't have a lot of thetools and skills that I have
now, but I I wish I could turnback that time.
Um, that is leads me to one morequestion, though.
Like, how old can people usethis device?
SPEAKER_02 (23:08):
I have had moms hook up infants, it hasn't happened
much because people are scared,they don't know, right?
But I have had moms hook upinfants, I wouldn't hesitate to
hook up my daughter.
Yeah, um, so yeah, it's at anyage.
I would say, um, if you arewanting to hook up an infant,
make sure you're hookingyourself up too.
SPEAKER_00 (23:30):
Sure, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (23:31):
Um yeah, yeah.
I've had clients in their 90s,this old guy named Jim, who I
adore.
Yeah, yeah.
It changed his gait, changed hisuh his walk more stably.
SPEAKER_00 (23:45):
Yeah, well, when you bring balance to the brain and
you bring balance to the nervoussystem, like our bodies are just
signed to heal.
So when there's all thatsurvival mode and all that
cortisol and adrenaline stopspumping all the time, your
bodies can do what they're meantto do, right?
SPEAKER_02 (24:01):
Yes, yeah, reaching your own potential, whatever
that is.
SPEAKER_00 (24:04):
Yeah, yeah.
Well, thank you so much forbeing here today.
Um, if people have questions oranything for you, I can
certainly direct them towardsyou.
But I just appreciate your time.
So thanks for being here.
Yeah, thanks, Jen.
Thanks for inviting me.
SPEAKER_01 (24:16):
You're welcome.
Well, welcome back to the Regulate to Your Nervous
System podcast.
And I have my friend and mentor,uh Miriam Bellamy here with me
today.
Thanks for being here, Miriam.
Miriam is a licensed marriageand family therapist, and she is
the one that opened the doors tome for neurofeedback.
(00:23):
So I'm really excited to haveyou here today.
Thanks for being here.
SPEAKER_02 (00:27):
It's good to be with you.
SPEAKER_00 (00:28):
So share with us how, because you're a therapist,
had been a therapist for quite awhile when neurofeedback came
into your life.
Like, what was the catalyst thatbrought neurofeedback in?
SPEAKER_02 (00:38):
Uh it was my own health crisis, really.
It my own, and then also myyounger daughter wasn't doing
very well.
Um I had struggled for myselfwith chronic fatigue for 20
years.
SPEAKER_00 (00:50):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (00:51):
Um, daily massive crashing for almost 20 years.
SPEAKER_00 (00:56):
Yeah.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (00:58):
I had tried so many things.
Um, you name it, I tried it justabout.
And then my younger daughter, umreally around fourth grade or
so, something started sort ofdropping off for her.
She had problems as an infant.
She was failure to thrive, andum she'd gain weight, then she'd
(01:21):
lose weight, gain weight, loseweight, all that kind of stuff,
fall off the growth curve.
And then we hit fourth grade,and something started happening
for her for her level ofconfidence in school.
Um, her level her ability toread, write.
Um her what we found out laterwas her short-term memory was in
the like one percentile.
SPEAKER_00 (01:40):
Wow.
SPEAKER_02 (01:40):
And what that means is like you're copying numbers.
If you look at numbers six,seven, and eight, or whatever
the numbers are, and you youcan't remember what the numbers
were to copy them.
Yeah, imagine that kind ofstruggle.
Yeah.
So she hit middle school and shestarted failing, and um, there
were many, many, many thingsgoing on for her, lots of
anxiety.
And yeah, so I needed to dosomething different.
(02:03):
I was I just couldn't do itanymore.
I was fatigued and depressed,and um, I needed help for me and
for her.
SPEAKER_00 (02:09):
Yeah, and the mental load, um, I don't feel like it
gets talked about enough.
Like it's hard enough justrunning a family and carrying
the mental load.
And I think women in generaloftentimes carry a lot of that,
but then in addition to that,you're a therapist, so you're
pouring into other people allday long, which I can relate to
in my coaching practice.
Um, and there's a point whereyou're just your brain almost
(02:30):
just stops like functioning theway that it should, right?
SPEAKER_02 (02:35):
Yeah, oh, for sure.
SPEAKER_00 (02:37):
Yeah, you hit that burnout, overwhelm, shutdown.
So then how did neurofeedbackcome into your life?
How were you introduced to it?
SPEAKER_02 (02:43):
Uh, I was actually so one of the things I do as a
therapist, it's quite differentfrom the mainstream is I I
practice uh Bowen family systemstheory, um, my my own
integration of it, but it's verydifferent from attachment theory
and that kind of individualfocus that's in the mainstream.
So I was at uh a conference forsystems theory in uh DC, and
(03:04):
this was a leadershipconference, and there were these
top executives of differentcompanies getting up and talking
about their experiences asbecoming a leader, becoming a
more differentiated leader,right?
Yeah.
And they were talking about thisZengar neurotimal neurofeedback,
(03:24):
and they weren't trying to sellanything, they were just uh
talking about how this wasgetting right to their brain and
shifting how they saw things,uh, shifting their energy even.
They would talk about their ownhealth issues and that kind of
thing.
And it just people at the BowenCenter, they were people that I
really trust.
I'd been studying there for avery long time, and I just
(03:46):
thought I need something tochange.
And uh I learned, so I starteddoing some research.
I started just looking intoneurofeedback in general,
calling around town.
Uh, we lived in Fort Collinshere in Colorado at the time.
And neurofeedback just for mydaughter, because that just for
one of us, whether it was me orher, was going to be$2,500 just
(04:09):
for her for 40 sessions.
SPEAKER_00 (04:11):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (04:12):
And I had already sort of started learning a
little bit about neurotimal, andit was much more affordable, and
we could do it at home, andeverybody could get sessions.
Yes.
Um, and so I that's what I did.
I found um someone who rents theequipment, and and within 10
sessions for me, sorry, it wassix sessions.
It was after my sixth session, Iwoke up feeling rested.
(04:36):
And I, you don't realize howtired you are until you don't
feel tired.
Yes, like I have not, eventhough I knew I was fatigued, I
thought I was sleeping fine.
Yeah, I woke up rested, and Iwas like, I haven't felt rested
in probably 20 years at thetime.
Yeah, and that's so and I waslike, I'm gonna keep going with
it.
(04:57):
Like for Ella, this was over thesummer when we did this.
For Ella, um, we only did about10, 12 sessions for her during
that rental.
She went from um in her room,sullen, depressed, angry, to all
of a sudden she is out and doingstuff in the kit.
(05:18):
She's cooking for herself.
Wow.
She is incredibly affectionate.
She's mildly autistic, so shejust sort of had the coil from
affection.
All of a sudden, she's all overme.
I'm like, what the heck?
Get off me.
This is too much.
I'm kidding.
Yeah.
Um, and so that was over thesummer.
She started cleaning her room,Jen.
SPEAKER_00 (05:39):
Wow.
SPEAKER_02 (05:40):
Wow.
Like you couldn't walk through,there wasn't a path to walk
through before.
And she starts cleaning her roomon her own.
One of the iterations of thiswas eight bags of stuff.
Eight.
She clears out.
Another iteration was she had myuh her father pull the dresser
out so she could get everythingthat was thrown behind the
(06:01):
dresser.
Right.
Right, her rights.
Okay.
And then school started.
And instead of the two hours ofhomework that should have taken
her 30 minutes or that wastaking other kids 30 minutes.
SPEAKER_00 (06:13):
Sure.
SPEAKER_02 (06:15):
Where she was screaming, crying, so
frustrated, so confused, all ofa sudden she's quietly doing her
homework.
SPEAKER_00 (06:21):
Yeah.
On her own, independently.
SPEAKER_02 (06:23):
Yeah.
I think the similar thinghappened with your son.
SPEAKER_00 (06:26):
Yeah, it did.
Yeah.
We we started uh over Christmasbreak and we did it the last
week of a Christmas break, andhe went back to school.
And we'd only done, I mean,seven to ten sessions at this
point.
And all of a sudden his teachersare emailing me, being like, I
don't know what changed overChristmas break, but your kid is
so different.
Like he has really struggledwith executive functioning, he
(06:49):
struggles with being organized,he struggles with staying on
task.
And these are things that we'vedone years and years of OT
therapy, vision therapy.
And we'd seen gains with all ofthem, every single one.
But all of a sudden it wasconcentrated and we could do it
at home.
And we had done, I can'tremember if I shared this with
you, but we'd done neurofeedbackum about a decade before when we
(07:12):
were doing OT with him.
But during that time, uh, he hadto be, we had to go to the
clinic for OT appointments.
He had to be focused on a screenand he had to be visually
engaged, right?
And so for a kid that strugglesto sit still, and he was young
at the time, he was only likefour or five, um, struggles to
be engaged, struggles to focus,struggles to sit still, and had
(07:36):
to focus on the screen when hehad a visual tracking problem.
Um, although we saw some gains,we didn't see near the gains
that we saw in a week at home.
So that was one of the draws tome with um with the Zengar uh
Neurooptimal system is that Icould bring it home and we could
do it.
And that the the frequencyfeedback was audio.
(07:58):
So let's just talk a little bitabout how it works.
So, how does it how does it workfrom Miriam's perspective?
SPEAKER_02 (08:03):
Yeah.
So to me, it's another reason Iwent with Neurotimals because I
had been poked and prodded andhad stuff done to me for so many
years, mostly by really goodsame, but but not always.
SPEAKER_00 (08:15):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (08:15):
And you can have, you know, real problems when
someone makes a mistake or don'tthey don't know what they're
doing.
So with Neuroptimal, there's nopractitioner who's gonna mess
with my brain, right?
Feeling very messed with.
So that's the the core of how itworks is it helps you your brain
(08:36):
decide.
It gives your brain information,so your brain then decides, and
it taps into it's also part offamily systems theory is the
sort of a foundation of thattheory is resilience, it's about
personal responsibility.
Um, and so this just on aphysiological level was also
appealing to me.
Yeah.
Um it just taps into yourbrain's resilience.
(08:58):
And for people who, if they'relistening and they've been sick
for a while or struggling for along time, you start like me,
you start to lose faith thatyour body can figure it out.
And this was my body figured itout because it got the right
information.
SPEAKER_00 (09:14):
Yeah.
So it just provides the feedbackto the brain, and then the brain
knows what to do with it,essentially, right?
SPEAKER_02 (09:21):
Yeah, and think of it too.
Uh my one of my favorite ways ofexplaining it is you you walk
into the bathroom, you look inthe mirror, and your hair is out
of whack.
What do you do without eventhinking about it?
SPEAKER_00 (09:32):
Yeah, you fix it.
You fix your hair, yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (09:34):
That's what your brain is doing all the time.
Yeah, the brain is constantlytaking in data.
What's the temperature of theroom?
If it's really, really cold,your your body, your brain is
gonna get involved and sort ofmake sure you're as warm as you
can be, or it's gonna say, goget a sweater or whatever.
We're con your brain isconstantly monitoring for stuff
like that.
And so with Neurotimal, it justuh holds a mirror up to your
(09:57):
brain and your brain willself-correct.
SPEAKER_00 (09:59):
Yeah, it's so good.
So, one of my favorite thingsabout it is that there's just no
contraindications.
So, because I've had you knowchronic illness, I have been
either on medication orsupplements the majority of my
life, and that gets old, quitefrankly.
You know, there's more foodsthat I have to take away, more
supplements that I have to addin, et cetera, et cetera.
(10:20):
And what this does is that allyou do is attach it to your
brain, attach it to your scalp,attach it to your ears, and it
does the work for you.
There's no internal things thatyou're taking in, the frequency
is just providing the feedbackto your brain.
And for me, that was such arelief, right?
For people that have beenthrough chronic illness and just
done all of those things foryears and years and years, and
(10:42):
it can be exhausting, right?
Yeah, can you relate to that?
SPEAKER_02 (10:47):
It's not a I think chronic illness is a complicated
thing, so for me, it's notwasn't everything, but it was it
was the game changer.
I I have never had fatigue likethat again.
SPEAKER_00 (11:00):
That's amazing.
SPEAKER_02 (11:01):
But I do get acupuncture when I go through
something stressful or whatever.
Like, you know, I do takesupplements now, but it's not 20
or 30 a day, right?
SPEAKER_00 (11:09):
Same, same, yeah.
I went from you know, taking 20or 30 a day down to just a
handful, um, which has been solife-changing.
Yep, so good.
So it regulates the nervoussystem, but let's talk about
also balancing emotions becausethat is a gain that I have seen
not only in myself, in so manyof my clients, where like as a
(11:30):
therapist, we work through thewounds and things, and as a
coach for myself, same thing.
Work through the wounds, thelies that they're believing.
But then if if they've carriedthose for years and years, the
neuropathways that align withthose lies or wounds or traumas
or whatever are still verystrong, right?
And so believing the truth canbe a lot harder.
(11:53):
So, what have you noticed inyour clients with just like kind
of switching over to believingthe truth with the
neurofeedback?
SPEAKER_02 (12:00):
So I I have a marital example, a personal
marital example.
If I'd be great.
So uh God, how many?
I don't know how many years wehad been married at the time.
17 or 18 or something like that.
And I had built up a fair, well,both of us had built up a fair
amount of resentment.
(12:22):
And resentment, one definition Iheard from a friend of mine once
was resentment is yourresending, re-resending,
whatever, resending those sameold thoughts over and over, like
you just referenced.
Right?
He's this and he's that.
So this particular time I hadmade a decision, and it really
wasn't related to the marriage.
It was just, let me see if I'lldo 30 sessions in 30 days.
(12:45):
Well, that turned into 90sessions in 90 days.
So every single day for 90 days,I was doing sessions, and I was
in a session at one point, and Iwas angry, right?
That resentment was going.
I was going round and round, andall of a sudden, in the middle
of a session, it just was like Idon't know how else to describe
(13:06):
it, other than that, thosethoughts just melted away.
Stopped.
I I felt this opening in myheart.
It was just this massive exhale,and it was like, I don't have to
go there.
SPEAKER_00 (13:23):
Yeah.
That's so good.
SPEAKER_02 (13:28):
And that the resentment was gone, didn't fix
the marriage.
SPEAKER_01 (13:32):
I don't want to scare anybody, but well, I mean,
that's real though.
It might have helped, but Idon't know.
Anyways, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (13:39):
I mean, but if you can like you're gonna be better
off regardless if you can let goof resentment and anger, right?
SPEAKER_01 (13:46):
That's right.
SPEAKER_00 (13:47):
Yeah, yeah.
For me, what I've seen um isthat the highs don't get so high
and the lows don't get so low.
I don't feel like that rollercoaster anymore.
I feel so steady uh for thefirst time in my life.
And that is something I haveworked on for years and years
and years.
Uh, you know, my home lifewasn't fantastic.
(14:08):
There wasn't a lot of skillsthat I had growing up uh to
learn how to manage emotions.
Um, and so what that did is thatI stuffed everything down for
years and years, and we knowthat if we stuff things down,
they're gonna come out usuallyin an unhealthy way.
And I had worked on that foryears.
SPEAKER_02 (14:25):
That was a big part of my fatigue, I think the
emotional stuff.
I just couldn't deal with that.
SPEAKER_00 (14:29):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And even as a therapist, likeand myself as a coach, like I
have tools, but we're stillhuman beings, right?
And so having this additionaltool that can help just bring
balance and rational thinking ina whole new way that I had never
experienced before.
I hadn't been taught that, Ihadn't been modeled that.
(14:50):
Yeah, I had been working ongrowing those skills for
decades, and all of a sudden itjust felt easy when I started
neurofeedback.
All of a sudden, it just feltlike it all the tools that I had
been trying to build and worktowards and grow in just felt
easy and light.
Would you agree with that?
SPEAKER_02 (15:09):
Yes.
It yeah, so it can make therapynot needed, or it can make
therapy that a person is in waymore effective.
SPEAKER_00 (15:18):
Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (15:19):
I've seen that with kids, I've seen that with
myself.
SPEAKER_00 (15:22):
Um of the greatest testimonies I heard.
Um, I read the book years agowhen I was really getting going
in my practice, um, The BodyKeeps Score.
Um, and there's a whole chapteron that of uh a therapist, um,
the the guy that wrote the book.
I'm totally blanking on his nameright now.
And thank you.
(15:43):
Yep, um, something wildlyGerman.
Anyway, he uh has researched foryears and he does a whole uh
chapter on neurofeedback thatI'm just gonna share a little
bit about.
So they did several teststudies, and and they did not
use uh neurooptimal, the onethat Mary and my area talking
about.
But neurofeedback isneurofeedback, right?
(16:04):
There's our there's alldifferent advancements in um
technology and things thesedays, but the particular one
that they use, I just want to beclear, this one was not the
particular company Miriam and myare partnered with.
However, they had done a numberof case studies, and they had
some clients who, I like Italked about, had been through a
lot of trauma, um, who had beenin therapy for years.
(16:25):
And although they had seengains, they still felt like they
were on that emotional rollercoaster.
And the only thing that theychanged during this time frame
was that they addedneurofeedback for a certain
amount of time.
And during that time, all ofthese clients showed all of a
sudden, like all of these toolsthat they had been trying to
work through and trying to growin and trying to gain, but it
(16:47):
felt like an uphill battle.
All of a sudden, they felt likethey were on the top of the
mountain and they could, theyfelt like they'd arrived.
And again, don't mishear me,like we never actually arrive in
all of our growth and growing,but they didn't feel like it was
so hard to hold on to thehealing that they'd gained
anymore.
And after I listened to thatchapter, I was like, I'm 100%
(17:07):
in.
I'm 100% in because we all knowit's hard to grow and change,
and then life's still coming atus, and different things are
happening.
And all of a sudden, if you havethe emotional stability to deal
with it all, everything becomeseasier and lighter.
So that's right.
Yeah.
What's one of your favoritetestimonies from one of your
clients?
SPEAKER_02 (17:26):
Um I know you have your own family, but what about
what comes to mind is thisfamily I worked with in North
Carolina.
It was a foster mom, but she hadadopted these three sisters who
had had just kind of prettyhorrific uh early childhood
stuff.
SPEAKER_00 (17:44):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (17:46):
Um I think at the time she called, she the mom uh
renting the equipment, theyoungest, I think it was the
young, maybe it was the middleone, it was violent at home.
Um and to the point where theyfelt they had to send her away
um to a like an inpatient kindof a facility or whatever.
SPEAKER_00 (18:10):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (18:10):
Um, if I remember remember correctly, the mom
decided not to do that, and theystarted the neuro and completely
shifted it.
The older one, now I'mremembering, would get up five,
six times a night, wake up hersisters, walk around the house,
whatever.
Very quickly, she's sleepingthrough the night.
(18:32):
Wow.
Um, the youngest had theseticks, would um scratch herself,
bloody, um, rip hair out, thatkind of thing.
All that went away.
SPEAKER_00 (18:44):
That's so amazing.
SPEAKER_02 (18:45):
Right.
And and this is one of thefamilies where the older one in
particular just wouldn't go totherapy, just wasn't engage.
All of a sudden she is engagedin therapy.
SPEAKER_00 (18:55):
Wow.
SPEAKER_02 (18:55):
Getting along with friends in the program she was
enrolled in, things like that.
So this, yeah, it was.
I think we wrote up a whole casestudy on it, actually.
SPEAKER_00 (19:03):
That's incredible.
That's incredible.
Yeah, I would love to see it.
And and I think the the greatpoint in that is like this
doesn't replace therapy, itdoesn't replace coaching, it
doesn't replace all of theamazing tools that are out
there.
What it can do is make them muchmore effective, right?
Makes it much more effective.
SPEAKER_02 (19:22):
Life goes on, we have challenges.
There's that we get out of thatever, I think really kind of
hurts people.
Yeah.
It's both rails, you know.
SPEAKER_00 (19:34):
And yes, yes, and amen.
SPEAKER_02 (19:36):
My rails, if we if we only want to be happier, if
we can only be stuck in thepast, and yeah, that's so good.
SPEAKER_00 (19:43):
So good.
Um, my personal testimony, Ican't remember if I've shared
this part of it with you.
Um, when I started neurooptimal,I was just coming out of grief.
I lost both of my parents in avery short amount of time and
had to take care.
So my dad died, and my momimmediately got sick with
cancer, and we had to take careof her for like 18 months.
It was almost 18 months.
(20:04):
Um, and it was just horrific.
Like she was just circling thedrain the whole time.
It was very traumatic the wholetime and had a complicated
relationship with with both ofmy parents, love them dearly for
who they are, but also there wasa lot of there was a lot of
trauma in my childhood.
And so just kind of a verydifficult time.
And we're talking like two fullyears of just straight trauma.
(20:29):
And although I have a ton oftools and I was using all my
tools, I was dragging, right?
Like I was trying to run mypractice, trying to take care of
my family, walking through griefof losing both of my parents and
having to, you know, take a tonof time off of my business to
take care of them.
And I'm self-employed, and that,you know, that adds another
stressor.
(20:49):
And so anyway, uh, when westarted neurofeedback, um I was
just walking through thatseason.
And although I was handling itas best as I could, I was in
survival mode a little bit.
And I like I said, we started itover Christmas break, and within
just a handful of sessions, Ifinally felt like my brain like
re-engaged and I could feel joyagain because it was had been so
(21:11):
heavy and so challenging duringthat time that all of a sudden I
felt like, oh, I feel likemyself again.
And that's probably the commentI get most often from clients is
I feel like me again.
I feel like the me that I knewwas in there, but I just didn't
know how to access him or her,right?
SPEAKER_01 (21:31):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (21:31):
Um, I've seen it uh be incredibly valuable with
people that have struggled withsubstance abuse of all kinds,
right?
Because what we know as youknow, therapists and counselors
is a lot of time the actualsubstance has become an
addiction, yes, but what they'redoing is numbing um what they
didn't know how to deal with anddidn't have the skills or you
(21:53):
know places that that to dealwith them in a healthy way.
And all of a sudden, if theirbrain can handle that, it
becomes different, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Any last thoughts for anyonethat's listening to this and um
has questions aboutneurofeedback, neurooptimal?
SPEAKER_02 (22:16):
You know, one thought is that um it's kind of
what you said earlier.
There aren't anycontraindications.
It's the it's not going to hurtyou.
Um it is worth well worth thethe investment, the the risk,
you know, of not knowing if it'sgonna help you or not.
SPEAKER_00 (22:34):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (22:34):
I wish I had done it when my girls were little, even
on Ella when she was failure tothrive and going through
everything she medically.
Um, yeah, I would if I couldrace the clock or whatever turn
back time, I would absolutely goback and yeah, really would for
me as a mom too.
SPEAKER_00 (22:52):
Same.
I was overwhelmed my kids'entire young years, the entire
time.
And I didn't have a lot of thetools and skills that I have
now, but I I wish I could turnback that time.
Um, that is leads me to one morequestion, though.
Like, how old can people usethis device?
SPEAKER_02 (23:08):
I have had moms hook up infants, it hasn't happened
much because people are scared,they don't know, right?
But I have had moms hook upinfants, I wouldn't hesitate to
hook up my daughter.
Yeah, um, so yeah, it's at anyage.
I would say, um, if you arewanting to hook up an infant,
make sure you're hookingyourself up too.
SPEAKER_00 (23:30):
Sure, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (23:31):
Um yeah, yeah.
I've had clients in their 90s,this old guy named Jim, who I
adore.
Yeah, yeah.
It changed his gait, changed hisuh his walk more stably.
SPEAKER_00 (23:45):
Yeah, well, when you bring balance to the brain and
you bring balance to the nervoussystem, like our bodies are just
signed to heal.
So when there's all thatsurvival mode and all that
cortisol and adrenaline stopspumping all the time, your
bodies can do what they're meantto do, right?
SPEAKER_02 (24:01):
Yes, yeah, reaching your own potential, whatever
that is.
SPEAKER_00 (24:04):
Yeah, yeah.
Well, thank you so much forbeing here today.
Um, if people have questions oranything for you, I can
certainly direct them towardsyou.
But I just appreciate your time.
So thanks for being here.
Yeah, thanks, Jen.
Thanks for inviting me.
SPEAKER_01 (24:16):
You're welcome.
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