 Hello, everybody, on this Tuesday afternoon. Today, I always enjoy my interviews, but today is extra special because not only do I have a professional with neurofeedback, marriage and family counseling, and just taking our psychological health to a new level with functional and integrative medicine, but I have today my cousin, my first cousin, Ashley Wiegand. So we go way back in so many different ways, and it's been really fun to reconnect on a professional level and just to see what Ashley's up to. And it's so neat because we have these kind of parallel worlds where we're both working and trying to get people optimally healthy. And we just had a conversation a few months ago. And we've stayed in a little bit of connection, but you know how it is when life happens and we grew up in a family with loads of cousins. And so it's been really, really fun to hear what Ashley is doing with poem health and to talk to her today. So it's extra special because we grew up playing out on the farm and those kinds of things in Illinois. And here we are both in our professional spheres and able to talk on that level. So I am absolutely excited to meet my cousin, Ashley Wiegand. She is a PhD, a licensed marriage and family therapist and board certified in neurofeedback, which we're going to talk about today. So I especially want to really introduce you today to the concepts of neurofeedback, family constellations, and just the work around families and how they interplay with our health and healing. And also just the psychological readiness to change some of these pieces that really, really, I have found way more sometimes than supplements or diet or lifestyle, maybe not more, but at least as important, really, really impact your ability to find optimal health and healing. Before I introduce Ashley, I wanted to just remind you you can find all of my free blogs and resources out on my website, jillcarnahan.com. And then the YouTube channel now has 70 plus hours of interviews, all free. So please go there, subscribe. It's just under my name, Jill Carnahan MD. And you can find all of the recordings there. And this will be there as well in a few days. And I hope you enjoy all of those resources. So first, I want to introduce Ashley. Dr. Ashley Wiegand works from an integrated perspective based on her understanding of neurobiology, physiology, psychotherapy, and family systems. Like I said, this stuff is so critical to healing. Just a tiny little brief personal jaunt before I finish her bio. I just have really worked all my life on my own healing with cancer and Crohn's and all of that. And I love the functional medicine, the biology, the physiology, the supplements, the diet, the lifestyle. That's critical to healing. But I have seen a level of acuity, a level of severity and complexity and a chronicity of patients that has just really escalated in the last several years. I think partially due to our environmental toxic load, but in another part due to the psychological stressors and especially in the last year. So this is so relevant because what I've seen in my own life, my healing and my patient's lives, if we don't address the psychological aspects and the nervous system up regulation and the spider flight and a lot of the stuff we'll talk about today, no amount of diet, supplements, nutrition will really overcome. You have to do all of it. So stay tuned because this is gonna be breakthrough. I'm gonna finish Ashley's bio here. She utilizes QEEG technology to provide brain map evaluations and detect underlying brain wave biomarkers related to concerns of her clients. Neurofeedback, also known as EEG, biofeedback and neuro therapy is used to balance dysregulation in areas of the brain. So again, I'm really excited to talk about this. Dr. Ashley provides psychological and family therapy and psychotherapy. She specializes in working with individuals with anxiety, past traumatic experiences, academic or professional stress, negative religious experiences, life transitions, college related difficulties and family conflict. She is licensed in marriage and family therapy, board certified in neurofeedback through the biofeedback certification and she completed her doctoral degree in St. Louis University. Ashley, welcome. Thanks for having me, Jill. I'm so excited to be here. Yeah, me too. So I always love to start with story and I would love to kind of your journey into this area. Did you always know you wanted to do something in this area? Tell me a little about how you got to where you're at now. Yeah, I didn't always know just because I had not even heard of neurofeedback probably till I, well, after I got my master's degree. So I think if I had known what it was, I would have picked it because it's this integration that I really love of connecting with people on the personal level with therapy and then looking at the science and neurobiology that has neurofeedback. So I really like that connection. It's like the brain and the mind, right? But my journey was, I actually started out pre-med. I don't know if you know that. No. Yes, and then it came to organic chemistry and I'm good at science but I didn't know that I wanted to do that. I knew I wanted to help people and be in a helping profession but it was so rigorous. That's what kind of got me to the point where I veered to explore being a physical therapist and then when I did my internship at a hospital that didn't quite resonate and I'd always in the background wanted to be a therapist but had been kind of discouraged from that path for a variety of reasons. So after I tried these other healthy professions I kind of came back to that. So I finished my degree in exercise science which worked well later on for neurofeedback because it was very heavy on anatomy and physiology. Then I got my masters in marriage and family therapy and then it's when I moved to St. Louis and I was just going to a conference, a local conference in one of the local professionals specialized in neurofeedback and that's the first time I'd heard of QEG is the technical name of the assessment but then brain mapping is a little easier phrase to throw around and neurofeedback and it just everything clicked for me because it was kind of looking at two sides that made sense of our health and helping people and so you have the interpersonal piece which of course is so important in the psychology but then you have brain patterns and how our brain might get stuck because I know I'm sure you have a patient where they know that they're anxious and they wanna not be anxious but they just can't seem to shift and so we can talk about that more but neurofeedback can really unlock some of that potential by changing the brain from the bottom up instead of trying to be have insight about your anxiety and then change it because you have insight so after I learned about it I kind of got to do a apprenticeship under someone else which is a really great way to learn for about five years then I went out on my own and then Palm Health I believe has been in existence for five years now and I got on board about three and a half, four years ago and what drew me to there was probably just like your practice so working on a team had multiple things under one roof and this multifaceted approach that seems to have a synchronistic effect where people can get better outcomes as opposed to when you just try one thing. Oh, I love that Ashley because what I've seen in my own in Boulder here, right I have neuropsychologists that I know well and refer to and it's so critical like so many times I call my friend and colleague and say, oh my gosh, I have this patient they're doing this, can you see them? And we find together it's such a great team because she can do stuff I don't know how to do and can't do and I can do the other piece with the physical, the diving deep and the detective work on the chemicals and the environment and the diet lifestyle. So what you bring to the table is so critical to getting people well. I love that you talked about and again, forgive my ignorance if I say terms wrong because you're the expert here, not me but I find like so like cognitive behavioral therapy I'll just tell you my experience that for someone like me used to be analytical makes it worse. I just get stuck in the same thought patterns, right? When I tried the more somatic based therapies that was profound because all of a sudden I went below my neck, I was joke I lived above my neck in my head for 40 years and then when I started dealing with the somatic and actually heart based and intuitive based healing it was profound but I've also done some of that work with EG and seen the patterns and it sounds like from your perspective this really gets at helping them understand the patterns that are keeping them blocked. How would you describe neurofeedback to someone who has no idea what it is? Yeah, so neurofeedback kind of works in partnership with how I use it with the brain mapping and the QEG so if you'll indulge me to explain both. Okay, so when someone comes in the initial assessment besides some family psychological intake it involves putting an EEG cap on the head it kind of fits snug like a swim cap and has sensors in it, put gel in the sensors and then I record brain wave activity. So that's the electrical activity of the brain relates to brain state, neuro pathways, right? We have different frequencies that need to have different ratios and they relate to our arousal or activation our tension level, right? If we're groggy, if we're alert so I'm measuring resting state EEG so there's the medical EEG which might have been what people have heard, right? If you have epilepsy, you go to the hospital and get a medical EEG they're looking for spike waves, sharp waves and to see if you had that medical condition. I'm looking at the resting state which is the background and there's been a lot of research correlating that with certain dysregulation patterns. So after I get those recordings to recordings eyes open and eyes close I analyze all of that data in these various data bases. So I'm basically looking at it's almost like an objective measure of the interface between the mind and the brain. So like anxiety is a good one, right? Cause there's a lot of anxiety for a lot of reasons that would be a separate talk but someone knows that they're anxious they know that they're worrying but they can't stop worrying. Well, there's going to be certain brain wave shifts in a brain that's locked in worry, right? And so it kind of quantifies this thing that feels invisible, right? Like we might know we're depressed or anxious and not want to be but so often we get stuck because it's stored in our biology or neurobiology or emotional brain and it's not under a conscious control like you were talking with CBT it's an over emphasis in our culture of things in conscious control as if we could just hit buttons and turn them on and off and they just exist in us in an individual. And so what's so neat about this is it quantifies that. So I see where the brain wave frequencies they could be elevated which means it has too much power and a frequency in a certain location, right? Or you have too little. So then I go over the results with the patient and typically even if I didn't do neurofeedback that often is so therapeutic because people feel validated. Yes, I love that you're going there because I find even on a food allergy test when they see the data in front of them I mean, I'm sure you have people in tears at times too because they're like oh my gosh, I've been struggling with this for so long and you actually have finally put a name to what's going on, right? If there's such a power in that because I think it starts to give them the hope that oh gosh, I'm not crazy, right? And we know they're not. We know we're not, we know but what happens is so many people have been in a doctor's office and they say your labs look normal, you're fine. Go home and come back in a year and patients start to doubt themselves they doubt their intuition that something's not right. That's exactly right. Yeah, I've also had that experience where people will cry just from being believed. Yes, yeah, right? And so that validates but then it also gives us and me a roadmap. So then I base the neurofeedback protocols on their green map. And so the neurofeedback then is the intervention. So QE choose the evaluation, the neurofeedback. So at its core, it's a learning therapy. As I start to explain it, it can seem abstract and sometimes experiencing it is worth a thousand words of showing and doing a demo but essentially how it goes the typical neurofeedback session or the processes. So I've localized an area again, let's use anxiety. Someone has elevated fast waves. That's a common pattern with anxiety. So I put a sensor on that location and then there's a patient screen and then my like clinical dashboard. So I will kind of coach them on how to approach the screen. That's where my therapy hat comes into play. But the technical term for the psychologist in the room is operant conditioning and there's also some classical conditioning at play. So it's reward-based learning. So essentially shifts in our brain waves are something we can not consciously notice, right? Like we might notice the after effects just like our heart rate. Like you and I, we're smart, we're analytical, right? But we'll never know what our resting heart rate is for instance, because our nervous system doesn't set up to give us that information. Now, if we have an Apple watch, we can find out, right? But we would never know. We might know if someone scares us that it bumps to 110 or about to faint but we can't notice the subtle graded shifts in our central nervous system in that way. So brain waves is the same thing part of our central nervous system, very real but managed subconsciously. We can't consciously shift it. So what happens is the sensors and the digital analysis of their brain waves makes that tangible, makes that invisible process tangible so then you can learn to regulate it. So that's where the magic is, right? So again, someone knows if they're worrying or not but we, especially in our modern American culture we're not very in tune, right? Like you said, to trust our intuition or knowing the subtle shift so we become very desensitized to these things which I'm sure you notice a lot too on the physical side, right? So I will set a threshold, again, we're training beta or fast waves. I'll set a threshold, let's say it's at 10 microvolts. So when they drop it below 10, kind of like the limbo then they're meeting the criteria, right? So what they would know subjectively is I'm gonna approach the screen usually if you're trying to train anxiety just from a mindfulness approach meaning don't try to or don't get in your own way as much as you can, right? Take it in and try to quiet your mind. Now, obviously someone's not gonna be probably very good at it, right? Cause that's why they're there with me, right? But that's the subjective, that's the instruction I give them. Well, then when their beta drops down to nine or eight they'll meet the criteria. And so on their screen they'll get some sort of positive feedback or reward. So they might be a little runner for my non-competitive folks who can handle it and when they quiet their mind their runner goes faster. And if they start to worry or activate it slows down or they might be watching a nature scene on a video and as they quiet their mind 10% as measured by the technology it might expand or go from black and white to full color. So because of the advances in technology what's so neat it's essentially real time feedback because all of that can be digital analyzed and fed back in less than 200 milliseconds and to our brain that's real time. Yeah, exactly. Cause if there's a flicker less than that we can't even consciously notice it, right? So what it harnesses the power of self-regulation and facilitates self-awareness. So these subtle things like clenching your jaw a negative thought about yourself this activation you've learned to ignore suddenly to get the positive feedback you have to become attuned to those things. And then the subtleties of down regulating in this case gets rewarded. And so then that activates our reward system, right? People earn little points. They win the race car race. And so there's that intrinsic motivation when you get those little rewards. So that's one session. I can, generally people will train because at the best analogy it's like going to the gym for your brain is what I say. So you don't do it once and say this didn't work which is obviously not a functional medicine premise anyway but a lot of times my work is explaining to people what nerve feedback is for them to even know that they want it because it's not something that people know about. So typically people come to 20, 40 sessions total one to two times a week and then depending on how they progress usually they do multiple protocols but that's kind of the nuts and bolts of nerve feedback. Fantastic. And again, people more and more are looking for things like this because they want to go to that next level. A couple of thoughts. Interestingly, I feel like the first half of my life I spent dissociating and I got really good at it which means like we talked about the head up, right? So I just like shut away pain and emotion and especially things like anger and sadness like those were not okay in the system I grew up in so I like suppressed those things. Not either. Right? Yeah, so I find it so fascinating because even now the skill there is that is a coping skill, right? And I learned it and learned it really well. And I joke because as I've done therapy work and neurofeedback all of these things I started to feel again and I started to be in touch with my psychology in a way like you're teaching with neurofeedback and what happened was all of a sudden I feel like when you are learning dissociation as a coping technique, I feel like in a way it made me more superhuman. And I'm gonna talk about this in a minute because it's not a good thing because I could deny pain dissociate from feeling and just push, push, push, push. But what happened was my body knew the difference and my body was like, wait, we don't like this. This is not healthy or good for us. And I got cancer and Crohn's and I got a lot of illnesses I think partially due to the fact I was so good at suppressing and dissociating but my body knew my body was like, hey Jill, we don't like this let's, you know, learn. And then as I've done the work around this and learned and grown, I actually feel like I sometimes have to go slower, work a little less hard and be more kind to myself. A lot of times I teach patients to be kind to themselves but what happens in the whole in the end of this is that you are a healthier human being you can show up more fully authentically you can actually, if you don't really know how to experience those emotions you can never really connect with parents, siblings romantic relationships on a deeper level. So these things are so critical to life and life skills in every way. And I like I said, I learned in some ways the hard way about that when I really had to go in and go deep but it's so invaluable because I feel like really anyone who wants to ultimately heal from chronic illness, auto immunity, Lyme disease, inflammatory issues any of these kinds of things that we see what would you say are some of the biggest types of conditions that obviously anyone can benefit but are there particular types of people that you guys see at Palm Clinic that really benefit from neurofeedback? Yeah, yeah, there are and there's yeah, probably a certain some subsets that I tend to specialize in and respond better. So I would say the broad umbrella of anxiety, right? So over arousal, nervous system over activation again, there's a lot in our culture and there's a lot of pressure and rewards and perpetuation of anxiety. So under that traumatic experiences, insomnia, chronic stress not being able to rest and slow down, right? We put those all under there. ADD and ADHD, which again is a whole nother talk because I do believe it is over diagnosed of course, a lot of times it might be PTSD post-traumatic stress disorder, depression or anxiety but that one has a medication that people really like so it gets over diagnosed. I do think from my perspective of the neurobiopsychology perspective, there is a conglomerate that I think is quote real in the sense that there's a certain frequency that is associated with distractibility and that wouldn't make it hard to focus it's just over diagnosed and over prescribed but ADHD and those are probably on the ADHD front if it's in otherwise healthy family system motivated like child or adolescent I get some of my best responses for with neurofeedback for ADHD which a lot of times parents are looking for a long-term healing as opposed to putting their child in a stimulant and then the other one and this is where I get to work in this arena more because I work under our CMO who is a neurologist and so post concussion syndrome. Yes, huge. So and that really slips through the cracks a lot in the medical fields, right? It's just like if you have these severe things, right? A structural bleed, something like that like structural damage and if you don't have it they're kind of like well, go on your merry way. Well, neurofeedback again it quantifies the electrical functioning and dynamics so sometimes when you whack your head that gets thrown off almost like a subtle bruise, right? It doesn't get caught, it's not structural. So assuming you can see inequalities in the hemispheres especially based on trauma, right? Versus like there might be global changes if someone has just anxiety or insomnia versus if someone's in the head trauma you might see more left-sided or right-sided changes. That's exactly right. Yeah, it'll be more acute and localized and usually there's the coup contra coup. It's not an MRI, right? It no evaluation captures everything but a lot of times you can see that localized if it's a head hit, right? And it's usually these areas frontal temporal areas whereas like you said other markers are going to be more global. So those are the three broad clientele like they're presenting goals and again post concussion a lot of times folks are very sensory sensitive, might have mood dysregulation, headaches and so they're sensitive to neurofeedback because again it's a little bit of a brain workout. So that's where my expertise comes in of titrating it, the protocols and the amount of time but then they're also again they're some of my best responses because they are so sensitive. They respond faster, right? And then the anxiety camp what I love about it with neurofeedback is this is where I would probably say my practice is roughly 60, 40 neurofeedback to therapy and then I have some that are separate and some that are a blend and what I love about the blend and this is again when someone myself like myself collaborating with someone like you is someone might need work for cortisol, right? Then running off of adrenaline their whole life, right? Not eating healthy and then they come to get neurofeedback which sometimes is an easier injury point for people than therapy because I need to know some goals but we don't have to talk about every hard thing they've been through in their life and sometimes people like that or they've already talked to someone and they feel like they've got as far as they can. So let's say they're a great responder to neurofeedback and they're having many panic attacks a week let's say one a day. So they respond well, they're down to maybe one a week but let's say they've had panic attacks for 20 years so they've worked around that by working remotely in IT for 20 years. So now their anxiety is 80% gone, you know? But that's where the therapy side and this like the other things you were talking about patterns, perception, identity, emotional awareness because they might have less anxiety but they're not going to have an identity or they're not gonna have a perspective of the world that I could go to a party or get together I would know what to say, I would feel confident they're not gonna know how to read their emotions when they're challenged. There's been all of these things in the psychology therapy realm that they're just out of practice at the bare minimum and don't have the skills strengthened because they've just avoided it which is kind of a different version of what you were talking about with the dissociation if you're on emotions, right? It's kind of overwhelming to feel emotions again and I can relate of course here's our cousin card being played, right? Definitely don't be angry definitely don't have the negative emotions analyze and think a lot, right? Yeah, we go with the thought that German Swiss stuff is like German, yeah, be very self, be super productive, right? No, it's over, exactly. Yes, no crying. And so when you, it sounds so obvious, right? But it's so novel when you go through it when you start to feel your feelings well they got suppressed for a reason, right? They were hard and then if you weren't taught or it wasn't normalized or modeled like it's okay to cry or sometimes feeling depressed obviously there's a clinical diagnosis that's very serious but feelings of depression are also a part of the human experience, right? Feeling anxious sometimes are a part of that but your atrophied and your skills if you weren't taught and it wasn't taught to be okay to have those feelings. Yeah, actually I remember when I first started really letting these up and dealing with it and that I remember it was like a two week period when I first opened up on some of these emotions and I was like, oh, completely overwhelmed I didn't know if I could function that week because I thought, gosh, this must be what some people feel like to be depressed because I hadn't really experienced that and what it was was 40 years of sadness like the floodgates were opened and again, it was normal physiology it wasn't anything abnormal it wasn't a clinical diagnosis of depression but what I realized was like, wow, this is normal and I actually had a lot of compassion for myself during that time because I was like it's okay to slow down right now this week or to know that you feel overwhelmed but it really took some psychological thinking like really being kind and compassionate to myself during that time because it was so foreign because I had really suppressed that for so many years it was different. Other thing that as you mentioned, I thought about is like I always thought it was an introvert now some people laugh at that because they see me out and about in that but that was part of my highly sensitive nature and the overstimulation and all those things with the brain where I needed to retreat from too much stimulation, too much people and I could handle little bits at a time well now that I'm healthier in all these ways neurobiology, psychology, physical health I can handle a lot more interaction and the truth is I think I'm kind of an extrovert I just was highly sensitive in the senses of the brain and all those things so that I had to retreat so often I thought that identity thing is so critical because I think a lot of patients are walking around thinking, oh my gosh, I'm or they even identify with I'm sick or I'm an introvert or I'm too much for people and all those messages be around this overstimulation of the brain, right? And then as you get them in a healthier spot all of a sudden, like me, I'm like, wait maybe I'm not an introvert maybe I'm actually an ambivert or an extrovert that just needs quiet time and I bet you see that a lot with patients, don't you? I do, yeah, you can really see that unfold or shift and kind of like what you were describing if we're suppressing our emotions or again I always tell my clients emotions are neither good nor bad, they're just information, right? And then if you're allowed to feel them they can flow through, they inform you sometimes it means that the situation is bad you need to leave it, right? Or sometimes it means I'm being challenged I'm gonna stick it through but that's a part of the normal experience but if you were, and I did this myself as well you spend so much time suppressing the emotions that I think it's training, right? And so, and then you think you need to perform a certain way I need to be the certain kind of way because that's the feedback I got from my family system and the microculture that you grow up in and so I also conceptualize it what you were saying is that like it takes so much energy to not be yourself, perform and be cut off it's exhausting, right? Yeah, like holding back a dam of the tree like holding back a big, you know and then all of a sudden you when you really relax and to be in your authentic self it's really so much easier even though the emotions you have to deal with it's so much easier. Right, it is. But yeah, and it's not there's still the human experience but it's kind of like you feel it in your bones, right? When you're feeling authentic and congruent with yourself and letting yourself be a person is also a phrase I like. Oh, I love that. And our body knows, like again, I look back at and auto-immunity, I'm sure you see a lot in the Palm Clinic too. Auto-immunity, if we look metaphorically it's a tack of self, right? Like how more metaphorically can that get is I always, there's some piece of either self-unacceptance, self-loathing, self-support there's pieces of that that are always at work in someone with auto-immunity that we always want to deal with if possible including my own, you know because as we embrace and love ourselves for who we really are and how we're supposed to show up in the world the body like, I mean, will heal. It's amazing. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, it literally is the attack of self. And so on my side where what I educate people on with the, because I see a lot of folks locked into like being self-critical, right? Very negative towards self is, so our brain's limbic system, right? That's our danger system. It doesn't differentiate between physical and psychological threats. So when you are self-critical you're basically becoming your own tiger and shooting off the sympathetic response. So literally like, oh, I didn't, I haven't changed as much as I want to change or I failed them this way, right? Literally one of factually in your physiology one of the worst things you can do is attack yourself because that makes you more dysregulated. And then you can't do the thing you might be attacking yourself for. Yeah, yeah. I love that analogy because again, this is so important for that overall healing. We didn't talk about like specific brain waves. Do you want to give us a little brief tutorial on out versus beta versus delta? Because I know you're the expert there too. Yeah, I would love to. So there's kind of five main frequencies that we look at in the field. So the slow waves are delta and theta. And then alpha is the mid-range frequency and beta high beta are the fast waves and there's also gamma which you might have heard of. So I feel like the two that I talked about the most are probably alpha and beta. Alpha was the one that was kind of first discovered and trained for neurofeedback kind of on accident back in the 60s. And that has a lot to do with sensory integration and mood regulation. They think it correlates with the thalamus going to the cortex, right? So the thalamus is the gateway of our sensory information. So it's these large oscillations in the background. So what I see are, I'm trying to give you a summary but not get too technical because it gets technical really quick and I don't want to bore people. But for instance, if you have a deficit of alpha they have, there were a couple of studies that found children with alcoholics had a deficit in alpha. And so that when you have a deficit alpha that means your resting state in your nervous system is anxious, right? And so what's interesting is when we drink alcohol it increases our alpha. So you have the self-medication piece. So that's why if you're not a child of alcoholics and you drink alcohol it might be fun and nice, right? But it's not this huge act of empowerment to not become an alcoholic. But if you have a delta and excuse me I'm switching my words, an alpha deficit suddenly you drink some alcohol it increases your alpha, it's self-medicating suddenly it's not as hard to be in your own body and be in your own nervous system, right? And so that's someone who would be more vulnerable to abusing that, but it's really because it's regulating their nervous system not in a sustainable long-term way, right? But with a short-term relief. So that's something I love so much about this approach is it's so humanistic, it's looking at the whole picture and not saying like, well, people are just bad and they always do bad things, right? There's usually a reason someone gets stuck in a certain way. So it looks at from this more contextual respectful way that I think actually gives understanding and the answers. So that's alpha, alpha is also really correlated with flow state or being in the zone which is a really big buzz phrases, right? And it was really good to be in a flow state. So if you play an instrument or you've done theater or sports, right? It's you're immersed in the moment there's no self-talk or self-criticism but you're also not lethargic or sedated, right? You're in that like kind of sweet spot of arousal and immersion. So it doesn't feel so good. And they've again, there's some research on like the secret to it's not really the secret, it's pretty obvious, right? But when people access the flow state more their quality of life is higher, right? Their life is more, they have more fulfillment and joy. So alpha is really correlated with flow state and being in the zone. A lot of times it's this prime alpha state where your alphas elevated but not too high and your other frequencies are lower. So I can train alpha state or train meditation, beta those are what we kind of think of as our thinking wave. So those are the ones we could consciously quantify the easiest, right? Like if you're learning a foreign language or if you're doing a calculus problem your beta needs to ramp up. It's problem solving, bold directed activity moral judgments, decision-making. So that's brain activation. So it needs, we need to be able to activate your brains for these tasks, right? Where we get into trouble and this is where I see another pattern is your beta stays elevated. So, and again that correlates a lot with people too much in their head trying to think through their feelings, think through life. So even if they're trying to quiet their thoughts they can't. So training down beta would be another pretty common protocol that I do. If your beta is too low a lot of times I see that more with ADHD or in concussion post concussion your brain can't ramp up like you need it to. So you feel kind of overwhelmed or you forget things, drop tasks, that sort of thing. So then the slower waves these correlate with unconscious processes. So they're a little bit trickier for people to train in session with me. Now, if someone's pretty good at being intuitive and letting go then they can train these but when people want to be able this is probably the number one question I get from new clients is I don't know what I'm doing to get the feedback. Yeah, yeah. Which I have a lot of empathy for. Yeah. Because we really want to understand it and again in our culture and society we really overvalue conscious processes and ignore and neglect subconscious processes right in the emotional and the messy. And so what I coach my clients with saying is that well that's normal. It's because the technology is sensing these shifts in your brain waves which no one can sense fluctuation in their brain waves. You might know if we're more focused or for again we're more tired but we can't actively sense the in real time shifts. So that's why you can't feel it which is why you need the neurofeedback it's giving you information you don't already have. But so Delta and Theta correlates with I think limbic system function. So more midbrain deeper brain function. So it's also not really also beta is more our external focus and beta is more internal regulation. So a natural time when our Theta might go up and we go more in a Theta state would be really deep forms of meditation when you lose track of self. Which is kind of a fun state if you've ever been in it if your people are hypnotized they're going more towards Theta or if you're in that real daydreamy state like say it's sunny and you're swinging in a hammock and you're kind of awake but you're kind of not and you're kind of in this like kind of fun woozy state. So to speak, that's more Theta. And again, I see that that's a common pattern if people are fatigued or have brain fog but then also a certain kind of ADHD people have above average levels of Theta which is interesting and not surprising is that used to be a differential marker to diagnose ADHD that could be used to differentiate it from something else an elevated Theta-Theta ratio but in the last 15 years they've done that again and it's no longer a differential marker and they think it's because kids on average are getting like two less hours of sleep than they do because of smartphones and tablets and everything. So we have kind of this epidemic of not enough sleep. And so that marker now may just mean someone is not sleeping enough and getting low levels of sleep. And then last Delta, that's probably the one that's trained directly the least. It's kind of the foundation of all the other frequencies. So it's, I think they correlate they think it correlates with, you know brain stem and deeper brain function kind of those regulatory processes, right? In the background that are really important but they're subconscious. Also correlate with deep sleep, like the Delta. Yes, that's right. Yep, it correlates with deep stages of sleep. And then when I see it elevated in my office it might be again, brain injury or learning disability or sometimes by folks that have these autoimmune clusters of symptoms like brain fog, fatigue, Lyme, that sort of thing. So those are, that's your quick run through. No, they're super helpful. And it's interesting because again, the neurofeedback side and then like I've been playing with PMF maths and pulse to light lights on the brain. And my specific, I have a V light which is this device that does a mitochondrial brain light stimulation. And there's some data on that. It's still kind of controversial but my particular frequency is more alpha wave frequency. And it's interesting to me because my experience when I had the worst of the mold about five years ago I had a lot of trouble with focus and concentration and that alpha, whatever it was it really helped me get into that state. And then the nutrient theanine I love to use I don't know again how much data there is on that but those are just like my little simple hacks of kind of feeling that focus and clearness without any anxiety. Again, Lehmann's term is what you just described and I feel like that alpha is so critical to that state which is again what you were saying. And you're saying many people are stuck with too much beta related to alpha or maybe too much theta related alpha and they're more like unable to focus, is that? Yeah, so it's yeah, too much beta related to alpha or that marker that used to be for ADD, ADH it was too much theta related to beta. Got it, got it. Because beta you need to have beta. Interesting. So fascinating and so fascinating that these hurts like there's mimicking of our EEGs, the PMFs like they're all around our world. There's other mimics of these frequencies that I obviously have an effect on us. And I always wonder like the stress of the environment the electromagnetic frequencies. I don't know how much data we have some data but it's not super sound yet but I have no doubt that a lot of these other things are affecting our bodies and brains more than we even think, right? Right, I agree. Yeah, I think the data is still coming along but I think it would make sense. I believe again, I'm not an electrical engineer so I'm reporting this from someone else but that the fluorescent lights I think emit a high beta. And so when people are really sensitive it would make sense that we're absorbing that in our physiology, right? And there's that law of physics that if you have a tuning fork, right? If it's bringing a scene out and you bring it by another one and it absorbs well, obviously we absorb as well waves. So it would be a reasonable hypothesis to think that well, if we're absorbing beta especially if you already have too much that that could be activating over activating in your body. And then another line of thought on the reverse is that a fire has a slow flicker rate. Like if you're sitting by a fire probably in the Delta range. And then that might be why it's so calming to be by a fire because it's that slow flicker rate. So again, I don't have data to back that up. So think of that as anecdotal from talks with colleagues and working. Yeah, and again, same with me, I'm not the expert but I do know like the Schumann frequency is the Earth's natural resonant. And that I think correlates more with some of the Delta that like some of the calming, I don't know I think seven or eight hertz. I think it's that, yeah, or is it 7.8 maybe Yeah, so that would be right at the bridge of theta and alpha which is interesting. It's interesting to think about that because there's a common training and neurofeedback as well. It's called alpha theta training and they use it a lot. People have anxiety or we use it when someone has past trauma. But a lot of times it's someone cut off from their emotions, right? Until you train alpha and then once you get better at training your alpha then they train someone in a theta state which can be this kind of, again, interesting almost hypnagogic state. And so it's interesting that the Schumann residence is right at the cuff. Right in there. Well, and I'm guessing too, again, this is just off the cuff so I may not be accurate but I'm guessing that when you access theta a little bit what you're talking there's almost a subconscious state where you're open enough to and I find seeing the somatic therapies in patients and even in my own life when you're open to the subconscious and the intuition that's where a lot of the powerful healing shifts come from because our body knows what to do, right? It's just a matter of shutting off the brain long enough to feel and heal. So I'm guessing that part of why it helps because you're actually able to access what your body already knows to do which is your subconscious programming. That's right, yep, you're exactly right. That's when it's kind of thought of that you're training into accessing the subconscious which is why it needs to be done by a professional. Yeah, if someone has traumatic memories you don't wanna do that right away. If someone doesn't then it's a little less risky and a little more just exploratory and fun. Awesome, oh gosh, Ashley, this is so fun. We could talk for hours, we're gonna do it. Yeah, I could. Anything like, obviously you're having great success. I think what you're doing is so important and so powerful. A couple of things like, first of all where can people find you? If they're, especially if you're there in your area go ahead and give us your website or wherever we can find information about you and what you do. Sure, yeah, so I work at Palm Health I'm in St. Louis, Missouri. So you could just go to our website palmhealth.com and spell just like it sounds. And then if you wanna know more about me I would just be under the about tab under the staff bar. And then I'm trying to think what else. Yeah, the address and the number would all be on the website. So Palm Health and we're on all the social media. Yeah, and I will include that link for all of the anywhere you're listening here we'll have that link. You wanna find out more and more about neurofeedback. What if there, you know, Rhode Island or Washington State or somewhere where would they find someone that does what you do? Is there a professional organization or someone that you think that like say someone calls from out of state and they can't see you? Is there any like, how would they find a provider like you? Yeah, that's a good question. So there's a professional organization that manages a directory of that. So it's called bca.org.org. So that's the certification aligns for biofeedback and neurofeedback. So I really encourage exactly what you said when people tried to find me and I only can see people in Missouri. We go on that website and there's a tab right at the top it says find a provider and then you type in your zip code. So what's useful about that is it's a directory to find resources, you know, providers in your area but also that is the organization that certifies people. So you have some experience and quality control because neurofeedback is a specialty you add onto something else that's not a profession by itself. So you unfortunately get a wide array of experience and training of people in the field. The BCIA, if you go there, they're certified, they've had this universal training we all have to have passing the test, certain mentorship and continuing education. So that's where I always direct folks. Good, perfect. That's actually what I was going to say is because I've seen like hairstylists put out where, you know, and I'm like, oh, right. Like what you talked about is so critical because you have this family marriage counseling degree you have your PhD, you've got a lot of background because that container creating a safe place for people to do this is really, really important. So just if you're listening out there, make sure you find someone like Ashley who's credentialed, who has the training and ideally who has some other background because what happens with some of the stuff is things come up, right? And if you don't create a safe space that's safe for that to happen with the proper, you know, titration of the therapies it can be really overwhelming or too much for people. So that's all right, awesome. Ashley, thank you for today. It is so fun to talk to you. And I know this was awesome information for everybody listening. Thank you so much for having me. This went so fast. I know it was so fun. Thanks for having me. You're welcome.