 So today I would like to talk to you about something that we all know and love and that's the Theta experience. Just curiosity, curiosity, how many of you know about Theta and experience Theta where you're floating in the tank? Oh, good. What I'll also like to talk about is biofeedback as well in conjunction with the Theta experience and I'm talking about a specific type of biofeedback called alpha Theta training and it's used in clinical practice today and treating disorders like anxiety, PTSD, etc. Just a little bit about myself, I've been in the mental health field for about 25 years. I've worked in multiple clinical settings, hospitals, inpatients, residential settings, private practice. I'm also board certified in neuro-biofeedback and I currently consult and work with mentoring and supervising individuals who want to do this type of biofeedback. I know today some of our presenters talked about biofeedback and its use. I'm going to go in a little bit more depth. But before I start, I want to kind of go over about a start with brainwaves and talk a little bit about states of consciousness and how they associate with different brainwaves. So most of you know what brainwaves are, EEGs or electrosyphalography and basically it is the electronic recording of the electrical activity on the cortex of the brain. Believe it or not, your brain produces its own electricity. It operates on about 15 watts of power or about a half a peanut an hour. Brainwaves are categorized or are known for their waveforms or rhythms. They're also named after Greek letters, almost like a fraternity, beta, alpha, beta and delta. Rhythms are identified by their frequency or hertz per second. It's the speed they oscillate at and their amplitudes or the power of the wave and it's measured in microvolts. Each rhythm or wave is associated with various states of consciousness. So what you're looking at now is a raw EEG. This is what you would see with all the brainwaves combined. And if we were to filter that out, each brainwave would look a little bit different. So we look at the beta wave. It's also known as the waking rhythm. It's cycles per second is 12 to 30 hertz. Most of us right now are in beta just to hear, listening to me speak and being conscious and awake. It's the normal waking consciousness. It's consciously, you're consciously alert and focused on the outside world. Also there's a frequency between 18 to 30 hertz that's associated with busy or anxious thinking. Kind of that anxiety realm. A lot of us, when we start to get anxious or stressed out, we start to increase that beta frequency. I call it cortical irritation and I'm sure we've all experienced that. It's also beta is also the higher arousal state. Now there's also another frequency called gamma. I believe one of the researchers talked about it briefly. Now gamma is still up for debate in the field of neuroscience. Some researchers don't believe it exists. Some do. But if I remember correctly, the gamma wave was discovered in fighter pilots where they used to monitor their EEGs. What they noticed is that they were in these high stress situations in combat. They noticed the spiking wave. So they came to be called gamma. It's also found in Zen monks as well and deep meditation. Some people feel it's an artifact wave. In other words, it's muscle tension. It's not really a brain wave, but it's just worthy to note that. Alpha. The alpha wave is also known as Berger's waves because it was the first wave discovered. The German neuropsychologist Hans Berger discovered it. Actually he was also the one that invented the EEG. If you can see, it's cycle is 8 to 12 hertz. It has a very similar, almost like a sign-like appearance to it. It's also associated with relaxation and reflective states and idle states. It's also generated when you close your eyes. So let's do a quick demo. Everyone just close their eyes for a moment, okay? Within the first one or two seconds, your brain will start producing alpha. Actually, you may start feeling a calming effect. It starts to be generated in the parietal lobe and starts spreading over the cortex. It's also associated, you may experience alpha when you're watching TV. It puts us in that kind of passive attention. It's a very feel-good type of feeling. It's also associated with peak performance and flow states. Specifically, there was a lot of research done with athletes. And there's a researcher out of the University of Chicago, Somali, who studied peak performance. And there's been a lot of research done on quantitative EEGs and recording athletes' brain waves when they're performing. And they had found that when they performed their sport or when they're in the zone or the flow, you would see an abundance of alpha in their brain waves. So really what was going on is that your beta waves were being turned off. They're in that moment, just in that moment, performing in their sports. And their muscle memory takes over and they don't think about their sport because they practiced it over again. But you see a generated amount of alpha. It's also the bridge between your high arousal to your low arousal state. So what I mean by that is when we're in beta, we're highly aroused, we're taking all the stimuli from the world. And as we slowly lower our arousal states, our consciousness starts to relax. And then alpha is now the bridge between going into the theta state. There's also a mu wave between 18 to 13 hertz SMR. I put it up there because later I'm just going to explain a little bit more about SMR and its discovery and how it's used in discovering neurofeedback. SMR stands for sensory motor rhythm. And it's a part of the sensory motor stripped here in the brain. And when you generate it, you get actually a kind of a calming effect on your body. It's also, you can see it in cats, actually. Part of it was discovered in doing EEG with cats. Cats actually are very still when they hunt. So they produce more SMR to keep their body still. I'm going to skip theta, go back to that because I'm going to spend a little bit more time. But delta is known as the sleep rhythm. It's between 0.5 to 4 hertz. It's the slowest and highest amplitude of all the waves. It's increased during sleep. And it's basically when we're unconscious. So let's go to theta. Theta is where the magic happens. Theta is a powerful rhythmic wave. It's between 4 to 7 hertz. There's two types of theta, hippocampal and cortical theta. Hippocampal is a subcortical structure of the brain, the hippocampus that is responsible for memory. We'll learn a little bit more about that. It's also found in children in all wakeful states. So when we're in our childhood and we're growing up, most children are in a theta state. In fact, as we mature and grow into young adulthood, our brain waves proportionally change. And we actually begin to wake up and we start to make more beta. So when children, kind of an explanation of why they're kind of daydreaming, they don't listen, it's in the theta state. Also, a lot of our memories, our childhood memories are formed in a theta state. I'll report and we'll talk a little bit more about that in a second. It's also associated with drowsiness. It's generated every day when we drift into sleep and when we wake from sleep and into consciousness. So we all crash through theta every day. When we're sleeping, most of us are maybe aware of it, not aware of it. We go in and then we wake up, we come back out again. It's also known as the deep state. It's also seen in deeply internalized meditative states, specifically Zen monks. They've done quantitative EEGs to show this. More importantly, it's also associated with the hypnagogic state. How many of you are familiar with the hypnagogia? Okay, so this is where we're going to get into the meat of things. The hypnagogic state generates an unexpected and unpredictable mental images. So what is hypnagogic consciousness? Hypnagogia is the unique state of consciousness between wakefulness and sleep, it's on the edge of sleep, right before we zonk out. It's basically a theta-dominant brainwave state. We all experience it, but there is often fear that it's a pathological or abnormal. I've got a personal story I'd like to share with you. Back when I was a teenager, I suffered from a disorder called sleep paralyzation, anybody familiar with that? Yeah, it's actually how I started getting and discovering the hypnagogic in the theta state, it's kind of what triggered me into really following this. And getting into psychology and wanting to learn more about it. But what would happen is when you're asleep, your body will paralyze itself in order to do that. So when you're dreaming, you're not running. But in this disorder, when you're coming out of sleep, your body doesn't wake up. But your mind starts to wake up and you can go into a theta state coming out of Delta. And when you're there, you start having hypnagogic images. And I can remember I was one night waking up for the first time. And I was paralyzed and I couldn't wake up and I started to panic. And in the process, all of a sudden, I felt this presence in the room and these faces behind doors. And I was thinking, my God, is this it? Am I going to be abducted and brought up to the mothership? And fortunately, it wasn't. But it scared me enough where I went to a psychologist. And I thought I was actually having a psychotic episode or a psychotic break. But fortunately, they were wise enough to be able to diagnosis as a sleep disorder. And neurologic explained to me what was going on. But any of us who do experience it for the first time, it can be a little frightening. Hypnagogic images. This is something that when we float that we all probably encounter or this is kind of the signature trademark of hypnagogic. Are the spontaneous vivid images that you'll see. The fleeting, they're fleeting sometimes flashing lights. Color, that can be archetypal in nature. Faces, shadows, shapes, sounds, and they're almost hallucinatory. Anybody experience any of this? Good. The hypnagogic consciousness in history of mankind has been used in shamanism and spiritual traditions. The Theta dominant brainwave state has been utilized for creative, intuitive healing, shamanism and spiritual purposes for millennia. So from the shaman who used to go into the spirit world, from drumming, rhythmic drumming, putting you into a theta state or even watching the flickering of fire lights would put people into these altered states of consciousness. And in doing that, they would feel that they would contact the spirit world. It's also associated with unconscious material, specifically childhood memories. And that's one of the aspects of the theta state while floating is a lot of us will have that kind of memory recall and start remembering childhood memories. And remember when I was talking about earlier, when you were growing up in your childhood, a lot of your memories were formed in theta. Here's one that I think we can all relate to is the hypnagogic consciousness was also, brings on a very creative state. A lot of scientific discoveries and creativities, inventions that were discovered. William Blake, Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison. In fact, Thomas Edison is a story that he would sit in a chair. And then he had a ball bearings that would hold in his chair and he would go into a drowsy state. And right before he would fall asleep, his hands would open up and the ball bearings would fall on the floor. And he would be startled back into the theta state. And while he was there, he claims that's where all of his information and creativity came for his inventions. Also Albert Einstein used to do thought experiments. One of his things, he would enter an ultra state of consciousness and he would take an experiment that he was working on and he would just kind of go with that. He also claimed that when he was in this state, he was opened up to a state of consciousness that provided him the information and the knowledge that he needed to create the formulas today. The photoelectric fact and the theory of relativity. Also, the benzene ring was discovered that way. I don't know if anyone knows organic chemistry, but the benzene ring was discovered by the scientists. He was sipped by the fire and just watched the fire and the flickering of the fire light would put him into a theta state. And he had a dream of a snake coiling around and grabbing its tail. Thus giving him the image that he needed to create the benzene ring. Also, I didn't want to mention intuitive purposes. Louis Ryan was a prominent investigator of spontaneous psychic functioning, confirmed early observations that intuitive functioning is facilitated by drowsy states. Furthermore, modern research into ESP conducted under controlled laboratory conditions has shown that the GANS field technique which is partial sensory deprivation is effective in facilitating ESP. I don't know if anyone has that experience in the tank as well, but also out of body of experience and feelings of peace, joy and connectedness. Now, I just realized I don't have much time left. I was afraid this is going to happen. So I'm going to talk a little bit faster and try to speed through this. Just wanted to talk real briefly about the history of theta pioneers and the research because this kind of gets into the meat of the research that was done using theta states and training people into alpha theta states to for clinical purposes. So Thomas Banzinski developed the concept of twilight training. He was a researcher who was doing research in muscle tension and he found that people would enter into these theta states. He basically at that point developed what is called twilight training. It was a device that monitored individual brainwaves and while they produced alpha theta, it triggered a playing of relaxation tape and that tape would be scripted, suggesting in the voice of the individual. Also known as hypnagogic visualization. Just want to use a quick example of how powerful this is, because this is also the meat of alpha theta training. In learning how to restructure or re-script our childhood beliefs and changing who we are. I was also a professional runner back in the 80s. And as I was running on the race circuit I had to learn to run with the Kenyans. So actually early on I started using theta as a way to relax but I also used it for visualization and would play a tape myself. Not knowing any of this research at that time of watching, rehearsing my races over and over again. And after about six months of doing this, I ran in one of the races. Let's see if it plays. Abraham Hussein and Joseph Kipsang's third and fourth place finish comes of little surprise. But the sight of Brian Neerstad chasing Joseph Zau across the finish line delights thousands with local pride. So it made my day. But it also showed me the power of the scripting as well. Jay Gonkelman, very quickly. Jay was one of the first researchers back in 1973, developed a twilight training facility in North Dakota. He used the feedback technique involving placing patients into a flotation tank for 90 minutes. And he produced patient brainwaves or monitored with pink noise audio feedback and provided for alpha and dominated EEG outputs through an underwater speaker. When patients became theta dominant, the pink noise was muted in a tape loop with a short prerecorded message in the patient's voice, rescripting early childhood beliefs. Jay's actually a friend of mine. I was gonna have him speak a little bit today. We don't have the time, but next week he would love to come. He's one of the leading authorities in EEG and quantitative EEG research and neurofeedback. And actually has experience running doing alpha theta training in a flotation tank. Yeah, very cool. Elmar and Alice Green real quickly, they also worked on using the twilight training. They found as well, they kind of not discovered, but also worked with hypnagogic imagery discovering that. And some of the students seem to have paranormal experiences. And they discovered a new type of psychological well-being. This is where the rubber meets the road. Eugene Peniston, while on a theta state in a training seminar, he came up the concept of, and you see the idea of using alpha theta training for chronic alcoholics in the VA Medical Center. Now these vets also were suffering from PTSD. And in his study, and designed back in 1989 in which they used three carefully matched groups, an experimental treatment group, which received the brainwave training, an alcoholic group, which received conventional treatment, and a non-alcoholic control group which received no treatment. Results showed much higher abstinent rates in the experimental group compared to the alcoholic controls and significant normalizations of various personality measures in the experimental group. In other words, what he did pre and post is he used an MMPI, which is a psychological tool that evaluates personality structure and psychopathology. And what he had found is that it brought it back to normality. He did further studies using the same protocols in which he took beta-dorfen levels, and it found that those increased as well, which is kind of the painkiller, but also gave an effort feeling. And a lot of this treatment today is also being used in addiction study. Part of the theory is that the effects of alpha and theta would increase this and give the person another sense of a high. Versus seeking drugs that they found that in doing and practicing this, this kind of overrode the original addiction. And the key factors in preventing relapse was changed in the personalized. So I am over time. I guess I got two quick minutes. I was told I can get extra time in. Nor feedback is trains your brain. Think of it as aerobic training for the brain. It's based on operating conditioning. In other words, there's a reward and threshold reinforcements that are given through a computer system. In alpha-theta training, what you're doing is you're hearing alpha tones. When you begin training, the clinician actually monitors your EEG, and then you can actually train your brain and coax it into alpha, and then down into theta. Once you're in theta, you can teach an individual to keep that theta state in a wakeful state. Yeah, it helps stabilize the mind, increases functioning mood. Space-H technology was discovered back in the 60s, and I can't talk about it now, but it actually, a lot of this technology was developed in NASA to working with astronauts. Alpha-theta training, I just kind of gave you an overview. But really how it's worked is when I do alpha-theta training, I have someone in a room, they're sitting in a chair, they have headphones on, they're listening to the music, as well as tones. Electrodes are placed in the back of their scalp in the occipital area. And then they're hearing the alpha-theta tones. And then as they go into theta, you develop a scripted tape of the participant's voice, and then usually they're hearing something they want to change about themselves. That's what Peniston used when he worked with the vets, is instead of drinking beer, he actually taught them thinking about reaching for orange juice or taking a non-alcoholic drink. And in doing that, that's changed their behavior. Okay, so at this point, I just feel that the natural thing to do is bring alpha-theta training into the tank. This training would not only augment the theta state, but will enhance the flow practice and the post-float experience, which has the capacity to change one's own life. And that was Jay, I was going to talk a little bit more about him. So, an ending, let me read this real quick. Floating along with alpha-theta training will augment the experience of the theta state, and with that, the hypnagogic images and the awareness of various states of consciousness. It is in this awareness that gives rise and insight into the realities that we have access to. Hypnagogia suggests the possibility of evolving and expanding our consciousness. It poses a serious question concerning the nature of reality. The power and magic of the hypnagogic realms brings us closer to our own intuition, creativity, mystical insight, and unconscious mind. We can engage in the self-hypnosis or hypnagogic visualization and re-scripting our own behavior so we can achieve things thought impossible or too difficult. We are explorers in traveling and together we travel into this new world. We are in fact following the footsteps of some of the most influential and intuitive human minds in history, and we'll continue this historical path longer to the next millennium. After all, Einstein couldn't be wrong. Thank you.