From Lee Gerdes,
CEO and founder of Brain State Technologies

A man who has worked as a pharmacist all his life is anxious, cannot tolerate changes to his everyday schedule, is terrified of flying, and has to have his surroundings a certain way or he becomes enraged. The least thing out of place and he explodes. Consequently, everyone in his family tiptoes around him, hoping not to set him off.

Do you know people in your own life who are so stressed out that you have to handle them with kid gloves? My guess is most of us know at least one person like this, if not several—and many of us have no doubt experienced feeling this way ourselves, so that we too at times become like a coiled spring.

Naturally, the pharmacist I’m referring to had access to all the drugs that the pharmaceutical companies recommend for severe anxiety, feeling stressed out, or depression. But none of these solved his problem, at best mitigating it to some extent. Plus, there are huge risks with some of these medications, in some cases even including the acceleration of suicidal tendencies—as the labeling now points out.

When some vital element is lacking in your body chemistry, it makes sense to supply the missing ingredient, whether this is related to an inability to absorb sufficient calcium or magnesium, or a lack of B12 perhaps as a result of following a vegan diet. In these cases, supplementation may be called for, as the medical profession increasingly recognizes.

However, in the case of excessive worry, ongoing anxiety, depression, suicidal tendencies, and post-traumatic stress disorder, most of the time it’s not a nutritional issue that’s the root of the problem—particularly if a person’s diet is fairly balanced, as is true of many of us in the western world.

The kind of anxiety the pharmacist I told you about had experienced for many years can’t be resolved by supplying a drug, since the cause isn’t a lack of that drug. All medication can do in such a situation is mask the symptoms, perhaps bringing a measure of relief—but at a price. In many cases medication flattens out the person’s ability to feel, so that they perhaps escape some of the lows, while also missing out on the true joy of life. A daily emotional numbness may be preferential to feeling like you are drowning in sadness or constantly exploding, but this is no real answer. It’s only a band aid.

Ultimately, the master regulator for all of the body’s systems—physical, mental, and emotional—is the brain. It’s this we need to harmonize if we are to function well as feeling, thinking, physical creatures. For when the brain is out of balance—when its hemispheres and lobes are locked into energy levels that are less than optimal—neither our chemistry nor our electrical circuits are able to promote a state of wellbeing.

It’s long been known that harmonized brainwaves affect how well we feel within ourselves, such as being at peace with ourselves instead of stressed, and that this in turn reverberates throughout all our organs, circulatory network, and chemistry, affecting such delicate system as the many hormones that regulate our health. This is why so many stress-reduction techniques have become popular, ranging from prayer and meditation to yoga, biofeedback, and neurofeedback. Though these can be helpful, they nevertheless have their own limitations—as I learned from personal experience.

When I was attacked by three youths with baseball bats in San Francisco while closing up after a church function one afternoon many years ago, the post-traumatic stress I experienced following this assault was so severe that I tried just about everything in an attempt to restore my formerly peaceful state. While some of the techniques helped somewhat,  nothing brought lasting change.

It was out of my persistent distress that I went deeply into how neurofeedback works, which in turn led me to a breakthrough development that didn’t require my personal effort in the way both biofeedback and neurofeedback do.

As a software specialist I realized we were entering an era when the power of the computer could at last be harnessed to restore balance and harmony to the brain. By reading the brain’s energy patterns noninvasively, it’s possible to mirror them back to the brain in such a way that it allows the brain to resonate or adjust its own energy levels to a balanced state.

So it was that Brainwave Optimization™ was born—and now clinical trials in university medical schools and other facilities are validating its efficacy.

If you are stressed, anxious, depressed, fearful, or even suicidal, returning your brain’s hemispheres and lobes to a balanced state is your way forward. Whatever additional modalities you may choose to utilize, a balanced and harmonized brain state is bedrock—as you’ll discover when you read my book Limitless You—The Infinite Possibilities of a Balanced Brain, available both in print form and as an ebook direct from Namaste Publishing, from Amazon.com, by order through bookstores, or through any of the 200 plus providers of Brainwave Optimization™ worldwide.

From Lee Gerdes,
CEO and founder of Brain State Technologies

Do you ever get a woolly feeling in your head? It’s a feeling akin to two radio stations broadcasting on the same wavelength, so that there’s a sort of buzzing noise instead of the clear sound of talk or music. It can also be a feeling that something heavy is weighing your brain down. You may have noticed, as most people do, that the feeling of cobwebs in your head is accompanied by a general anxiousness and perhaps even a tension in your neck muscles.

We’ve all experienced a sense of fuzzy-headedness or brain fog, times when thoughts come more slowly and never quite fully into focus. When you think about it, it’s interesting that we are even able to recognize this condition as we are experiencing it. Sometimes this aspect of our makeup—the brain’s capacity to observe its own functioning—is referred to as the “watcher.” We stand simultaneously within ourselves and outside ourselves and observe ourselves. It’s easy to take this ability for granted, but it’s essential to our health and well-being.

When all is well with your body, you don’t even notice it. For instance, you don’t pay attention to your legs as you walk, your hands as you type, your arms as you hold someone. There’s just a flow of energy throughout the body that enables you to function in tiptop condition. Even still, your brain is constantly monitoring and regulating all functions of your body.

You have no doubt heard a lot about brain plasticity in recent years. Far from being a fixed entity, science has discovered that the brain is capable of rewiring itself, creating new neural pathways. This makes us enormously adaptable and resilient, but it has its downsides as well.

When you experience a trauma—major or minor, physical or emotional—your brain immediately adjusts its own activity to compensate and to cope. You may not even be consciously aware of the shift at first, but your brain is functioning differently. Though the brain functions best when brainwave activity is balanced between its two hemispheres, the ability of the brain to unbalance itself is essential to healthy brain function. Where it becomes a problem is when the brain cannot find its own way back into balance. Imbalanced brain activity has been associated with a wide variety of symptoms and conditions. In cases of extreme trauma, the brain may remain in a state of hyper-arousal as we often see with soldiers returning from combat. Even in cases of minor trauma, however, brain function may be impaired.

Your fuzzy thinking may simply be your brain trying to navigate the day with a kind of mental limp.

On the other hand, when the brain’s natural balance is restored, there is a knock-on effect that cascades to all the bodily systems, enabling them to function better. Body chemistry actually improves, as does the level of energy, alertness, and capacity for feeling and clear thinking. This is what Brainwave Optimization™, from Brain State Technologies®, facilitates.

Brainwave Optimization™ provides the brain with a mirror in which it can perceive itself, recognize its own imbalances, and adjust itself towards its own optimal state. Using EEG and advanced proprietary computer systems, we process brainwave activity into musical tones. The client, relaxing in a comfortable chair, in a soothing environment, hears these tones in real-time. As the brain hears its own activity, a resonance loop is created and the brain begins to auto-calibrate. As the brainwaves return to balance and harmony between the two hemispheres, our client’s frequently report, among other benefits, clearer thinking and greater focus.

What truly distinguishes this approach is that the brain itself does the work according to its own natural modes of behavior. Drugs aren’t introduced into the system to alter the brain’s chemistry. The client isn’t asked to consciously train the brain to behave according to some supposedly optimal norm. Brainwave Optimization™ simply holds up the mirror and the brain does just what it’s designed to do—adjusts itself for optimal performance.

Join us for the next Brain Talk, when we’ll explore the fuzzy feeling so many of us experience more fully. Click here to learn more >>

From Lee Gerdes,
CEO and founder of Brain State Technologies

How do you have what an aunt described on Canadian CTV as a “perfect” childhood, then end up a radical who bombs the Boston marathon?

Especially, how do two brothers who were said to be “quiet,” “nice,” and “friendly” become such extremists as to launch a jihad against the United States, with plans to detonate further bombs in Times Square, New York?

There can of course be many contributing factors to such a paradox and investigators and psychologists are already turning up some of these. But none of what’s been discovered so far really explains how a family that immigrated to the United States, with two boys who grew up here, ends up as front-page headlines.

In my book Limitless You, I begin my exploration of the severe dysfunction individuals like these two brothers suffered from with the case of a seventeen-year-old who was planning to carry out a massacre at his school. If you picked up a copy of Limitless You for no other reason than to read just the first chapter, you would likely be streaks ahead of most of the researchers who are trying to explain what triggered the hostility of these two brothers in New England.

I begin chapter 1 by asking, “How does a seemingly calm teen who has never caused any trouble in his life get to the place where he decides to annihilate his fellow students and teachers?” Notice the parallel with the Tsarnaev brothers—a calm, nice boy who stepped out of line.

It turned out that the young man I’m talking about who intended to create carnage at his school had a severe brain imbalance. When we scanned his brainwaves at Brain State Technologies® here in Scottsdale, it turned out he was severely parasympathetic dominant. It was this unhelpful brain pattern that was triggering such a “good” boy to go off the rails.

I believe something similar happened to these two boys from Chechnya. You’ve probably read that the younger brother, Dzhokar, age 19, was a wrestler, and that the older brother, Tamerlan, age 26, represented New England as a heavyweight in the National Golden Gloves boxing tournament. He also had a desire to be a part of the Olympic team.

And we need to understand that practice and allegiance to a radical belief system can also cause the brain to shift, and be eventually stuck, in a strong asymmetry – locking out compassion and separating the extremist from themselves and from others. This happened in the middle ages during the Christian crusades where between 2 and 6 million people were killed in the name of a religion. And it is still happening today in the name of the religion. Sad. If someone can place a bomb next to an 8 year old child and blow them up, that person cannot have a functionally balanced brain because the brain simply wouldn’t allow us to do that kind of crazy destruction in the name of ANYTHING.

Boxing, of course, involves blows to the head—but so also can wrestling. Radical belief systems which are rigorously practiced and have blinded allegiance can also can also act like blows to the head by causing brain function to be dramatically asymmetrical. Here at Brain State Technologies®, as well as with our providers around the world, we have seen countless cases of where functional brain imbalances cause imbalances in the autonomic nervous system, with the sympathetic and parasympathetic aspects of this system ending up completely out of whack.

One of the terrorists is dead, but if we could take a readout of the energy patterns of the other’s brain, I would be willing to bet we would see a serious imbalance that’s the underlying reason such “nice” boys, who grew up participating in the American dream, ultimately gravitated toward such violence. All the other contributing “causes” would have had little influence had there not been a brain imbalance lurking behind the scenes.

People who have read Limitless You have told me on many occasions how they wish this kind of insight were being taught in schools and families. It would also be hugely beneficial were it a part of the training of those involved in law enforcement, not to mention people in the fields of psychology and social work. Were such an understanding of what goes wrong in such cases widely understood, we would likely be able to head off many such tragedies.

The powerful yet wholly noninvasive technology of Brainwave Optimization™ is so very needed everywhere in a world in which the instruments to wreak havoc are so readily attainable by anyone with a brain imbalance.