Coaching Advice - Stubborn/Paradoxical Brain

January 17, 2012

Dear Group:

I have a client who has a rich background in yoga, and both teaches it and

practices various self-awareness and self-relaxation techniques much of each

day. She is sweet to work with, however, the brain-training stuff is being

extraordinally difficult, on some levels.

We are training a temporal windowed squash, and also a right parietal windowed

squash, based on the TLC and symptoms. She's got lots of beta going on.

However, in the training, her readings/graphs quickly show an initial settling

in the brain, and then start showing a paradoxical response to what the protocol

is set for, and from what I'm used to seeing with others on these protocols:

her high beta starts rising, and ultimately, everything else does, too. This

happens in other protocols I've tried, too.

When I check in, she has wondered off into colors, and puppy dog barks, and orbs

and other wonderful creative things...

We're working on various symptoms, but the symptoms of falling asleep have

improved very much, but the staying asleep has not. I kind of equate it to the

graphs I see of her trainings; an initial settling, but then much busyness.

Her history equates with this, too - a " military brat " who never spent more than

2 years in one place, and had to be on her best behavior all the time. Her

in-session responses seem like " quiet rebellions " and discomfort with trusting

she could stay in one place for long.

So, I've started doing training in 3-minute increments, where she can check in

and talk about her experience, and we can re-focus back to the feedback again

(which often goes out of the picture for her). This is helping. And teaching

her to " stay " for a few minutes at a time. She says she feels resistance from

her head to toe in this, but thinks it is a good process.

Another side note is that when she closes her eyes, she automatically

wants/needs to turn her head completely to the left.

The client talks about wanting to go retire/retreat to a cave like the great

yogis. I believe much of her efforts are to bypass her suffering, rather than

find ways to walk through it. I'm not a therapist, and have offered up names of

brilliant ones I work with, to travel this special journey with her. Not

interested.

Does anyone have any thoughts on coaching here - some ways I can better coach

the neurofeedback end of things? Some ways of staying with the experience

rather than wandering away to the cave? I sense there may be trauma here, and

that slow, trustworthy experiences may be the best.

Thanks for any thoughts you might have...

Gretchen

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