RE: Awareness

[Guest guest]

Hi

Pete, thanks for the reply and I have done as you say, right at the beginning. We

also have a goal. The big problem is I can’t understand him, his speech

though improving right from the start is not that good yet. His mum has quietly

spoken to him and he says he feels really good after the sessions and the

changes take place even when he does not come. Its just that its like he has

switched on and is now like a three year old with why this why that. His family

are happy. He is more confident and happier as well. I find the HEG is the most

graphic form of demonstration easy to use and the results are very visible.

Cheers Tony

Re:

Awareness

Tony,

There are several keys to

answering your question, ideally handled early in training.

First, I like to start

off by having the full family come to a first session I call the " sample

session " . In that I focus almost exclusively on talking with the

client, finding out what (or if) there are issues she would like to change:

" what in your life would you like to be able to do faster, better or more

easily? " I give a brief description of fast vs slow activity (from

the Level 2 video) and ask the client which she thinks will be strong when we

look at her brain. Then we go in and hook her up, explaining what is

being done in simple terms. We look at the power spectrum. I demonstrate

where the slow waves are, where the fast are, ask the client to really focus on

the tallest bars and try to make them go down just by looking at them,

etc. We note whether there is a lot of fast or slow activity and how that

might make it more difficult for the brain to help her do what she wants to do.

I like to use the

analogy: People are often told that they are dumb, or they aren't trying,

or they don't care, when their brains are really good at making one kind of

activity but can't do the others so well. If your brain were a car,

intelligence would be the horsepower of the engine; brain training works on the

transmission. You can have a very powerful car, but if you only have

first gear, you can't take it out on the highway! No matter how much you

want to or how hard you try.

Then I use the

" sample session " TLC design, which simply provides feedback on a

single band (usually at Cz). With the family watching, the client

demonstrates that--with or without knowing HOW--she can begin to control, for

short periods of time, the target activity. We play a few rounds of

pacman, and she makes it through the maze a little faster each time.

In short, the goal here

is for the client to experience a) I can DO this; my family is impressed

that I'm doing it. If there are other siblings, in the car on the way

home, I want them saying, " How come SHE gets to do it, and WE

don't!? "

I always tell the client

two things in that first session--and reinforce them in later ones: YOU

are the only one here who is doing any work, so when you start to be able to do

things you couldn't do before, YOU get to take the credit! And I suggest,

" tomorrow, when you see your friends, do something for me: tell them,

'hey, you know what I did yesterday? I practiced changing the speed of electrical

pulses in my brain!' " That usually gets a laugh, because we

recognize that everyone will say, " yeah, sure! " Then I tell

her, They won't believe you, but you saw yourself actually doing it

today. The more you practice this, the better you get at it, the more you

will be able to do something really well that most people don't even believe is

possible! It will be a secret power that you have, and you'll have it for

the rest of your life. "

So starting someone off

with a way of understanding brain training as something that is very cool and

beyond most people's ability to even imagine is an important base.

Equally important, though, when you are alone with the client, you need to sit

down and say, " look, I know why your parents want us to do this. I

know what they want to get out of it. But how about you? It's your

life, and you're the one who will be doing the work, so if you could imagine

some changes in your abilities, in your life that would make this all

worthwhile, what would they be? " Most kids can't answer that

question very easily, but you can't take " I don't know " or

" nothing " for an answer. You have to probe, ask more detailed

questions about school work, about how she feels about herself, about social

life, about her hopes for the future, about free time, about whatever, until

she can begin to find some things she can put " up on the wall " as

objectives that SHE could get excited about.

So the bottom line is not

that she suddenly realizes she is " different " and " has to "

do brain training. I want her to recognize that ALL of us are different

from one another. But few of us have the chance to " MAKE ourselves

different in the ways WE want to change " and few of us " get the

chance " to do brain training.

Finally, it's important,

in my mind, that the idea of brain training not be seen--especially by the

client--as something that will be going on for hundreds of sessions.

There should be some kind of target end point, and there has to be some way of

measuring and demonstrating what results are happening. Without that,

it's all just a waste of time.

Pete

On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at

5:05 PM, Tony <karyn.tonyxtra (DOT) co.nz>

wrote:

Hi

all, just wondering if anyone else finds that as children train

they seem to become more aware that they are different and question

why they come for training. How do you explain it to them?

Cheers Tony

--

Van Deusen

pvdtlcgmail

http://www.brain-trainer.com

305/433-3160

The Learning Curve, Inc.

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