Yesterday I did something I’ve wanted to do ever since I learned about it. I had an assessment of how my brainwaves are working.

I learned that I still have traces of fight-or-flight activity stemming from PTSD. Forty something years after the trauma, after nearly 20 years of yoga, psychotherapy, releasing the traumatic energy block a la Waking the Tiger, over 5 years of meditation, learning NLP, and doing the trauma releasing exercises, this pattern (although much less than it was) is still present in my energy field. All of those healing modalities have helped and been completely worthwhile, to be sure.

Fight-or-flight is a wonderful instinct to have — when there’s something to fight or flee from. The problem is when there’s nothing in the environment to fear, but I am still tense or jumpy. It’s a brainwave pattern.

I’ve wondered how can I know I’ve completely recovered from trauma. The trauma happened when I was young, so I don’t have an adult baseline of well-being to compare to. I’d really like to know that I’m over it and don’t need to spend any more energy on it. Ever.

The aftereffects of a trauma can last a lifetime. I’d like to experience what it is like to be untraumatized. I can’t change the past, but I can change my brain wave patterns and therefore my life.  

Here’s how the process has gone so far. I made an appointment with Gigi Turner at NeuroBeginnings. That is one of three Austin affiliates offering brainwave optimization using the equipment and software and training provided by Brain State Technologies (BST).

The founder of BST, Lee Gerdes, has written a book, Limitless You: The Infinite Possibilities of a Balanced Brain. I have just gotten the book myself. One of the testimonials on the back cover mentions “restoring … humans to a joyful and highly functional state in their daily life.” Yeah.

All of these companies are staying busy, from what I hear, and I’m sure they are all very competent at doing what they do. I connected well with Gigi on the phone and identified with her as a working woman, so I chose her. She’s also the most highly trained BST certified technician in town.

At my first appointment, she had me fill out an extensive online questionnaire. I’m pretty sure they ask about so many issues because BST wants to collect as much data as it can. All in the name of compassionate science. This is a fascinating frontier that I’ve blogged about before.

At the end of the questionnaire, I identified my top reasons for wanting to do this. I listed well-being and happiness first. And, oh yeah, I wouldn’t mind having better spiritual development and meditation, cognitive improvement, social interactions, etc.

Gigi had me sit in a recliner. She put some electrodes on my earlobes and scalp. She then asked me to close my eyes for 2-3 minutes. Then she asked me to open my eyes partially. Then she asked me to open my eyes completely. With eyes open, she had me do an exercise like repeat strings of numbers.

Meanwhile, a big computer monitor with a split screen is showing my left and right hemisphere activity as colors — blues, green, red, each color representing a range of brainwaves like beta, alpha, theta, delta — streaming by.

Pretty and fascinating. I wonder what this means.

Then she’d move the electrodes and repeat the process for a different area of my brain, getting readings for the frontal lobe, parietal, temporal, occipital, cingulate gyrus, and midline, if I remember accurately.

With my eyes open, I’d do a different exercise for each area. I solved math problems aloud, read to myself and answered a question, listened to Gigi reading and answered a question, and just looked around the room.

At the end, she removed the electrodes and showed me a summary on the computer of my assessment. (It’s proprietary, so I didn’t get a copy. Darn! I love looking at data, seeing what pops out.)

Basically for each area of the brain, there’s data about the left and right hemispheres, about each brainwave type, and about ratios between types (such as between beta and theta), as far as I could tell. I bet there’s also data about the brain’s flexibility in moving from eyes closed, partly open, to wide open, and how well it functions doing each assigned task.

From experience, the BST-trained technicians have come to recognize “brainwave signatures” for various conditions like PTSD, ADHD, and so on. But it’s really not meant as a diagnostic tool. It’s meant to be used to harmonize and balance the brain, and this is the starting place.

They also can tell what range the numbers “should” be in for optimal functioning. Not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with being out of range. I imagine some gifts and talents that people have developed (math prodigy, psychic) rely on being out of normal range while doing that activity. The question is, are they happy and healthy? Can their brainwaves change to meet the situation, or are they in a dysfunctional pattern?

Even if you don’t have anything like PTSD, you can probably benefit from tuning up your brain. The literature says it can help with addictions, anger, anxiety, chronic fatigue, chronic pain, compulsive behaviors, eating disorders, learning difficulties, obsessive thinking, panic attacks, poor memory, sleeping difficulties, stress, and a host of other issues.

So it is possible that with the training, I can completely retrain my brain to operate as if I never had PTSD.

I can be less jumpy and experience even more well-being. I’m looking forward to that.

I can also learn to focus better on reading material that is, ahem, less than compelling. Like textbooks and other dry material.

I’m a pretty good sleeper, but Gigi says that optimizing my brain waves will help me sleep even better, waking up even more refreshed. Wow. I’ve had insomnia before and have great compassion for people with sleep problems. I’m looking forward to sleeping more restfully.

BST affiliates can also do things like increase beta in the left hemisphere and increase alpha in the right hemisphere. Yeah, let those hemispheres specialize even more! I imagine this would make someone more cognitively adept when they need to be and happier the rest of the time. I’ll have some of that, too!

So I’m going to do it later this month, when my contract job is completely done. You need to be able to come in for a couple of hours a day every day, or even twice a day, which is why I’ve waited until now.

I understand the process uses sound, and that you actually “observe” your brain waves and optimize them yourself, creating the balance and harmony you desire, rather than matching an external norm.

I will report back here at Well:bodymindheartspirit.