Biofeedback - in interaction with the body

Naturopathy: Biofeedback - In interaction with your own body
Biofeedback is a method to measure as measurable physical functions for therapeutic purposes, making them audible or visible and beneficial to influence. Gradually researched and developed for therapeutic treatment since the 19th century, biofeedback is now used not only as a relaxation method in a wide variety of therapeutic directions.

Development of the biofeedback process
As early as the late 19th century, after electrical processes were discovered in the body, the development of devices began to measure them. The founder of Progressive Muscle Relaxation, Jacobson, is said to have used biofeedback back in 1920 in the form of a simple device that could measure muscle relaxation. For many years, biofeedback methods have been researched in the United States and Canada, and in the wake of technological progress, the process has long been adopted in Europe. Because biofeedback is about the „neutral“ Determining physiological values, it is independent of theory and human image in the medical, psychotherapeutic, pedagogical as well as language and ergotherapeutic context applicable.

Mode of action and course of biofeedback therapy
The therapeutic benefit consists in the feedback of presumed willingly uncontrollable physiological parameters such as heart rate, respiratory rate, temperature, skin resistance, muscle relaxation or brain function (neurofeedback), which can then be independently influenced. Connected to a biofeedback device, the client is reported by means of acoustic (sound, melody) or optical signals (light, graphics), the body function and every smallest positive and negative change. Through this, as well as through the initial guidance of the therapist, the influence of behavior, thoughts, and feelings, as well as a beneficial response to it, are learned very quickly, such as prolonged exhalation or an imagined one „inner“ Picture that conveys calm. At the end of this learning process, the new skills should also be used in everyday life, especially in stressful situations, and eventually integrate as a physiological response.

A broad range of applications
As a motivational and starting aid, the method is also used in autogenic training or hypnotherapy, it is used for general stress reduction, but also as a therapeutic method of specific diseases and disorders.
Common uses include chronic pain, migraine, nervous disorders, e.g. Sleep Disorders or Irritable Bowel Syndrome or Inflammatory Bowel Disease (CED). In rehabilitation after strokes, the procedure has proven itself in paralysis and in aphasia therapy, as well as in the voice and stutter therapy of adults, adolescents and children. Biofeedback is also used to treat attention deficit disorders (AD / H / S), anxiety disorders, burnout and tinnitus. Despite good scientific research and the (here certainly incomplete) range of applications, the biofeedback methods are not part of the standard benefits of the statutory and private health insurance, the cost coverage must often be applied for in individual cases.

The goal is to empower the client in a manageable number of hours of the biofeedback therapy, his complaints through „inner correction“ to influence, trains its self-perception and strengthens him in his own responsibility for their own well-being and health. Moreover, it is a very individual procedure, which is based on the „nature“ oriented to each individual client and thus an interesting (pedagogical and therapeutic) instrument in naturopathic practice. (Dipl.Päd. Jeanette Viñals Stein, non-medical practitioner, 19.02.10)