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Choose your wave, change your life
You can control your internal body functions with biofeedback, a no-drug, hi-tech system that claims to cure many ailments.
Every minute your heart is pumping blood, your liver is secreting acids, your kidneys are processing waste. But you are not conscious of all this mad activity. Your body efficiently slogs on without any external monitoring—except from the brain, which anyway is not under your control.
Now what if you were told by wisps of research drifting in from the West that you can control your body's internal processes? At least to a certain degree.
This is biofeedback, a science that claims to cure anything—from headaches to cerebral palsy—by giving us the power to 'manipulate' certain physiological as well as neurophysiological activities.
To an uninformed observer, the sight of a biofeedback session may look like something straight out of a science-fantasy. In a typical setting, the patient sits in a soundproof room, surrounded by blinking electronic gadgets. Electrodes taped on her skin surface, forehead, chest or any part of the body chosen as the target area, are attached to a machine that makes audible clicking noises and flashes signals of varying intensity and frequency. So, what's actually happening here?
To answer this, it is necessary to first understand the concept of feedback. A student preparing for a competitive exam routinely solves sample papers so that her performance is at its peak on the actual test date. After each sample test, the student assesses herself with the help of answers provided. In the process, she learns of ways to improve her test performance. All along, she has been getting precise feedback at every step—reinforcing the chances of correct response.
Giving a physical analogy of the same process, Dr Sunil Mittal, who practices biofeedback at the Delhi Psychiatry Center, says: "When you eat, after a point your body tells you that you have had enough and are satiated. The body is effectively giving you feedback to stop eating."
