Gamma Training Part 2

Gamma has been an unexpected journey.

It is easy to wrap one’s head around the need to address brain functionality, to enhance memory, to decrease anxiety, to improve reading comprehension, to develop good organizational  skills or to fine tune executive functioning for your child or yourself. We  can all appreciate the need to overcome traumatic or acquired brain injury, current or generational trauma.

Gamma has helped to revisit deeper aspects of brain injuries, refine healing and add more dimension to processing information. It has also been an exploration, not easy to describe.

 Gamma brain waves have a small amplitude and a fast oscillatory range. Gamma allows  the brain to process multiple sensations at  the same time. It allows us to experience the five senses altogether. It efficiently absorbs information and change in one’s environment to fine tune instinct. It speeds up mental processing and perception by linking information from all parts of the brain. Gamma deepens REM sleep. There is  a sense of euphoria, our own natural anti-depressant.

The foundational Neurobiofeedback  prepares you for the intense work that it takes to target the gamma range. At one point I described the Neurobiofeedback effects as changing knob and tube wiring for well insulated copper wire. Adding gamma is  like creating a fibre-optic cable connected to a vast network. Often more sleep is needed and good quality nutrition is always necessary to support the development of the new connections the training stimulates.

Like the initial Neurobiofeedback training gamma also needed the first 20 hours just  to build a template for the new function. There was one immediate sensation that made the initial development of gamma more enjoyable. Euphoria!

 It was overwhelming at first when gamma brought all the other brainwaves and senses on-line at the same time to process information. It was like experiencing  multiple dimensions, sensory overload and information coming at me from all directions all at once. The sense of expanded reality equalized quickly to a comfortable level for which I was quite grateful. I learned to relax into the volume of co-ordinated information. What used to be a mentally crowded jumble of lists, chores, responsibilities etc. went the other direction. I felt as if there was endless, open room to fill or organize as I wanted. My days had “free time”. Previously so much effort had gone into sorting through unsynthesized information.

 The training settled into a week of euphoria then a week of building capacity which, frankly, was often unpleasant. There were memories that had threads to current circumstances that had never come to full awareness in therapy, including EMDR and Brainspotting which both access the left and right hemispheres of the brain. I suspect that the more integrated function of gamma helps the brain co-ordinate a lifetime of imprints and influences much more efficiently than memory or willingness alone can account for.

One of these moments, I think, is worth mentioning.

I had come to many layers of understanding and resolution over two incidents that, although separated by 35 years, were similar in one critical element. I had became responsible for the safety and the life of someone who should have been cared for by an adult in the first circumstance and then for someone whose  safety and needs were dismissed by a medical professional in the second circumstance. Both times I was in a vulnerable state myself.  I had resolved what I thought were all the  nuances of my responses to these events. But one morning, the day after a gamma training, I woke up light headed, dizzy and trembling. It was a completely  familiar  sensation. This was the same post trauma, full body response, linked also by the scent memory of hospitals and drugs that I had experienced first at 15 years and then again at 50 years of age. Gamma had brought together  everything from all the senses. It brought up the deepest of survival and empathic instincts.  I realized that even the smallest element of similarity in other situations would heighten perceptions and cause my body to gear up for battle by ever so slightly initiating an internal trembling.

Another layer of exhausting conditioning resolved. Another opening for deeper resolution of other injuries. My dream world was a  marathon for a couple of weeks.

 Sometimes we, well certainly I, have in some circumstances never downgraded other conditioned responses that while useful at the time have just become  automatic in the nervous system especially those events that are long gone from current necessity but still play their part in shaping current or future behaviour. The best example I have for this is the attentive sleeping that parents or  palliative caregivers maintain long after the children have moved out or the caregiving is over. I was with my Mother when she was in hospital with pancreatic cancer. I listened for her breath for weeks. I woke up at 4:22 every morning for years after she died. My nervous system was deeply imprinted.

There may not be any fault or negligence in how many events are dealt with but who can know how or why  events configure as they do in unique and individual ways that may be influenced by biochemistry, DNA, personality, environment, nutrition etc.  I have found that with gamma training there has been a deeper cohesion, consolidation and understanding of previous events. I think that this is in large part because gamma links all the senses with more of the brain and nervous system. There has been a  deep relaxation, an emotional resilience and a very profound sense of well being that is easing into everyday life. This is a gift of unexpected magnitude for me. I am very much an introvert who as a child was deeply affected by things that would be inconsequential to most people. It would take me days and sometimes weeks to recover from an incident. On the upside I developed a lot of empathy.

 The euphoria is not as pronounced any more but a quite ordinary, garden variety of consistent kindness and calmness is there in everyday use. The type of kindness that  allows enough sleep every night rather than one day of collapse, the kindness that doesn’t wait for bells to ring to acknowledge a job well done but celebrates daily effort. Internalized kindness has made it easier to review, catalogue and archive experiences, available if needed but otherwise comfortably stored. I had wanted to enhance gamma to make me a better therapist. I wasn’t expecting so much personal benefit. Silly I know, but I did have a Grande Canyon deep groove of expectations geared to care of others at all costs.

I will have done 40 hours of gamma training by November 2015. I hope that the speeding up of mental processing and perception develops a whole lot more! The first piece that I wrote for the blog was relatively easy to write as it was well remembered historical information and well used resources. Writing about the unfamiliar path  that gamma has taken me on, linking and reworking memories, emotions and information has been much more of a process than simply reporting the events. I feel differently about many things. I am not sure yet if I am expressing myself in a way that does justice to the altered perceptions.  Finding that voice has been curious and a little unclear.

A good friend made an observation about the first piece and gave me some advice for this post. She said,” The only thing I would say is missing is the answer to the question - - Why?  Why would they want to know your story and why would this help them?” It is a good question and a valued observation as I have not written anything for anyone else before these posts. Certainly my clinical practise in manual therapies is centred around what will help someone else. Writing is a whole other world and use of the brain. Perhaps that then is part of the answer to “why”,  the chance to use your brain in ways that you hadn’t contemplated before.

For myself, I would say that the experience of having more of one’s brain available more of the time is pretty heady stuff.  I would definitely have to say that using the brain’s capacity, freer of constraints or injuries  is inspiring. Personal sovereignty is a good goal. Compassion is a good foundation. A finely tuned instinct creates certainty and  security. And not least, but very refreshing, sleep is sweet and deep.