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Areas › Your body › Your nervous system
Reported gains include better sleep and attention, less irritability and fewer trauma symptoms. The honest caveats are cost, wide variation in how practitioners are trained, uneven trial quality and almost no long term follow up. If you do go, check credentials carefully, because training standards vary more here than in most things.
'He who endowed you with hearing, sight, and understanding' (Quran 67:23). Understanding is on the list of gifts, and this is a good place to spend some of it.
الملك
قُلۡ هُوَ ٱلَّذِيٓ أَنشَأَكُمۡ وَجَعَلَ لَكُمُ ٱلسَّمۡعَ وَٱلۡأَبۡصَٰرَ وَٱلۡأَفۡـِٔدَةَۚ قَلِيلࣰ ا مَّا تَشۡكُرُونَ
Say [Prophet], ‘It is He who brought you into being, He who endowed you with hearing, sight, and understanding- what small thanks you give!’
Qur’an 67:23read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A meta-analysis of biofeedback and neurofeedback for depression found benefit, while noting the evidence base remains contested and effect sizes are sensitive to which control condition is used. Sensitivity to the control condition is the tell: part of the apparent effect may come from attention, expectation and the ritual of turning up. That does not make it worthless, and it does mean the marketing is running ahead of the science.
Fernández-Alvarez J, Grassi M, Colombo D, Botella C, Cipresso P, Perna G, Riva G. (2022). Efficacy of bio- and neurofeedback for depression: a meta-analysis.. Psychological medicine doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Knowing where the evidence is thin tells you which claims to trust and which to check.
Your stress system needs an all clear as much as it needs an alarm. What often breaks after trauma is the signal that says it is over.
The goal is not to have less energy. It is to have a brake you can feather rather than slam.
When someone cannot take in your reassurance while they are frightened, that is the receiver and not their willingness. Wait for the wave to pass and try again.