New Mind-Body Health Institute Exemplifies Future Medicine
(An Article in Future Medicine Digest, 1994)

A multidisciplinary group of psychophysiologic therapists from one of the birthplaces of biofeedback, The Menninger Clinic, has formed a future medicine enterprise in Topeka, Kansas. Founders of The Life Sciences Institute of Mind-Body Health are all pioneers in self-regulation and mind-body medicine. Steven Fahrion, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist and past president of the national Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback (AAPB) has nearly 25 years of professional experience in biofeedback and psychophysiologic self-regulation with a focus on cardiovascular applications. Psychophysiologic psychotherapist Patricia Norris, Ph.D., also a past president of AAPB with nearly 25 years experience with psychophysiologic self-regulation, has specialized in psychoneuroimmunology applications, emphasizing psychosynthesis, imagery and visualization procedures in her work.

Jeff Nichols, M.D., biofeedback and psychophysiologic therapst and past president of the Biofeedback Society of Kansas, has undertaken specialized training in complementary medicine including acupuncture, nutrition, Feldenkreis body work and Family Systems Theory. Carol Snarr, R.N., B.A., is a past-president of the Biofeedback Society of Kansas and has 12 years experience as a psychophysiologic therapist, specializing in work with hypertension, stress disorders, and recently with alpha/theta neurofeedback therapy with addictions. Physicist and Biophysical Psychologist Elmer Green, Ph.D., who with his wife Alyce, received the first N.I.H. grant for biofeedback research, and who subsequently stimulated many professionals across the nation to become involved with biofeedback, has joined the group as an advisor. All the members of the group are widely known through their lectures, workshops, and publications.

The clinical programs in the new Institute focus on teaching self-regulation skills to help individuals develop their own healing capacity. Biofeedback-assisted relaxation, stress management, visualization and imagery techniques, and psychotherapy are integrated into treatment as indicated. Education and self-responsibility are emphasized, along with the idea that every individual has the capacity to participate in and enhance natural processes of self-healing. Mind, emotions, body and consciousness are considered to be interacting parts of the whole person, and the staff is committed to helping people promote self-awareness and psychological, physical, social, and spiritual well-being.

Life Sciences Institute of Mind-Body Health therapists employ a variety of techniques in addition to biofeedback to enhance self-regulation, including relaxation and stress management techniques, desensitization, breathing exercises, crisis rehearsal, and traditional psychotherapy as needed. Imagery is explored and visualizations developed to facilitate more harmonious relationships and integrate conscious and unconscious processes, enhance immune system functioning, promote self-healing, and improve self-efficacy and voluntary control. Consultation regarding health and fitness such as nutrition and exercise is also available and is tailored to individual needs. When clients are receiving medical treatment, the staff works in conjunction with the client's physician and current medical therapies, not as an alternative to them.

Personal growth and peak performance are also among the primary interests of the staff, and are offered both as separate goals, and as part of a healing process when desired and appropriate. Brief, intensive therapy is also offered, usually a week in length, for individuals from anywhere in the country or abroad. The same intensive format is available for professional therapists who want to experience a unique learning process. This intensive format is especially popular with clients with cancer and cardiovascular conditions, and also with professionals treating cancer patients.

A major program focus of the Life Sciences Institute of Mind-Body Health is group neurofeedback therapy for addiction. This new treatment, resulting in very low relapse rates, is based on the new biology of addiction which indicates a common neurological problem underlies addictions both to substances and to behaviors such as gambling, compulsions, and overeating. Absence of slow brainwave activity interferes with experience of satisfaction and pleasure from everyday life events. Using daily brainwave training, five days a week, over 6 to 7 weeks the new treatment methods appear to successfully correct this biological deficiency in most individuals within 30 to 45 days. Treatment facilitates discharge of traumatic experiences, returns a sense of humor and normalizes personality measures. Another effect of treatment is that individuals who do relapse commonly experience physical illness with flu-like symptoms over a couple of days together with absence of a "high" from use of the addictive substance. While this effect has not yet been explained, it is noted quite consistently, and usually results in limited relapse behavior.

The Kansas Department of Corrections is interested in the neurofeedback therapeutic approach for convicted felons with substance abuse problems, and has contracted with the group to test this procedure in a research paradigm. Parole violators who have been reincarcerated because of drug- and alcohol-related problems are receiving neurotherapy, and are being compared on relapse and recidivism with others in conventional substance abuse treatment programs. It is anticipated that this may become a statewide program.

Drs. Fahrion, Norris and Green were awarded one of thirty grants given by the recently established Office of Alternative Medicine of NIH to examine the impact of "energy medicine" techniques in healing. The research, conducted at The Menninger Clinic, is studying the effect of energetic healing on basal cell carcinoma, a slow-growing skin cancer that rarely metastasizes and whose degree of progression can be observed directly. This was the first known scientific efficacy study on this topic.

"As we move into the future," Dr. Norris said, "all of us with skills in alternative or complementary medicine are being called upon to be of service in our local communities. More will be asked of us than ever before. We must prepare now to meet the challenge of helping people everywhere to move toward wellness, to become empowered as initiators and participants in their own healing process. Community based treatment, education and research that facilitates health rather than just treating illness is an urgent necessity."