Episode 118
Unlocking the Power to Thrive Through Biofeedback

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Description

In this episode, Chris Burns welcomes back Dr. Jenn Holcomb from Integrative Mind and Body Wellness LLC, as well as her husband and partner Dustin Holcomb, to delve further into the cutting-edge modalities of Biofeedback and Neurofeedback. From deconstructing the physiological responses of the nervous system to speaking about regulating the heart rate and breath, this episode is full of insightful information and personal testimonies of efficacy. For more information on Integrative Mind and Body LLC, check out mindbodywellnessllc.com. For information on Positive Outcomes LLC, check out positiveoutcomesllc.com.

Talking Points

1. Introduction to the Holcombs (0:20)
   
2. Why the breath becomes compromised (2:00)
   
3. Response to nervous system threats (3:45)
   
4. Pushing through physiological responses without regulating (7:15)
   
5. Similarities between Somatic work and neurofeedback and biofeedback (14:45)
   
6. Impact of lack of good breath (16:40)
   
7. Breaking generational stigmas (20:37)
   
8. How biofeedback creates room for optimal performance (23:40)
   
9. Looking into experiencing and managing stress (27:05)
   
10. Experience at Integrative Mind and Body Wellness (36:10)
    
11. Positive Outcomes LLC (39:23)
    
12. Integrative Mind and Body LLC (41:06)
    

Quotes

“Your amygdala didn’t evolve from back in the caveman days. That served a function when the threat was the saber-tooth tiger coming at you… Well now our threats are less obvious, it’s a thought. Sometimes we are not even aware of it; it’s subconscious”.

-Dr. Jenn Holcomb, Integrative Mind and Body Wellness

Episode Transcripts

Episode -118- Transcripts

[Music] hey everybody and welcome to another amazing episode of Finding Peaks your host Chris Burns president founder CEO here at Peaks recovery centers so grateful to be bringing back on Dr Jennifer hul thank you for being back on the show Dr Jen absolutely it’s good to be here yeah it’s great to have you and then we have her husband in counterpart Dustin welcome thank you for joining us Dustin glad to be here absolutely and Dustin is uh Masters in Education board certified neuro feedback as well as biof feedback um so grateful to have him on the show I’ve been spending some time with Dustin in the office breathing as well as with Dr Jen so we’re really really excited to have her back on the show and those of you that forgot U Dr Jen is a PhD in Psycho physiology a licensed marriage and family therapist EMDR certified board certified Behavior Analysis as well as Dustin and certified both in BIO and neuro feedback as well as hrb yeah let’s go yeah there a big Hot Topic right now is HRV and so I’ve been exploring that with them and what that means and just really really excited to get this show going today and um I want to talk about if you’re open to it why does the breath get so compromised over time I noticed that even being in your office two weeks ago when I started to do some low and slow breathing was actually really difficult to start my stomach would tremble I wouldn’t get a nice long breath it would be um disconnected throughout the breath and I know we talked yesterday a little bit about fight ORF flight and some of the stuff that happens there but I guess my question to you guys is what is it is it a multitude of things um is there something that you guys are identifying throughout the developmental process that gets in the way of that low and slow good rhythmic breath so with good respiration we um we have good oxygen intake and we are blowing out enough CO2 which is important I think a common misnomer is that the CO2 is bad and we just got to get rid of it and we got to blow it out well truth is we got to maintain about 87% to really keep good respiratory chemistry in place and so with good CO2 levels uh in our system and good pH what’s happening there is our body is under understanding our current metabolic rate and all systems are a go the problem is is when we lose sight of good breath or good respiration to match the current environment so if we’re sitting there at a desk and we think about something that stresses us out what’ll happen is we could start to increase breath rate because again I think over many many Millennia we’ve been doing this we we sense stress we’ve got to get more oxygen in and we’ve got to prepare for fight right right the case is is when we don’t really when that when that intent is misguided so when we’re sitting at the desk we don’t really have to plan for fighting um we just think we do and so this response can become trained over time and we we will have lower levels of CO2 in our bloodstream because we’re blowing out too much CO2 and what that in turn is says Hey the brain tells the body slow down the the uh the overall metabolic rate because of metabolic needs and what will happen is we have less CO2 it’ll slow down oxygen delivery to our brain up to 60% less oxygen going to the brain when we get stressed out um so it actually slows it down and we just overall lose sight and I tell people all the time your amydala didn’t evolve from back in the caveman days right so that served a function when the threat was like the cybertooth tiger coming at you right it’s like you got to get ready to roll because you had to well now our threats are less obvious sometimes so it’s a thought so we’re not even aware of it a lot of times it’s subconscious you know working on an email and you’re putting something in an email and that causes you to remember something else and now you’re holding your breath not because of the email you’re typing but because of what you were thinking about while you were typing it right and it’s that subconscious process but regardless your physiology is still responding like where’s the tiger where is it we got to get ready to go right so then that’s starts to impact the breathing in that whole process that makes a lot of sense it really well stated there and so folks that struggle with from a developmental perspective this intense trauma or physical abuse or emotional abuse that can represent sometimes kind of that saber absolutely right yeah yeah and so then you know in individuals in those environments in those situations their whole life is about looking to see when the next big thing is going to happen hypervigilance yeah that hypervigilance kicks in and then you live like that and so I know when I was first learning how to breathe and incorporating this in my life I like never breathe I was always in this state and so having to teach myself to breathe when I drive breathing and driving is not as common sense as people would think and I’m talking about the diaphragmatic breathing cooking and breathing reading and breathing I work with a lot of client students at the universities right they were coming in for a lot of anxiety and stress around classes and all that stuff where it was keep your hand on your belly while you’re breathing while you’re reading and they would come in laughing so hard going I can’t breathe and read man it’s like this wait a minute here I thought we were always doing this and so you do it but once you get it it’s so lovely you can actually sense your physiology goes back into a state of recovery and so that’s really what we’re looking looking at is we are supposed to respond with stress but we’re supposed to recover yeah and we don’t often times recover and that’s when our physiology gets impacted right I mean we’re getting was it 60% less oxygen to the brain that has a it has an effect over time right it is a huge impact and and I I had just thought you know I’d walked into rooms with a bunch of a type males as a young man and everybody’s hair on their neck stood up and they had this physiological response but what I learned over time was actually that I I suffered a tremendous amount of use at the hands of an A type male who kind of was my you know was my father and and kind of um was my hero at the same time and so I would go into locker rooms as a I remember seventh grade is like one of the first grades you change out you know you get a locker you put your shorts on and I remember doing it and I remember thinking to myself I am so out of body right now like I just don’t feel okay but I’m just pushing through pushing through and so maybe you guys can speak to a little bit on what are some of the some of the detrimental outcomes by kind of pushing through this the sematic experience or these physiological responses without regulating you think the long-term effects of that are just that your body gets locked up and then it gets used to being locked up and then you just go through life locked up but not realizing that you’ve been locked up right and so I think that’s part of what happens right is just over time this is just how I get through it and so if you were say someone took you afterwards and said hey buddy how was that and you were able to like kind of drop and say I hated this I don’t like this experience it’s made me uncomfortable and someone was to validate that and say okay well you’re safe now let’s figure out how we can make an adjustment for you in that setting and you were to problem solve and work all the way through it the next time you walked in you would have your plan and you would be able to deal with it differently and be able to get yourself regulated and that’s the part that I think often gets missed especially when we’re young yeah it’s something that you guys really speak to really well is like there’s this stripping of a layer and something that really speaks to me is I was sitting with Dustin yesterday and he’s like you know probably four or five sessions you’ll be good M I’m like you guys are actually doing this to help people get get better you know yeah um did you have something on that topic it’s yeah so initially it was thought that um the heart was basic uh controlled by the sympathetic side of the autonomic nervous system and in truth it’s parasympathetically driven so when we uh get excited or stressed out or anxious about anything that’s not increased sympathetic activity it’s actually parasympathetic withdrawal so if we think about this parasympathetic nervous system side of the nervous system which comes through the Vegas nerve think about it as a breaking system and so it breaks on our heart and slows our heart down and as that breaks removed it allows our heart to speed up so it has very little to do with the sympathetic side of things um and so strengthening that parasympathetic side what we have is improved flexibility and resilience across stressful situations uh and it’s really the rebound effect too whether it’s proactively through low and slow breathing which you know focuses on good use of the diaphragm which is very underutilized for so many of us we’re chest breathers we’re upper thoracic breathers and it’s just not how it’s supposed to go so we train this diaphragm to really move in and out pulling good amounts of air in and our parasympathetic system strengthens during low and slow breathing and then it can better calm us down when we acknowledge hey there’s a stressful situation I’ve just gone through but it’s able to put on that break in a stronger way bring that heart rate down and we can go on about daily life so it’s really a tool for adaptability across situations and it and it primarily is achieved through something called respiratory sinus arhythmia uh which is if we think about our heart rate it’s continually fluctuating a heart that just beats beats beats go see your doctor because that’s not good it doesn’t beat steady it always constantly increases or decreases and it’s fairly sporadic as I’m talking right now if I were hooked up to a blood volume pulse monitor or EKG you would see that it’s sporadically beating and it should it’s chaotic it’s a chaotic process but the way we strengthen that vagal tone is through a process called low and slow breathing where we want the increase in heart rate and the decrease in heart rate to match with our respiration so those two go hand in hand and as they increase and decrease so the heart speeds up and the Heart slows down what we’re doing is we’re strengthening that parasympathetic reflex which allows us to adapt to situations more effectively yeah when you said I mean beautifully stated when you said resilience and adaptability you know basically we’re talking yesterday if there’s two words the reason we’re here right is resilience and adaptability when I think about mental health and I think about substance youth which is mental health and the journey of which is the recovery process process um that is everything absolutely with respect to moving into recovery anchoring into a foundation and if I’m going to really big terms yeah if I’m going to Anchor into a foundation resilience and adaptability really speaks to me and to your point with the the feedback it’s it’s very closely aligned with my experience with sematic work it’s almost like you can come into a very treacherous situation call it a stress test or a client experience we can visit this see from the neurobo and HRV feedback on the screen how the physiology is being impacted and then we can we can do the work that we need to as you walk through it and then do you all revisit the scene too because in sematic work it kind of goes like hey last week we were talking about you were and this is just an example last week you were seven years old and you were waiting at the back door for your mom to come home she never came home um last week we process that in I’m going to bring that back up I want you to tell me what your body does in that regard right and generally speaking if I’ve already gone through it and I’ve done the SC I’m pretty well regulated by so do you guys do that with the bio feedback and the neuro feedback as well it’s almost kind of like revisiting the crash site and seeing the improvement from the screen as well yeah especially when I use it in conjunction with EMDR okay so for everyone that I work with with the trauma that’s part of what we’re doing is when we when we finish going through our EMDR session and we kind of contain and then we go into um kind of the calm safe space right that’s when we start pulling in the breath and client responding of uh usually I don’t have people hooked up at the same time but they’ve done enough of the HRV that they noodle you know I mean that’s what I call it it’s not a clinical term but yeah I love that term they they get that sense and so my clients will tell me I’m I’ve noodled right and then after we get done and we installed the new positive belief about themselves and whatever we’re dealing with right how does your body feel now when you go back in there that’s what I have them checking so it goes back into that full body scan are you noticing anything within your body that’s telling you you’re not fully you know fully connected to that new positive belief and and that strength that you were feeling right and then how does your breath feel as you go back and you think about whatever it is your mom leaving you on that porch and that’s how I kind of go back and and do it that that’s beautiful is it is it stripping the nervous system or is it further ing neurop Pathways or is it doing any of that if we think about the the the Vegas nerve it’s it’s very interesting in that you know the Mind Body Connection is really emphasized in this process in that 80% of the uh nerve fibers in the parasympathetic uh branch of the autonomic nervous system are are afferent or to the brain uh and only 20% coming to the heart so really the you know the heart’s talking to the brain or I’m sorry the brain’s talking to the heart more than the heart’s talking to the brain and um so in in in training that you’re strengthening that communication certainly yeah that makes a lot of sense and it’s it’s interesting how I you know sematic work in Fe neuro biop feedback it’s very similar very similar uh different but have a lot of similarities a lot of sim yeah because a lot of it with sematic work right I’m familiar with it because of Ariel shorts up and Boulder right she does a lot of the sematic work too but a lot of the tra tra gets stuck in the body MH and that’s that’s really when you start as you’re even going through the EMDR process and doing the trauma work I have some clients where the trauma is just kind of stuck and so we have to spend a little bit of time working with the body work and the way that I do that is with the biof feedback more specifically than with the neural feedback yeah that’s really cool yeah so closely aligned really speaks to my heart because had a tremendous amount of experience of like and it really is it really feels like a lot of times I know I say stripping a layer but it’s like one of the best full body tissue massages you’ll ever get kind of this neuro feedback potentially some sematic work it just it’s like this cleansing breath for your nervous system that I never thought was possible I just thought you know as we said on the last show I really believe that people in recovery you know what are they 51 time more likely to die from all cause death mortality right you know I just thought that we succumb because we had this special allergy called addiction to this like six out of 10 quality alive right and I was on my Instagram this morning saying my beautiful mental health message and I’m like I we’re moving into healing that’s where this is going that’s where Peaks recovery is this is where your all’s brand is is moving people into this quality of life that they didn’t think was possible is there any research and I know I kind of get into this sometimes but we’ve talked about um different ways to conceptualize research and what’s beneficial for humans in general but is there any research that points to um the repercussions or the consequences from lack of good breath or lack of breathing or what is the impact over time for somebody who um is not able to practice low and slow breathing and has a traumatic history or engages with stress certainly yeah I mean one one good example of that is in the area of hypertension and so if we go back to low and slow breathing which involves breathing at a unique frequency that’s based on an individual’s makeup and we can talk about that as well but within hypertension um really what it reflects is a reduced strength of something referred to as a barrow reflex there receptors primarily located in the kateed artery and the um uh what’s the big one the aorta aorta thank you aortic Arch yeah and so these these stretch receptors respond uh continually to this increase in heart rate and decrease inas in heart rate and they uh encourage Vaso dilation vasel constriction to regulate blood blood pressure and so when these lose their strength or their uh their effect their reflexive effect then that leads to hypertension we’ve lost control and those you know hypertension sort of resets the bar in your body so that your body starts to maintain that disregulation and so there is very very good research uh showing that through low and slow breathing and and and increasing HRV we can uh rest strengthen that reflexive system and reset it back to where it needs to be to keep the body in a better state of homeostasis so you actually create a we were talking about this yesterday you create a new homeostasis if you don’t watch out just kind of your Baseline your body activates at that level yep that’s and HRV in general as one modality for biof feedback training um you know you mentioned all cause mortality it is very well known and well established in the research how important uh you know increased HRV is in adaptability um and being uh uh resilient across environments and we know that we can absolutely train and increase that HRV along with strengthening that other reflex and the borrow reflex uh through that low and slow breathing and so how that’s done is is it’s got to be based on an individual’s resonance frequency so if we think about resonance in this way the best example that I’ve come across is a child you know pushing a child on a swing and it’s it’s hard you get them going and you man you really and it’s pushing back on you and man you hit that sweet spot and that kid’s just flying and you’re just you know you’re checking your phone right you’re just barely tapping it so you found that individual resonance frequency right very low effort and good magnitude good power occurring so the same thing happening with low and slow breathing and both refle ref Le systems the vagal reflex the parasympathetic reflex and the borrow reflex and so what we’re doing is strengthening those systems so that across daily life daily stressors our system can readjust so we can we can strengthen that so that we’re better dealing with stressful situations but we also use it as a reactive strategy hey I’m getting a little out of hand here I can feel it my heart we all know when our heart rate starts to beat and we’re getting stressed out um and then we can engage in a little bit of low and slow breathing and re-regulate that process so I love that too because it’s I guess switching over to Dr Jen what do you see when you have somebody come into your office potentially like uh with an experience like mine where you come in and I have hypertension my dad has hypertension my grandfather had hypertension my grandfather’s grandfather had hypertension as long back as we can measure hypertension we’ve had hypertension right and so that’s what I was met with in the medical model I know we’ve touched on it before but how do you work with individuals that are kind of rooted in this belief that they have what their parents have and there’s no way through that well I think it’s you know one looking at it is there anything medically causing that hypertension that is like there’s a medical reason for it right and if there isn’t right then we just I tell them you know you want to be open to changing things usually most people want to come in and do things differently than their parents yeah right and so we work through some of those things but we’re talking about breaking that cycle if there is a psychological reason for the hypertension and usually the breath is always involved in it right and so when we start working with clients I don’t Focus so much on the hypertension that’s usually like a secondary gain from therapy but we really work on decreasing stress because they usually come in because they’re saying I’m stressed out my anxiety is through the roof I’m not sleeping I’ve got headaches I’ve got back pain I don’t feel well my wife tells me I’m drinking too much right all of these things are happening and I have all these medical problems I’ve got IBS I’ve got hypertension I’ve got you know I’m pre-diabetic we’ve got we’re moving so the whole physiology is just regulated right and so we I work specifically on saying let’s get you feeling better first let’s balance the physiology with the mental health because it’s a both and right if I am exhausted and I don’t eat well and my body is just fatigued I’m not going to feel good MH so we work on addressing those things and then we also kind of work on now we’re going to pull in the breath and we’re going to learn how do I regulate when I get into these states first even recognizing what I’m feeling right you know how much how much you know education did we get on identifying our feelings beyond the like happy sad right and usually people can say well this makes me happy this makes me sad this makes me angry but how do you know that’s how you feel what is your body t tell you about those feelings and also joy and happiness and peace and are those comfortable feelings for some people happiness is horribly uncomfortable calm oh dear God right no no that’s right before everything falls apart right yeah and so we work on understanding our feelings and then we pull in the breath and we allow the breath to start to ground us and help regulate and once people get that sense like the noodling that I talk about which is just this coherence it’s not peace it’s just here I am and it’s calming to everyone even though maybe they wouldn’t call it that right yeah yeah I love that it’s it’s like you you your all’s business name could be moving from surviving to thriving right LLC I like it I like it know it’s a really beautiful thing and how does bio feedback create room for Optimal Performance that was a catchy term that I really kind of latched on to um so now we’re talking about mental health moving through recovery but now we’re moving into this thing of like optimally performing from a mental health perspective a physiological perspective and so maybe you can chat with me a little bit about that yeah sure there’s been um you know 30 plus years of of biof feedback uh neuro feedback practitioners specializing in an area of biof feedback uh referred to as as Optimal Performance and then uh on the sports side they refer to it as Peak Performance so okay they kind of go hand inand but it’s really anybody that wants to perform better at work uh in in their in their Sports uh and really across daily living and so there I I think that really highlights there doesn’t need to be a definable diagn diagnostic problem right if if you want to attempt to better understand and regulate and self-manage your physiology and Your Mind Body Connection then that can be done through many modalities um we have um we have temperature biof feedback we have skin conductance which me measures the sweat response we have respiration clearly we have heart rate and um and through those or you know any combination of those we can learn a little bit uh a little bit about how individuals respond under stress conditions and then we can work with those modalities to try and decrease arousal uh across situations which is going to lead again back to slower heart rate better affirmation of current metabolic rates that means the Mind Body are going to be communicating well together we’re not going to be over breathing we’re not going to be under breathing our respiratory chemistry is going to be in place so many many athletes uh around the world um and and a lot of teams I know the the podcast that I referred to you they talk about the a big soccer team and and and and I think his name is Messi probably everybody knows so he spends 5 minutes in the morning just understanding his HRV as a metric to uh inform fatigue uh because we have reduced HRV when we’re tired and that’s why we need to be cautious not to overanalyze daily fluctuation in our HRV which I know we’re all myself included uh can overthink at times um it’s really what we’re looking at doing is improving these metrics over time so for instance good loans slow breathing give it a couple months 10 10 minutes a day I’d like to see 20 minutes a day but 10 minutes a day seems to be a real musthave and you’re going to start to feel the benefits so you’ve just got better cognition better blood flow um parasympathetically you know we’re even looking at there’s this layer you know that that that the parasympathetic nervous system can create to inhibit muscle pain and so there’s just a lot of different areas to go which leads me to semg too so muscle bio feedback we can also do that so if we’re sitting in chairs we can align one two maybe up to four sensors uh which are going to meas measure uh muscle electrical activity and we can train that over roused muscle area down so that’s interesting so it could be somebody like a sports injury where you get a new hip and you’re overcompensating on this side it’s hard not to right and you can cool that side down that’s that’s really interesting something that was really spoke to me yesterday yesterday when I was in the office talk about um finding or capitalizing on ways that people manage stress and how that shows up in the nervous system I think we saw um one of the things that was really responsive to me was the skin conducted yeah and so Dustin said hey for two minutes I just want you to tell me about a stressful situation you know tell me as much as you want don’t overshare just tell me about a stressful situation and I start talking about um the last couple months and what we’ve walked through and things of that nature and right away I start feeling my hands get clammy um you know feel my heart rate go up I feel my armpits begin to sweat and then we learned something about that individual and how they experience stress and then correct me from wrong but we can go into that area and begin to kind of make this magic happen repair right for that a better term right absolutely yeah bring more physiological regulation so that one part isn’t overworking as opposed to another right we’re really working on in bof feedback trying to enhance our understanding our recognition of our physiological responding because I think we’ve already talked about the connectivity I mean it’s irrefutable right they are absolutely connected and so responses in the physiology affect the brain and vice versa and there’s all these different systems and Loops that occur so for for you uh it might be beneficial to have you start to learn to exert control over your arousal level as evidenced by that skin conductance response and that’s really going to tell us uh a story about your ability a to regulate it and then start to maybe discuss that stressful situation again and see what happens and how quickly can you recover from those things because we’re not going to be able to avoid stress how quick can we or are we able to recover from stress and that’s not just hey man get out of your head right no get back in your head and really think about your physiology and engage in strategies such as low and slow breathing um to re-regulate that makes a lot of sense it’s almost like even just with breath in the time that I’ve spent with you which has been pretty minimal but I’ve spent you know a couple hours in breathing now it’s and maybe I said it on the last show but it’s almost like as you’re breathing and you’re going through it right around seven six seven minutes your nervous system kind of moves into this world that is so expansive and it just the breath and depth of that experience Al be it very very simple is something that’s very attractive um and something that I’ve integrated into my morning routine simply because of that it’s a noodle it’s the noodle it’s the noodle it’s the noodle and I love how you talk about the noodle too because um what I noticed when I was hooked up to the machines initially was is I would have this breath my heartbeat would be outside of the breath or in front of the breath and you know when I can I feel what that feels like in my nervous system when I’m able to breathe and have that Arc and then have my heart rate slightly under that and just with that feels like from a nervous system perspective and it’s kind of like a d room that hasn’t been explored in 38 years and I’m happy to be there right and I think too I think for a lot of my clients with trauma specifically medical trauma yeah it’s empowering to see their ability to regulate their own body when they feel like their body has been maybe fighting against them or damaged or broken and they start to see just a simple Act of a nice breath be able to regulate A system that then transfers into feeling better because that’s why anybody comes to the doctor right is to feel better I want to feel like myself again well you have to go back into yourself again and sometimes that’s scary sometimes that’s uncomfortable sometimes we don’t like our body because we’re mad at it for a myriad of reasons right or we just don’t understand it it’s a puzzle why does my heart do this so I don’t want to cry I get that a lot right I don’t want to cry I don’t like to cry quit making me cry and so then it’s well how do we regulate like tears are okay but it doesn’t have to overload you and I think that’s the fear that a lot of people have is I’m going to feel this and then I’m not going to be able to turn it off and so you might feel it and some of those intense emotions or for an intense situation that’s close to home it may take longer but you can stay regulated within it and what I’ve had clients in the past tell me is you know what I was really mad at you while this was going on because I thought I’m not supposed to get stressed out anymore she lied to me yeah this is counterproductive this is ridiculous I’ve been going to the bathroom and breathing and it’s not working but they didn’t get sick their IBS symptoms didn’t come back they were able to sleep that night they didn’t go and stop off and get the bottle of wine that they usually do after work they were able to stay within that coherent State although still stressed you can hold stress and you can hold confidence and you can hold peace and you can hold hold happiness all at the same time but the focus always goes on the discomfort physiologically it’s really staying within that zone of to tolerance right and so we can become hyperaroused we can become under aroused too and that has a lot to do with the parasympathetic you know this third sort of idea that we have okay sympathetic and we have parasympathetic so we have fight ORF flight and we have rest and digest but we also have freeze and that has a lot to do with depression and withdrawal and that involves the par sympathetic set system so yeah this zone of tolerance and remaining in that certainly the mental health aspect and and and the physiology hence psychophysiological aspect go hand inand in that treatment and I think having engaged in it now and and working alongside you know the best mental health therapist around having the privilege right um it becomes ever ever evident along the way uh how critical the two dimensions are as far as any treatment modality and really connectivity you know and and individualized Care yeah what I love so much about the modality and the way that you all speak about it and deliver it to your clients is it’s it’s not self-de it’s very empowering like you have this light and this greatness and this opportunity inside you and as we said on the last episode life is kind of built on top of that and suffocated your ability to see that clearly exactly so you are a light like you and it’s so important when dealing with mental health especially substance use because we have a lot of Shame going on so I just love that it almost creates uh you know my 12 subers would hate this but like some recovery autonomy yeah like who who would have thought like I can stand on my own due feet I can be strong and we can be strong together it’s a really really empowering way to look at the recovery process and one of which like I want to continually see myself inside and see the ones that we have the opportunity to serve at least know about the opportunity right feeling and be able to speak to that and introduce them to that on a daily basis because as we said on the last show um unfortunately people to build a narrative over treatment center after treatment center um that is pretty negative self-deprecating um I can’t change this is hop and as opposed to I’m just really disregulated I need to go regulate myself cuz like who isn’t yeah small course correction right it’s just it’s a disregulation I need and you learn what helps the precursors before sometimes if I try to sit and breathe it’s not going to work I need to go run and then come and breathe right because I have too much physiological energy that sitting down to breathe is only going to make it worse because I’m not going to be able to breathe so I’ve got to get that energy out or sometimes I need to go hit a hot yoga class yeah because I’ve got to get the stretching and the movement through my body so that then I can sit back and actually attune to connect with the breath so you have to kind of figure out what else you need to incorporate to allow you to pull in and that’s just like understanding your sensory needs and what your body’s telling you is going to allow it to absorb that whole intake and so that’s part of that process too yeah that makes it tremendous amount of sense I I just love kind of chatting with you guys and having you on the show it’s amazing I I’m really excited about getting this information out to the public and clients that come into care but I kind of want to end with this something that was really really unique to me in my experience in your office and for the viewers I’ve been in the office twice now for a total about three and a half three three and a half hours and I’ve loved my time there but when it was you two specifically what I noticed when I was hooked up to the machines and you all did it without a hitch all of the sudden I would be sitting there breathing and Dr Jen’s next to me and then all of a sudden I’d be sitting there breathing and then Dustin’s next to me right and you did this really symbiotic exchange of you know you come with a certain level of data and insight and you do the same thing as well and the way that you guys work in a team together I had never seen anything like that I thought that was really absolutely I thought that was really cool maybe can you guys touch on that how did you come to work so well together in the midst of like I mean I’m sure it’s trial and err it starts with something that I think neither one of us ever want to lose and that’s this intrinsic motivation to do good work and you know it sounds cliche but you know the minute that stops just reverberating in my head I need to retire clearly um so and and knowing my limits you know in in treatment in general as a behavior analyst as someone who initially was trained in treating overt or behavior that I can see so really arranging environmental circumstances to set my Learners whether they be Young Learners or adult Learners across situations whether it be at home or work or even uh on the on the mountain bike or something um being able to a expand that repertoire within the field of bow feedback n feedback now I can actually see and observe the neurological processes and start to tweak those as well but then the mental health realm and so I think that’s where we complement one another I’m kind of a numbers guy I really like the bof feedback I really like the neuro feedback I and and training that via the screens and the data he’s very much data but as you can as you can hear this one talk yeah uh I I just I get restful just listening to her and her tone and her eloquence in talking about human beings and and um and the and their and their journey across this big world right and I think in that way I am very proud of the ability that we carry more than one two three tools right I always talk about I go to the doctor and it’s like if I don’t fit into that lane I’m going to fit into that lane I mean there’s just no other there right this is what you do and there are treatment options out there and I think um Jen has certainly encouraged I think myself to expand my repertoire and then her repertoire speaks for itself so we’re able to really journey across this thing that we can observe and these things that we can’t observe and the intent is to just be effective certainly we have two kids we need to make money yeah exactly but I’ll tell you what that that is no more than just aligned with that aspect of just wanting to do good work because that feels good too and I want it to always feel good I think it some people will just respond better to Dustin based on how he does stuff with data and graphs and the numbers and he’s very good in all that realm that is not my Force I mean I can look at it and say see this red line it went up and that’s the goal yeah we did good and and that’s that’s for some people that’s all that matters right so it’s just the complimenting of the two yeah yeah it was really special I hadn’t normally you’re in an environment like that and shoot even my wife and I when we used to work together in the front end I’m interrupting her she’s interrupting me there’s no there’s not a lot of synergy there I guess time under tension and practice and really having an over it does it has its moments yeah I’m sure but having that overarching goal and that intention or purpose to just be do really well by the individuals that sit in front of you I think is pretty special um two things before we end here I wanted to clear up as well we have positive outcomes LLC right we have integrated mind and body right can you talk a little bit about those for the viewers the differences between them and where you can find that okay so positive outcomes is an organization that Jen and I start back in 2009 and it houses a team of professionals um proud to say homegrown I mean in this work you’ve got to know who works with you and and and be like-minded so um that’s grown to you know have a Clinical Director office manager and a a group of bcbas like myself like Jen and our primary uh effort is in serving children with disabilities okay neurological disorders such as Down syndrome autism uh Focus issues ADHD and really any learner who’s just struggling to get by and get their needs met effectively I always talk about the My My My Little Learners that we serve on the positive outcome side are are experts in getting their needs met they’re just not always doing it in socially appropriate ways and we’ve got to challenge that but we’ve got to meet them where they’re at and we got to pull them along slowly so we got to approximate that growth so really that’s centered on the behavior analysis piece which is nothing more than just good teaching it’s the science of teaching and learning where we’re doing the same thing as any teacher out there but we’re really sweating the details yeah because we’ve got to and those Little Learners deserve it so we’re just really teaching them good alternative ways of getting that same need met and clearly that has so much to do with caregivers they’re Central in their child’s life and the environments in which they exist so we have to understand all that as well um that has done well because of our staff uh I I am really proud of the staff we’ve we’ve uh developed over there so they’re doing a wonderful job which has then allowed Jen and I to Branch off um to the integrative side you want so the goal for the integrative mind and body was to pull in my trauma Focus so that’s my specialization as trauma and because of of the clientele that I work with which is a lot of complex trauma medical trauma you can’t in my opinion humbly yeah treat that without pulling in the physiology and without pulling in some of the neurology and really supporting the whole person and the whole body and integrating that that Wellness that needs to come for real longlasting healing to come and also to give people strategies so that they don’t have to come back anymore right and um and so we pulled that in together and um doing a lot of the bio feedback the neuro feedback and then a lot of the trauma talk therapy family therapy that we do over there so that is purely mental health trauma biof feedback and neuro feedback okay yeah and um integrated mind and body what is the website it’s I mindbody Wellness llc.com okay mindbody wellness llc.com and then we have positive outcomes positive outcomes llc.com okay yep awesome thank you well it’s been so incredible having you all on the show as you guys are sitting there talking I’m thinking we should have bio and neuro feedback in all the schools oh yeah there should be a counselor there um learning disability maybe that’ll be for the next right the the research supports it the efficacy supports it but it’s going to challenge day-to-day operation of business right and we know what we you know that that takes time certainly yeah yeah well thank you so much and for the viewers out there thank you again please find us on all the all of your favorite spots to get Podcast Spotify Instagram [Music] Facebook