HEALTHY LIVING
Easing Stress
You can help your body heal itself from damage caused by stress.
BY JANIS JOLLY | CONTRIBUTED PHOTOS
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hen we speak of stress, we usually have something negative in mind: headache, anxiety, indigestion. But stress can be positive as well as negative. Stress is simply the body’s response to changes that create taxing demands. It makes the heart beat faster, it makes the blood course through our veins and it heightens all our senses. If changes in your life make you have more energy or feel excited—for example, if it improves your performance—it is a good thing. We are unlikely to seek help when we experience positive stress. Negative stress, on the other hand, causes anxiety or concern. It feels unpleasant. It can decrease performance and leave us exhausted. We seek out help from friends, physicians, spiritual advisors or others to relieve and manage stress. Billy Bergeron Learning to manage this all-too-common negative Biofeedback stress can have a positive effect on our lives when we learn to cope and find new ways to take care of ourselves. The Coulee Region is fortunate to have many people in the helping professions who can help us mitigate common stressors. One method that is becoming easier to access is biofeedback, a technique that helps neutralize the body’s reaction to stress using modern technology and mindfulness training.
use its own great healing abilities.” He adds that biofeedback does not diagnose or treat the cause of the stress. Bergeron points out that people store stress in certain parts of the body, such as the lower back, the upper back and neck. Some people get bad headaches or have digestive problems. Biofeedback can interfere with the frequencies of the body to neutralize the stress. A typical quantum biofeedback session is relaxing and painless. First, the practitioner converses with the client about how they are feeling and how stress manifests in their body. Then the client is connected to the biofeedback machine and a computer, which provides a readout. The client then rests in a comfortable chair for 20 to 60 minutes. During this time, the biofeedback equipment uses the information it has gathered about of Bluffland stress factors within the body and emits frequencies to attempt to neutralize that stress. At the end of the session, Bergeron shares the results with the client. The readout from the session can show something about the nature of the stress. The client then learns what to pay special attention to in their life and their body. “The stress management is not instantaneous; the client needs to pay close attention to how they feel after each session,” explains Bergeron. “It typically takes three sessions to assess and neutralize feelings of stress.” HELPING THE BODY TO HEAL Bergeron is a certified practitioner of biofeedback, having Embraced by many holistic health practitioners, quantum completed a one-year course provided by the maker of the equipment biofeedback targets stress with electronic frequencies. “Biofeedback he uses. CRW reminds the body of what it felt like when it wasn’t stressed,” says Billy Janis Jolly lives in La Crosse and plans to learn lots more about Bergeron of Bluffland Biofeedback, who uses a type of biofeedback machine that “sends healing frequencies through the body so it can biofeedback. www.crwmagazine.com OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2020 29
