To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.

Joseph Chilton Pearce

With wires on my head like an EEG, and a heart rate monitor on my thumb, I learned to fly a Fokker triplane plane around a desert island, win a sailboat race, and bowl strikes. “The video game is based on underlying academic principles that attempt to improve the concentration level and classroom performance of children with ADHD” (Mir, Asmatullah Khan, Ansari; 2021). Bigger than a desert island or regatta, I finally learned how to meditate.

What did 40+ hours of neurofeedback teach me?

Neurofeedback is a self-regulation technique, defined as learning to control brain events by giving conscious feedback in response to an event (Fundamentals of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2013). In the 21st century, for an event to be noticed it should be on a computer screen, and if it’s an audience you’re after, give your app or activity game elements. They weren’t quite “games” that I played, but the activities proved to me, one who’d long since given up looking for lost lists or a place for his pomodoro, that self-regulation was not out of my reach.

Now admittedly… How, or even whether I could have mustered such a level of self awareness as a child is something to write about another day, but what this meant for me now is that for two hours each week, at a time some people I know are planning retirement, I was studying the effect of slowing my heart rate by controlling my breathing with my diaphragm, as if it was the latest reality TV series—and gaining muscle memory of how I might re-create these feelings that had these measurable effects on specific areas of my brain.

…most of neurofeedback practitioners implicitly or explicitly use a bulldozer principle of neurofeedback. … So, if there is an excess of some EEG parameter in a particular patient and in particular location in the cortex, the aim of the neurofeedback is to train this parameter DOWN, if there is a lack of some other EEG characteristic, the corresponding neurofeedback parameter is trained UP. The method works like a bulldozer filling in the cavities and excavating the bumps.

Juri D. Kropotov, Methods of Neurotherapy (2009)

Over the years I recall mentioning several times, in no uncertain terms: my brain seems much louder than how others describe their inner voice. My mistakes when playing well-known, oft-rehearsed tunes often felt more like intrusive thoughts — unintentional spontaneous improvisations. A so-called “good night” was often the nights I let it happen, and didn’t work myself up with doubts and rumination. When thoughts arise in mindful meditation we gently set them aside, “without judgment.”

For neurofeedback in the early 2020s I still had to go to a dedicated office where a trained professional attached expensive equipment. Mindfulness is everywhere. I carry the Medito app on my phone. Neurofeedback reminded me I’ve tried to meditate since the Beatles released the White Album, and felt all along I wasn’t quite getting it. What’s new for me is the connection between these realizations, and a diaphragm breathing exercise I got years ago from a vocal teacher.

In the posts under this page’s heading I’ll describe how I’ve been adapting the Medito Foundation‘s free app to meditate successfully (after 50+ years of fooling myself, or telling myself I couldn’t do it) and especially the role of the diaphragm in lowering anxiety and heart rate.