Biofeedback with Dr. Camille

What is biofeedback?

At its core, biofeedback helps you to connect how your emotions, stress, and environment impact your physical body and gives you tools to regulate your responses in a healthy way.

It involves monitoring physiological signals like heart rate, breathing, muscle tension, and skin temperature.

These bodily signals can influence your behavior, sleep patterns, anxiety, blood pressure, digestion, energy levels, and more so it’s very beneficial to be aware of them.

My first experience with biofeedback happened during graduate school when I experienced overwhelming anxiety. Through my treatments I learned how to recognize and manage the manifestations of my stress in my body. Biofeedback helped me to reclaim a sense of empowerment in my life and I want to share that experience with others!

When you’re more connected with your body, you’re able to:

• Reduce your stress
• Experience less anxiety
• Lower your blood pressure
• Get more restful sleep
• Improve your digestion
• Increase your energy levels

What conditions does biofeedback treat?

• Anxiety and depression
• Hypertension
• Sleep issues
• Adrenal fatigue
• IBS
• Migraines and other types of headaches
• Hormonal issues like PMS, mood swings, and hot flashes
• ADD, ADHD
• Chronic pain

What does a treatment look like?

Your first visit is 90 minutes and will include assessment and treatment.

We’ll discuss your main goals and we’ll spend time talking about important parts of your life like social support systems, diet, sleep, spirituality, and movement.

You’ll learn to breathe in a supportive way that promotes relaxation and we’ll get a baseline on other important biofeedback markers like heart rate and heart rate variability, which is a measure of how well your body adapts in different situations. These markers will help to guide your future treatments and will be important signs for you to track and understand.

Follow-up visits are 60 minutes and will focus on building new self-regulatory skills including self-awareness, adaptability, mindfulness, and self-compassion so you can tune into yourself in a whole new way.

We’ll also continue to track breathing, heart rate, and heart rate variability so you can see how the skills you learn impact your body in real time.

We will use a variety of tools depending on your initial goals and concerns, including postural training, progressive muscle relaxation, breathwork, meditation and mindfulness training, guided imagery, and expressive writing.

You’ll also be given exercises to do at home in order to build your skills. It is important that you practice at home to get the most out of your in-office sessions.

How will I feel after a treatment?

Biofeedback is usually a very relaxing experience and people leave feeling less stressed, more energized, focused, and grounded.

You may also experience strong emotions during treatment or afterward, which is completely normal. Part of our treatments will include teaching you how to share space with those emotions and process them, rather than trying to avoid them.

How many treatments should I have?

I typically recommend an initial series of 6 weekly visits so you can build your skills and feel confident using them in your life.

By the end of your treatment series, you’ll:

• Know your typical stress patterns and how they affect your body so you can regulate them in a healthy way through your newly learned skills
• Learn how breathing can balance your nervous system and know which breathing pace is best to support your body
• Understand subtle body signals that tell you you’re stressed so you can work with your stress instead of denying or avoiding it
• Have personalized tools to use in the moment that you need support
• Be able to relax at a deeper level as you’re more connected with your body and its signals

You may need an occasional follow up session after your initial 6 treatments to help reinforce what you learned and deepen your skill set. Those sessions are recommended on a case by case basis.