Success Stories

My clients value their privacy and I highly value their confidence in me. They entrust me with personal and intimate information that they may never share with anyone else. So I am not at liberty to divulge their identity but they have given me permission to describe their presenting circumstances and the results of our work together.

As I sat down to compile this summary and review some of the hundreds of cases I have been privileged to work on in recent years, I was reminded how alike we all are as human beings and how united we are in our desire to live happy, healthy, successful lives. No matter where we come from, what we look like or what we believe in, we can all use a little help from time to time to feel better.

We are lucky to live at a time when science has proven that our mental and emotional health is as important as our physical health and has evolved some pretty amazing tools and techniques to help us gain, recover and maintain this vital mind/body balance.

Here then is a very brief representative sample of the ills and ailments that people come to me with for resolution to regain their enjoyment of life, as well as the goals, challenges and aspirations of those seeking to improve an aspect of their already satisfactory life. I have separated them into categories for ease of readability, so feel free to skip to your area of interest and to explore other areas of our site that explain in more detail the tools and techniques described here.

Enjoy and please share this information with people you care about.

And if you would like to share your own success stories of how you changed your life by changing your brain, I would love to hear them.

Please click on your topic of interest:

Depression Fear & Self-Confidence Stress & Burnout Aging & Seniors Narcissism Addictions Negative Self-Talk
Panic & ADDAnger Anxiety & ADHD PTSD Brain Injury Insomnia Parkinson's Lyme Disease Professional Development Academic Improvement Cultural Ambivalence Teaching Practitioners

Depression

DEPRESSION

Depression is an awful thing. Studies show that depression affects 1 in 10 people at one point or another, and that 80% of the people who have symptoms of clinical depression do not receive any treatment. There is a stigma attached to depression, and so we don’t talk about it. We suffer in silence. When we seek help, it is generally given in the form of prescription medicine whose symptoms and addictiveness often vastly outweigh the benefits. It doesn’t have to be that way.

When she was referred to me, Diane was 54 years old. She had been ‘clinically depressed’ since the age of 20 when she suffered a head injury. She described her life as a living hell for 34 years, and how it deeply affected the lives of her busy business owner husband and of her large extended family. She was using very heavy medication, was over-weight and was prone to outbursts of anger, tears, long dark days of sadness and depression, and occasionally violence. She couldn’t live with herself.

Fortunately, she was very responsive to a number of the Brain Reprogramming tools we use. Over a period of a few months, I worked with Diane to gradually get her off her meds, improve her sleep and take an interest in the world around her for the first time in decades. At first, she was disappointed that so much of her life had passed her by, she felt a bit like Rip Van Winkle. She could not use a bank machine or an automatic checkout machine at the grocery store or find her way in traffic by herself. I taught her how to quickly rebuild her procedural memory and her ability to plan and execute on that plan.

She began to travel. She got her first passport ever and took her first international trip totally on her own, and now visits long lost relatives all over the US and the UK. Then she started taking art classes and to travel to various locations to improve her artistic skills. Her husband’s business has doubled its revenue since he no longer has to take time off work to care for Diane. More importantly, her grandchildren got their Grandma back and let me tell you, it was very touching to get cards from her grandchildren thanking me for giving them their grandma back :)

Sean was a 20-year old who had dropped out of school and been bedridden for six years when I met him. He had suffered very serious trauma in childhood which culminated in a seemingly incurable case of ‘clinical depression’ by the age of 14. The effect on the family was almost crippling.

Using some simple brain reprogramming techniques and inexpensive neurotechnologies, in just twelve weeks Sean was out of bed and off his meds. He got a job, got his driver’s license, went back to school to get his high school diploma and asked a girl out for the very first time in his life.  His mother later confided "We first noticed subtle changes in our son in the middle of high school and before we could wrap our heads around the diagnosis of 'depression', our son was on his way down. For six years, we tried all manner of therapy and medication but nothing worked. We were frantic and scared beyond words. Then we found you. Within just 3 weeks, we saw a significant change in our son's demeanour, attitude and general outlook and over the next 3 months, we watched in utter joy and fascination as our son was transformed into a normal healthy happy young man. We are forever in your debt."

How cool is THAT!?

Alan had always been an entrepreneur. He started his first business at the age of 9 and flourished from that moment forward. He enjoyed feeling successful. A few years ago he started a business that was growing very quickly and turning handsome profits.  Then he went through a horrible divorce that really affected his mood and outlook on life. His wife got into drugs and sex and deserted him and the two kids. She then tried to take the kids from him. He won that battle but his scars were deep and he got very, very depressed and despondent about the whole ‘life at any cost’ philosophy. He began binge eating, stopped exercising, got really fat which made him even more depressed and neglected his business.

Over a period of twelve weeks, I taught Alan to learn how to turn the page on the past, stop feeling sorry for himself, throw the chips and cookies away, start exercising again, and get back to work. His business is now worth $10 million and his biggest worry is to figure out what to do with his millions!

Sound Familiar?
Change your brain ~ Change your life

START HERE

Fear and Self Confidence

FEAR AND SELF-CONFIDENCE

Mark was bored at work and needed some new professional horizons but he knew deep down in his heart of hearts that he just wasn’t good enough. He was aware that he was constantly doubting himself but he didn’t know why. His parents had always been nice and supportive to him growing up. He was never bullied at school, he was a conscientious and productive employee and his bosses liked him. Yet there he was, stuck in a job he didn’t like.  He knew that he could never get a new career off to a flying start without boosting his self-confidence.

When I started working with Mark, it soon became clear that he was subliminally running a fear pattern that was working its poison outside of his conscious awareness. In other words, he didn't realize that he was working against himself and blocking some frightening feelings that his brain was generating and he just could not cope with them. This essentially forced Mark to stay within his comfort zone. The thought of venturing out onto thin ice terrified him and kept him stuck. It is said that “we evolve at the speed of our bravery”.

We need FEAR. People born without a fear response die in their early twenties usually due to their engaging in very risky behaviours. Fear is designed to keep us out of trouble, to keep us safe. Fear is a tool and a friend but it can also become a tyrannical master.

In Mark’s case, he needed to ‘upgrade his mental software’. He needed to upgrade the stories he was telling himself about himself. He had gotten into the habit of badmouthing himself inside his head that he just wasn’t good enough and that he wasn’t living up to the high standards he had set himself. He was like a hard marking high school teacher “Mark can and should do better!!” he was inadvertently hypnotizing himself to doubt himself and he did this so well he believed his own stories! I’m sure you don’t do that, do you?

It sounds crazy but when you appreciate that the brain is purposeful and wants what it wants when it wants it and is not rationally motivated, you can see how this self-reinforcing pattern could happen. Our brains are so complicated they can sometimes get stuck in this way, like having bugs in our mental software. Mark probably did learn these patterns at his high-school, which was a very highly competitive school. Unfortunately, when we met Mark was now in his mid-thirties and still running mental software that he had learned back in his teens - years ago.  It was time for an upgrade.

Together we worked on upgrading his mental software to make it relevant and able to handle today’s challenges. Mark applied for and got his dream job, and then got serious about his music and built up the confidence to start performing in public. He is a happy man.

Sound Familiar?
Change your brain ~ Change your life

START HERE

Work Burnout

STRESS AND BURNOUT

Jennifer is a senior executive who works directly with the mayor of a major multicultural city. All day long, her job is to keep everyone happy and the city functioning at its peak: politicians, dignitaries, civil servants, merchants, business owners, city folks, associations, immigrants, the list is endless.  She also has to manage a big staff.  She is on call 24/7 and she is expected to attend a multitude of meetings and socials functions. Her commute to and from work is an hour and a half each way.

When I first met Jennifer I was amazed at how much pressure she had to cope with, and how often she got sick as a result of being exposed to so many people’s colds, flus and other contagious maladies. For years, she experienced digestion troubles, suffered from Irritable Bowel Syndrome and developed severe food sensitivities. She was underweight and she looked tired all the time. Meals were taken when and where possible, she wasn’t getting any sun or fresh air, she was constantly worrying about one thing or another and she slept very little and poorly. She was burnt out.

When we started working together, Jennifer realized that while she could not change the realities of her job, she could change her responses to it.

We drew up a plan for her and she immediately began to implement a number of strategies and habits to improve her mental and emotional functioning.  For example, she now regularly calms her brain on her rail commute using a powerful neurotechnology protocol. She arrives at work feeling balanced and energized, and back home fully refreshed with all of the day’s garbage and rubbish ‘left on the railway tracks’ as she put it. At home, she relaxes with modalities designed to reduce her stress and improve her sleep.

“I feel like a new person” is how she puts it.  “I can eat, I can sleep, I have put on some much needed weight, the dark circles under my eyes have disappeared, my staff comments on how happy they are with “the new me”, I am much better able to handle crises and emergencies, and most importantly my IBS and digestion troubles have subsided. I’m alive again.”

Peter is a successful sales support engineer in a multinational corporation. He has a very tough job. Many millions of dollars in revenue are dependent on his ability to deliver. Peter came to me with a simple request: “Show me how to do more faster”. That might seem like an odd request until you understand that Peter is a very dedicated professional with very high personal work standards and ethics. His team needed him, he was the only one in the organization who could answer and respond to the myriad complex engineering questions that arise in complex engineering sales. I did two things with Peter.

First, I showed him that ‘Doing crazy things faster’ would very soon break his body down with the stress, so I coached him in ways to improve his work flow and throughput. Simultaneously, I showed him how to use tools to accomplish important but different tasks. He learnt how to wake his brain up and sharpen his thinking when he had to get a big proposal out in a hurry and work into ‘the wee hours’, how to calm himself right down when he felt too stressed and overwhelmed, how to sleep better and to use his sleep cycle to solve complex technical problems in creative way. He is regularly recognized for his achievements and he has just cashed a big bonus. And he says he is now ready to take his brain to the next level.

Sound Familiar?
Change your brain ~ Change your life

START HERE

AGING AND SENIORS

It’s no fun getting old and unwell. There’s not much we can do about the ‘getting older’ bit. We haven’t figured out how to slow or stop time yet, although the Geeks in the Lab tell me they are working on it. But we can do something about the ‘unwell’ bit.

We are fortunate to live at a time when neuroscience offers us knowledge and technologies that can keep us young at heart, in mind and in body. There are new treatments and discoveries being made every day that push back the unwanted effects of aging. Some of these treatments are inexpensive and are well within our grasp or the grasp of a loved one who is ‘knocking on a bit’, as my 93-year old mother would say. We have the means to age gracefully, painlessly, joyfully.

I frequently work with Seniors who ask me to help them improve such things as their memory, their mood, their pain, their mental sharpness, the ability to recognize people’s faces, to improve their balance, to feel less fearful and insecure, and to maintain their independence.

Take balance, for example.

We never really consider how amazing it is that we can stand upright or walk until we become “wobbly on me pins”, as one 68-year old put it to me. Balance is the product of a vast number of interconnected control systems that include the inner ear, the stomach, our leg and body muscles, and most importantly our brain.

Charles had heard of Brain Reprogramming and Applied Neuroplasticity and wanted to see if it would help him feel more sure of himself when he was walking and navigating tight spaces. I taught him how to use tDCS, transcranial Direct Current Stimulation and focus it on the part of his brain involved in body movement and sensation while he practiced a number of balancing exercises, like standing on one leg for as long as possible and walking blindfolded in a straight line. This ‘drove traffic’ through the area affected by the disequilibrium and gave the relevant portion of his brain more ‘plasticity’, which you might think of as a boost of extra intelligence. The exercises and the tDCS montages soon rehabilitated his balance and he found he was much more confident and less wobbly when walking.

What about pain?

Are you living with chronic pain? Did you know that you can now modify and reprogram the sensation of pain and reduce its intensity significantly using some very simple home based equipment and some guidance?

Deborah, a lady in her mid-sixties, was referred to me with severe chronic pain in her left hip. The X-rays showed no obvious damage and her doctors could only do so much to remedy the situation. I showed her how to use MET, Micro Electric Therapy, which disrupted how the sensation of ‘pain’ was being created in her brain. She was quickly able to decrease the pain any time she wanted or needed to, and she started using her MET to relieve her neck and shoulder pain too.

Dealing with mood changes, loneliness, misery and depression.

Now there are lots of causes for depression and misery but there have been many scientific and technical advances in that field too. You can learn to reprogram your brain using a variety of new and some ancient techniques that, combined together, can get you feeling happy in a hurry.

Mood is very important and can be another potential showstopper. It is not unusual to find Seniors losing their taste for life and neglecting their health. A depressed person does not look after themselves properly. They stop grooming themselves. They don't take care of their teeth and get infections. They have no spring in their step. They don't exercise enough. They neglect their nutrition. They become ill, fragile and vulnerable.

If you have noticed these lifestyle changes in someone you deeply care about, you may want to let them know that there are some quick and simple ways to brighten up their mood and stop them spiraling downwards.

Tired of life?

It is very, very easy to become so roboticized by the mundane routine of the daily grind that life becomes completely meaningless. “What’s the point, really?” or “Is that all there is?” become the internal mantras of misery. Sometimes people feel like they are on an endless treadmill, or they resent feeling like a beast of burden supporting their extended families, for example, or a number of other reasons.

Our success with these individuals follows a consistent pattern. We first get them to ‘start the journey’. ‘Starting’ is by far the most difficult step. Most of the time we second guess ourselves so completely that we paralyze ourselves with inaction. But we are not here for long and we do not HAVE to suffer. We can give the finger to the universe and find ways to enjoy life in spite of the flaws in the design.

Chris was coming to the end of a long and boring career and facing a not very happy future. He was disengaged from his wife, both now liked different things and all he saw was his life slipping away. He came to me saying “he wanted to find the juice and joy in life again”. Chris needed a plan to awaken Chris v2.0, his next incarnation, as it were.

To help Chris get a handle on what his new incarnation could be like, I first got him to write a “Dear Me” Letter. The “Dear Me” Letter allowed Chris to start a meaningful conversation with his brain. This is so important because it is our brain that creates our reality. All of the things we become consciously aware of are generated from our brains. This ‘awareness’ we have, and use in our day-to-day lives, is a cleverly constructed illusion, created by a myriad of sub-sub-neural networks that cooperate together to create the ‘persistent illusion’ we call “Me” or “I”.

The “Dear Me” letter was a great starting point for Chris and he read it before he fell asleep to direct his brain to anchor the changes he wanted to make while he slept. From the insights he gained, it quickly became apparent that he had a deep, abiding and unfulfilled love for Grand and Heroic Opera that he had put in abeyance because of family and financial pressures that were no longer a concern.  He started playing the piano again.  He started singing again. Next he added some very effective neurotechnologies to grow new capacities especially related to his emotional intelligence.

He learned to hold himself accountable to follow his plan and it wasn’t long before his excitement about his new lease on life rekindled his romance with his wife. They went to Germany to listen to Opera. They joined new social circles and remembered what it was that had attracted them to each other some 40 years ago.

I could go on but you get the point. There are many fears that can nag at aging Seniors. Seniors Magazine articles frequently quote such things as fear of loss of independence, loss of memory, fear of falling and getting badly hurt, not having the mental capacity to be able to drive, pain, grief, loneliness, safety and security fears and so on.  But do you see that every one of these problems can be remedied quickly and successfully using neuroscience? The issues might not go away completely but you can put a very BIG dent in their impact on your life, your wellbeing, your happiness. You can decide to age gracefully, painlessly, joyfully. Let me show you how.

Sound Familiar?
Change your brain ~ Change your life

START HERE

NARCISSISM

NARCISSISM

Narcissism is a widespread disorder that keeps two or more people in a constant co-dependent tortuous tug-of-war between the manipulator(s) and their victim(s), with disastrous consequences. It often takes years of intense therapy to restore the healthy sense of self to the victim, and it does not always work.

It doesn’t have to be that way!!

Please meet Rhonda Jansen, a most remarkable person. Upon being introduced by a colleague, Rhonda got quickly interested in pursuing the idea of applying neuroscience to her life. Rhonda was already doing well but she wanted to stretch herself to do even better.  She wanted to discover how ‘big BIG could be’, so we tailored a program to her specific requirements.  Soon after we started work together, Rhonda did a very remarkable thing but let me tell you first a bit about her background and amazing journey.

Rhonda inadvertently married a chap with a very severe case of narcissism that neither he nor Rhonda could perceive. Neither of them could see the psycho-dynamic. They were both blind to the realities of the situation. Suffice it to say that Rhonda suffered 12 years of severe torment that affected every aspect of her professional and personal life.

Determined to help others through her own experience, she wrote a sobering and enlightening account of her courageous journey to recovery entitled ‘Narcissism – The Evil Behind the Mask’, also available on Amazon. It is not a pretty story but it ends with Rhonda finding the emotional wherewithal to extricate herself from her predicament, to start again, rebuild and rediscover her natural abilities to enjoy life.  Today she is a successful author, trainer and speaker.

“So why would she need to reprogram her brain?”, you ask.

She wanted to discover how big BIG could be. She wanted to find out how much more she could accomplish. And how quickly she could learn to do this.

Very soon upon starting the process of reprogramming her brain, Rhonda made a remarkable transformation. She discovered that the trauma and misery she had endured and documented was not the end of her story, far from it. She discovered the phenomenon of PTG, Post Traumatic Growth. Post Traumatic Growth is our capacity to heal ourselves from severe stressors and to overshoot in our recovery such that we gain in emotional capacity from the experience. We get stronger, more resilient.

I say this is remarkable because most people would prefer to keep themselves stuck in a ‘poor me’, ‘broken wing’, Victim style mindset and mentality. Justified self-pity. Rhonda is learning to take her Victor mindset to the next level of her evolution, and the next one after that…

In Rhonda’s own words: “I knew my past conditioning affected my thoughts and actions that saw me trapped in a marriage and environment that were destructive and negative for over twelve years. I knew that I needed innovative teachings and a deeper understanding of how my brain works if I wanted a different outcome for my future. I could see that by reprogramming my brain and with professional leadership, I could soar higher than I have ever dreamt possible.

Each week in our sessions, Dr. Saunders works his ‘magic’ in a refreshing and thought-provoking style, as we discuss in-depth areas of my past thinking that have slowed me down or prevented me from moving forward and achieving a life, I now realize, I am more than capable of achieving. I love that Dr. Saunders gives me homework and sets targets for me to knock out each week. I love being pushed and held accountable (in a nice way of course).

I have now started working on my second book and organizing one-day seminars. Thank you so much Dr. Saunders. I will be eternally grateful for your brain training. I feel more awake and alive than I ever have. I am all fired up and, like Al-Adin, I am off to the market place with anticipation to discover how BIG big can be.”

Victim or Victor? You choose!

If you are of the Victor persuasion, I can help you reprogram your brain to regain and maintain that exhilarating renewed sense of self, and to live the life YOU choose.

Sound Familiar?
Change your brain ~ Change your life

START HERE

Addictions

ADDICTIONS

Dan was a handsome womanizer addicted to the hunt for sex. Dan also drank way too much, he was under scrutiny by financial securities agencies, he was very close to bankruptcy, his wife was suffering extreme anxiety, his kids were going crazy, his life was a MESS. One day he read about our success with reprogramming the brain and something clicked inside his head. It dawned on him that maybe he was being a chump and that he really needed to start turning things around.

I don’t need to tell you this because I suspect you already know how miserably destructive an addiction can be.  Addictions destroy people, they destroy families, they destroy lives. It doesn’t matter if it involves overeating, drinking to excess, using drugs regularly and turning to sex or violence, we live inside our brains and we can be very clever and skilled at concealing things from ourselves. We can lie to ourselves so well, we believe our own lies.

It was the cravings that were driving Dan crazy.  They were driving his life.  He could not consciously stop them.  He needed to get those under control, everything else was secondary, so he started to use cranial electrostimulation to calm the cravings down and help his brain function at its optimum.

As new connections were being made in Dan’s brain, old ones were weakening and disconnecting, dissipating the cravings and giving Dan a renewed sense of calm, joyfulness and satisfaction.  I taught him to dehypnotize himself of the stupid beliefs that had created the cravings in the first place. With new healthy beliefs solidly anchored in his mind, it quickly became easier to calm his brain and his body down anytime he wanted or needed to. The cravings had kept him far too hyper for too long and he was having trouble sleeping. So I taught him how to use each sleep cycle to reprogram his brain and permanently anchor each lesson to run on automatic.

Free of the cravings, he was able to set very achievable but stretch goals and in a very short time his life started to turn around. Today, Dan is a happy family man and his finances are secure.

Sound Familiar?
Change your brain ~ Change your life

START HERE

Negative SelfTalk

NEGATIVE SELF-TALK

Most of us deal with negative self-talk throughout our life. It is well ingrained in us right from the moment we enter Kindergarten, sometimes before, and it is reinforced by our peers, our parents, our teachers and, ultimately, ourselves.

Negative self-talk affects every decision we make and every result we achieve because it has us constantly questioning ourselves about everything. “I’m not good enough”, “I can’t do this”, “I don’t have what it takes” “What if?” and on and on. It is ever present in our minds, like a poison insinuating itself into our every thought.

I have known truly remarkable people who knew deep inside that they were remarkable but were continually talking themselves out of achieving their goals and their life’s purpose.

People like Colleen, for example, who just needed to rearrange their thought processes in their own minds to put the negative self-talk firmly in the past and start moving forward on their road to well deserved success. Here is a lovely testimonial I recently received from Colleen:

“I spent about a year meeting once a month on Skype/Facetime with Dr. Saunders to work on a few things that I thought needed improvement. I knew I could do so much more than I was giving myself credit for. Dr. Saunders was also very good at pointing out a few things that he thought needed improvement Our sessions were usually filled with some good laughs at ourselves and some good techniques to develop my mind and my thinking habits.

It has been almost two years since Dr. Saunders and I have had any sessions and, to this day, I still remember and use the techniques that he taught me and had me practice and do as "homework". These techniques have radically improved my behaviour toward myself in the ways that I think and how I approach challenging situations.  When I went through a particularly challenging time in my life, these techniques helped keep me moving though the challenges and helped me keep out of a negative headspace that would have been completely unproductive considering the circumstances.

He taught me to think about my "Gold Star" ⭐  moments as a way to recall how I felt when I accomplished something I felt proud of.  I have used that technique to remind myself that I CAN DO IT! when I am in a tough situation or I begin to have negative self-talk. Negative self-talk was a popular habit of mine and Dr. Saunders helped me to redirect myself and cut that bad habit down and now it has become a distant memory.

I also have used the Power Pose as a way to give myself a boost when I feel like I need to improve my confidence or just get motivated to take on a challenging situation. It has helped me in particular with preparing my mind for interviews for jobs that I landed as a result, and even with simple but highly beneficial things like letting the "girl in the back office" (trusting my brain) take over for me and sort things out while I sleep.

I contacted Dr. Saunders recently to let him know that I appreciated all the valuable lessons and especially the time we spent together. He got to know me and together we worked out what needed to be worked out. Of course, no one is ever 'done' when it comes to this kind of thing, so it was great to have a check-in and learn a new acronym or two to keep things in check.

It sounds funny to say you're reprogramming your brain, but when you get into the practice, you quickly learn really practical methods to consider and assist you to strengthen your mind and character or simply change old harmful habits like negative self-talk. The things I have achieved in the last two years I never would have believed possible before I met Dr. Saunders. I have recommended him to many friends and will continue to do so for as long as he is in practice.”

Sound Familiar?
Change your brain ~ Change your life

START HERE

Panic and ADD

PANIC AND ADD

Moe was a teenager when he was referred to me and he was living in a constant state of panic. He had developed a panicky ADD brain that, I discovered, was due to the continual, angry, verbal violence between his parents with him in the middle. He trembled almost continually and complained that he felt chronically terrified and would often feel stabbing panicky sensations for no apparent reason. His thoughts were in an endless whirl that made studying and focus very difficult for him.

A few years earlier the family had moved from the Middle East to North America and with all the torment going on at home, Moe was finding it impossible to make friends, fit in at school and navigate his new culture. He referred to his life as miserable mess.

One of the secrets of breaking up panic ADD type patterns is to recognize that it is very often caused by a protective self-reinforcing cybernetic loop that has established itself within the body. This cybernetic loop cycles between the individual’s protective fear system in the brain, which is controlled by the amygdala, and the fight or flight adrenaline system, which is controlled by the adrenals in the kidneys. The system is designed to protect the individual from harm but it can get itself stuck on automatic.

You see, the amygdala gets turned on because of some very fearful and unpleasant trauma in the environment, in this case the continual shouting matches and angry exchanges between his parents. When there is trouble in the environment, the amygdala sends a signal to the adrenal system that the body is under imminent threat and needs to get ready for a fight. The adrenals oblige by pumping adrenaline into the blood stream to get the body ready for a battle.

Unfortunately, the amygdala, now senses adrenaline in the bloodstream and stays on high alert expecting trouble at any moment. This high alert state sends another signal back to the adrenals to pump more adrenaline into the bloodstream to get ready for that upcoming battle. It’s a never ending cycle and a major causes of panic attacks and ADD symptoms.

Does this sound familiar? Have you ever felt this way? No fun, is it?

Fortunately, that are a number of very effective and clinically proven ways of breaking up the sensations and patterns associated with panic and panic attacks, regardless of its cause.

In our ten weeks together, I first taught Moe how to calm his breathing.  Breathing properly is a vital skill in managing episodes of panic. Rough breathing affects our heart rate which, in turn, sends mixed messages to the brain. Once Moe started to get the hang of smooth breathing, he found he was becoming calmer more of the time. Next I showed him how to use different cranial electrostimulation tools and modalities to improve his sleep, and how to use each sleep cycle to reprogram his thinking and feelings, interrupt the panic patterns and remain calm, cool and collected in previously scary situations.

His panicky ADD symptoms subsided, he was able to focus better on his schoolwork and his grades soared. He started making friends and the school bullying stopped. Moe is now at university in a different city, he has a lovely girlfriend and his world has opened up for him. Way to go, Moe!

Sound Familiar?
Change your brain ~ Change your life

START HERE

Anger

ANGER

Uncontrollable outbursts of anger and rage can be hugely debilitating and career limiting.

Jason is a very good hockey player but his uncontrollable temper on the ice had become a liability to his team and to his prospects of a promising career in the NHL. He had to learn to control his temper.

Jason was also finishing his business degree and working in the family business but his moodiness was affecting his relations with his professors and his customers.

During the course of his brain reprogramming work, he engaged in the exercises and homework like a true professional. He learnt how to harness his sleep to kick start the process of brain reprogramming.  He also learned how to use Micro Electric Therapy to turn down the sensation of pain he was experiencing due to some old injuries. He discovered he could calm himself at the touch of a button and didn’t need to go off the deep end. He also began to realize that his anger issues were due to his rebelliousness against his father’s strict parenting. He had built up a pattern that he realized he no longer needed. “I grew up” said Jason at the end of his program.

His hockey game improved, he finished his degree, he got engaged to the girl of his dreams and his Dad has put him in the front office because he has gotten so good at interacting with the customers.

Sound Familiar?
Change your brain ~ Change your life

START HERE

Anxiety and ADHD

ANXIETY AND ADHD

Mike was 43 when I met him. He was in a constant anxious fog and he felt lost in life with no control or direction. He complained that he felt an endless low grade nagging at the back of his mind that made him anxious all of the time. He tried to mask the feelings with alcohol and kept making excuses for why he wasn't happy, why he was gaining weight, why he was single, why he was constantly dabbling, and unable to commit to exercise, diets, activities and relationships.

At the end of our work together, Mike wrote to me: “You helped me grab hold of my life and gave me the tools I needed to guide myself in a positive direction, make changes and live my life my way in just a few weeks.  I'm so proud to be your student. I feel like I'm on the right track now that I have you in my corner, like I've tapped some secret resource of knowledge that only the very few are privileged to have access to. I feel strong enough to face the challenges that I see forth and to see them not as obstacles but as opportunities. Thank you so much, Doctor. I have made a great leap forward into the unknown and have landed on my feet."

Sound Familiar?
Change your brain ~ Change your life

START HERE

PTSD

PTSD

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is another miserably debilitating mental illness. A very common characteristic of PTSD is hypervigilance, a chronic state of being on full alert, jumpy, nervous and anxious all the time, often made worse by compulsively distressing thoughts.

Todd was a young soldier who exhibited the typical symptoms of PTSD he had developed upon returning from his last tour of duty in Afghanistan. He was very jumpy and nervous. He was ashamed of himself, he thought he was ‘weak’. His sleep was poor and he was having a great deal of trouble integrating back into civilian life. But he was a very good student and was keen to put his past in the past.

One of the secrets of breaking up the PTSD pattern is to recognize that very often a self-reinforcing cybernetic loop has established itself between the individual’s protective fear system in the brain, which is controlled by the amygdala, and the fight or flight adrenaline system, which is controlled by the adrenals in the kidneys. The system can get itself stuck on automatic.

The amygdala gets turned on because of some very fearful and unpleasant trauma. The amygdala sends a signal to the adrenal system that the body is under imminent threat and needs to get ready for a fight. The adrenals oblige by pumping adrenaline into the blood stream to get the body ready for a battle. The amygdala now senses adrenaline in the bloodstream and stays on high alert expecting trouble at any moment. This high alert state sends a signal to the adrenals to pump more adrenaline into the bloodstream to get ready for the coming battle.

This is one of the causes of PTSD. Fortunately, that are a number of very effective and clinically proven ways of breaking up the sensations and patterns associated with PTSD regardless of its cause. I teach these individuals how to use different cranial electrostimulation tools, many of them approved by the FDA, the US Federal Drug Administration, to more effectively harness their sleep.  They discover that they can reprogram their thinking and feelings, interrupt the PTSD patterns and to feel calm and happy again.

That is exactly what Todd did. In fact, he got so keen on the idea that he could ‘hack’ into his fear circuits that he built his very own home made tDCS unit and used it to help heal himself. I was amazed at the transformation.

Sound Familiar?
Change your brain ~ Change your life

START HERE

Brain Injury

BRAIN INJURY

When Linda was in her late thirties she and her girlfriend were in a dreadful car accident. Her friend very nearly died and Linda was hit on the head and she was very badly hurt. Because her friend’s injuries were more serious than hers, Linda did not get the attention that she needed and when her physical wounds had healed, she was discharged and everyone thought she was all better.

When she turned 60, she began to notice that she was falling asleep during her client interviews, experiencing memory loss and developing a tremor. She was diagnosed with Parkinson’s but her symptoms were not typical. When I started working her, I suspected that she had an unhealed concussion. A traumatic brain injury, a TBI. So I suggested she get a qEEG, a quantitative Electro EncephaloGram, which revealed to her for the first time that a portion of her brain had not healed from the injury she sustained 20 years earlier.

I designed a course of exercises for her brain using tDCS and neurofeedback to improve her sleep, her memory and her tremor. Her memory improved as did her tremor and she works with her patients without fearing she will fall asleep. She laughs more too! She is now learning how to use new tools and modalities to get her through her daily busy schedule and work more effectively with her clients.

Sound Familiar?
Change your brain ~ Change your life

START HERE

Insomnia

INSOMNIA

Chronic insomnia is a HUGE problem and it’s not going away. There are lots of causes of insomnia, many of them only now being researched by scientists who are discovering that we hardly understand sleep at all.  Yet we can’t underestimate the importance and power of sleep. Sleep is essential to our ability to live a vitally fulfilling life. There is no way around it.

Kelly came to me complaining that she was falling asleep during the day when she was meant to be awake and alert during important business meetings. She wasn’t sleeping well at night. Her insomnia was affecting her memory and she was getting increasingly forgetful. The brain uses sleep to consolidate and organize all of our experiences. If we do not sleep, our brains cannot perform this essential function.

As we started working together, Kelly confessed that she spent a lot of the night with ‘Monkey Mind’.  You have ‘Monkey Mind’ when you cannot shut the distressing chatter up in your head when you are meant to be falling asleep. Kelly had gotten so expert at having ‘Monkey Mind’, she began to get phobic and terrified of going to bed because she couldn't stand the constant chatter that was driving her crazy.

Has this ever happened to you?

I taught Kelly an easy fun way to hypnotize herself to sleep. At the same time, I showed her how to use a Cranial Electro Stimulator before she went to bed to calm her brain down, stop the chatter and produce more feel-good endorphins and calming neurotransmitters. She noticed a difference almost right away. At first, she couldn't believe that it would be that easy but in a week she noticed that her sleeping patterns were shifting and shifting for the better. Her “Monkey Mind” continued to dissipate. Her sleep became more and more deep and refreshing. She felt energized, alert and able to function normally at work. And she gradually regained her memory, which was a very big plus for her.

Sound Familiar?
Change your brain ~ Change your life

START HERE

Parkinson's

PARKINSON'S

You probably know that Parkinson’s is amongst the most horrible of diseases, right up there with MS and other neurodegenerative diseases.  At the moment there is no cure for Parkinson’s and few practical tools to ease the debilitating symptoms.

A few years ago, we were asked by the President of a Parkinsons’ Support Organization to lecture to several groups of their members on the benefits of reprogramming their brains to relieve their suffering and reduce their dependency on their relatives and friends for their everyday living.  Over time we worked successfully with several of their members, helping them minimize the intensity of their symptoms, regain their memory, improve their balance, their ability to function normally and their quality of life.

That’s where I met Steven, a forty-five-year-old ex-policeman, a very fit, sensible, competent man who had contracted Parkinson’s. When I met him, he was in a very bad way; his disease had progressed to the point where he was totally dependent on his family for his every day survival. He was shaking [dyskinesia] violently. He asked if he could have a go at using the CES device that I had brought to demonstrate at the meeting.

Within a few minutes, he stopped twisting and shaking almost entirely and burst into tears with relief. He exclaimed, “You have no idea how frightening it is when your body moves in crazy ways that you cannot control. For the first time in ages, I feel in control again.” Needless to say, it was a very emotional moment for us all.  We worked together for three months.  That summer, Steven entered almost every golf tournament in his area. He had discovered how to use non-invasive neurostimulation tools to manage his symptoms.

Sound Familiar?
Change your brain ~ Change your life

START HERE

Lyme Disease

LYME DISEASE

Lyme disease is a debilitating tick born disease that is a relatively new but is spreading silently and quickly around the world. More cases are being diagnosed every day than ever before. What starts as a fun trip to the countryside can become a nightmare. You may or may not notice the tick bite. You may not see the red bull’s eye rash. You may have a bad fever for a couple of weeks that you and your family put down to ‘the flu’ but then the nightmare begins. Many Lyme sufferers [they call themselves Lymies] lose their energy. They start to live in a perpetual brain fog, their sleep is impacted, their bodies ache and nothing relieves the symptoms.

Since there is no cure yet for Lyme, the best we can realistically do is to ameliorate the symptoms, one at a time. For example, brain fog is a draining aspect of the disease. It is as if the Lyme fever has disrupted the communication pathways within the brain or the brain has suffered a blow to the head.

Matt was experiencing brain fog.  When I worked with him, I showed him how to use a new audio visual electrical entrainment tool that, over time, coaxed the different subneural networks between the surface and the inside of his brain to communicate with each other effectively again and the fog lifted.

For Michelle, a chronically aching body was the most devastating of her symptoms of Lyme.  I was able to show her how to use tDCS to break up the brain patterns responsible for the sensation of pain.  It isn’t a cure but for Michelle it meant a most welcomed substantial relief from the pain.

Both Matt and Michelle have been able to get back to enjoying their lives more fully.

Sound Familiar?
Change your brain ~ Change your life

START HERE

Professional Development

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Since I spent 40 years as a Behavioural Psychologist in the Corporate world, it will not come as a surprise that I met and worked with thousands of individuals who were facing enormous challenges and running out of ideas. Many of them felt utterly stuck and needed fresh ‘out of the box’ perspectives to survive, rebuild and move forward.

Some had to put in countless hours under high pressure to save their jobs and their companies. Others found themselves without a job and with little prospect of finding a new one in a field flooded with other displaced professionals. Some turned to consulting or entrepreneuring with disastrous consequences. Needless to say, their personal life, health, relationships and finances were suffering the impact as well.

I worked with many of these highly valuable professionals, in groups and one-on-one, to help them reprogram their brains to first take the pressure off themselves, learn to look at their situation with fresh eyes and discover they already had all the resources they needed to turn their work and home life around, often towards much greater success than they had previously achieved.

I will give here just a couple of examples to illustrate what is possible. Everyone’s situation is different, of course, but if any of this resonates with you, perhaps you need to ask yourself if reprogramming your brain out of the all too familiar box could help you achieve the goals and the results you absolutely KNOW you are capable of and deserve.

David was in trouble. He was the Vice President of Marketing for his company but the market had changed and he and his company had not kept up. Technology had changed the cost structure of producing their product, and new competitors from outside of the traditional industry were making significant inroads into his company’s traditional customer base. Things had gotten so bad that recently the company had had to lay off half of their employees and those who remained were very unhappy.  Morale and employee engagement had reached a new low.

When David heard of my work in reprogramming the brain, he asked me to explain to him and his direct reports how neuroscience worked and how each one of them could learn to reprogram their thinking. They needed a new perspective. As they began to absorb the implications of modern neuroscience, for the first time in a year they could see a light at the end of the tunnel.

They learnt new skills and concepts that seemed very strange at first. They learned to communicate directly with their brains and use their sleep-cycles for creative problem solving. During one of our sessions David had a “Door in the Wall” insight and he literally saw the way forward.

“All of a sudden I could see that the whole of our industry had been focused on only three customer needs - Price, Delivery and Quality. We were all competing on exactly the same three important things P,D,Q. I felt this shift in my thinking, as if my brain was actually saying to me: “If everyone is doing the same thing what is the invisible fourth customer need that no one in the industry is looking at?” I didn't stop to think, I just blurted out the question to my team. We were all surprised because that was out of character for me and we all laughed. So we went looking and found the fourth unmet and unrecognized industry need, a unique form of Hitech Engineering Customer Intelligence.”

What David and his team suddenly saw with his ‘Hitech Engineering Customer Intelligence’ was a way of inserting some of their highly technical staff into the operations and design teams of their biggest customers at no cost to them. David’s marketplace ecosystem is highly technical and sophisticated, with long research, development and manufacturing product lead times. It takes time to develop the technology needed to meet their customer needs, and being able to know in advance what products their customers were going to need two to three years down the line meant that they were ready to propose and implement new solutions to meet their customers’ needs.

It worked like a charm. In a relatively short time, they were able to come out of their downturn and retake the number one spot in their market. And they are still using the story of ‘The Door in the Wall’ to discover cleverer and more profound ways of solving complex work related problems.

Lisa was a highly regarded Director of Human Resources in a mid-sized company when she found out that she had been ‘revectored’, ‘downsized’, ‘invited to pursue her career elsewhere’.  She got the sack.  She hadn’t done anything wrong, in fact she had been part of the management team who had done everything right, too right. Her company started to do very well indeed, people noticed and they got bought by a bigger competitor eager to consolidate their grip on the market. Unfortunately for Lisa, the new owners already had a very strong Director of HR of their own.

Sound familiar? It seems to most of us that the world is changing faster and faster and no one seems to know what direction the next industry disruption will come from. Worst, we have been forced from being traditionally secure in our jobs to becoming ‘employed entrepreneurs’ having to future proof ourselves. When we choose to trade our time for a piece of a company’s cash flow, we make an entrepreneurial bet and this becomes all too apparent when we get ‘revectored’.

Lisa was devastated. She didn't see it coming. But she picked herself up and decided it was an omen from the universe and a sure sign that it was time for her to start her own business, something she had always wanted to do. She had never been a real ‘out on your own’ entrepreneur before, but she liked the romantic idea of it. Her first venture failed and she lost a lot of money and precious time and effort. She got really scared and decided to go back to finding a ‘real’ job but a lot of people were out on the street at the time, she had been out of the job market for nearly three years and a lot of fresh new faces with fresh new degrees were getting to top spots.

Do or Die, they say. Lisa picked up an entrepreneuring for beginners book with the theme ‘She who gets knocked down nine times is a winner if she gets up ten times’. She was sold. Up went her next venture and down it came again within just two years. No takers. Her product idea turned out to be six years too early but she didn't know that at the time.  She knew she had a winner. She had all the data, she wasn't making silly mistakes like she did the first time, but she still couldn't make the rent or payroll.

What now? She switched fields. She looked at this market with fresh eyes. She could see a fantastic opportunity ahead of her. She wrote an amazing business plan, borrowed money from family and friends, launched herself into another ‘sure win’ and it turned out not to be what she hoped. “I very nearly went broke again. I was very close to doing something drastic to end the agony”, she later confided.

Lisa came to me for help. As she told me her woes, I began to notice some patterns of behaviour that she was using but that were invisible to herself. She was so used to doing what she always did, she had habituated to her ‘normal’ and could not see it. She was self-blind.

I taught her to communicate directly with her brain and wove my own decades of experience as an entrepreneur into her brain reprogramming work. I showed Lisa how to harvest experience and memories within her brain that she had forgotten she knew and to anchor and reinforce those precious resources while she slept. I taught her how to clean out a lot of history and baggage that she was carrying around, to re-evaluate herself and to not be so hard on herself.

She began to internalize the ideas of the Non-Negotiable Goals (watch here.) She learned to ‘Fail Fast, Fail Often, Fail Cheap to Fail Safe to win, and to Fast Prototype her product development and offerings to the market. She also began to use some neurotechnologies to improve her creativity, her mental stamina and her sense of poise under pressure.

Lisa was a real trooper. To start with she inched herself forward but bit by bit she dug herself out of the financial, emotional and business hole she had been in. She iterated rapidly and found a very attractive subsegment of her market that had never been properly served before and she moved right in. Her business grew. She hardly dared believe it. She was growing in so many ways.

If you get knocked down nine times, you must get up a tenth. You must embrace fear and failure. There is no option but to let their stings educate you and your brain. When you have your brain firmly installed in your own corner, the two of you can face the future with the strength of ten.

Sound Familiar?
Change your brain ~ Change your life

START HERE

Career & Academic Improvement

ACADEMIC IMPROVEMENT

As I am often given to observe, you don’t have to be sick to get better. I come across many successful professionals and students who are always looking for ways to tweak their brain to boost their career or academic achievements.  This particular example amazed even me.

Louise was a seventy-two year-old (yes, you read correctly) highly accomplished lawyer who decided to go back to school to get her MD degree so she could practice medical law but she was having trouble increasing her grades from the mid-60s to the requisite mid-70s she needed to pass her medical exams. Her memory in particular, and the way she was processing information, needed upgrading.

I first offered Louise some new ideas about how her brain actually processes information and showed her how to take advantage and ‘hack’ into important circuits, like being able to read and comprehend faster. I showed her how to ‘take the pressure off’ herself while she studied, which allowed her to focus much better. I showed her how to use simple, yet powerful, inexpensive neurotechnologies to ‘dial up’ the appropriate brain state that she needed when she needed it. Her grades went up from the mid-60’s to the mid-80’s in just five weeks. She is continuing to use these tools and techniques to make the learning easier and maintain these high grades as she moves towards completing her medical degree.

Sound Familiar?
Change your brain ~ Change your life

START HERE

Cultural Ambivalence

CULTURAL AMBIVALENCE

One area of difficulty that crops up a lot these days, with so much migration and immigration around the world, is best described as ‘Cultural Ambivalence’. Sometimes second generation children find it hard work deciding which culture they will adhere to and fit in with. Children of Chinese extraction often get cruelly called ‘bananas’, yellow on the outside white on the inside. Indian/Pakistani kids are sometimes bullied by being called coconuts, brown on the outside white on the inside. You get the picture. Horrible prejudice and pressure.

Many displaced people feel torn in their loyalties and feel guilty a lot of the time even though their predicament is not their fault.

We have worked successfully with dozens of such cases of Cultural Ambivalence.  Usually the first step is to show them how to calm themselves and then start a beneficial conversation with their brains. It is our brain that creates our sense of self and of who we are, so it makes sense to learn how to communicate with our brain in an effective and respectful way.

I teach them how to use the power of the sleep cycle to reprogram their thinking and feelings so they can more easily move between both cultures and treat the cross-cultural tensions with more good humour and a healthier perspective. I teach them to celebrate the differences of culture rather than trying to ignore or crush them.

Sound Familiar?
Change your brain ~ Change your life

START HERE

Teaching Therapists and Health Practitioners

TEACHING THERAPISTS AND HEALTH PRACTITIONERS

I frequently teach therapists and health practitioners how to use Brain Reprogramming tools and technologies to improve their patients’ healing outcomes.

For example, I have worked with many Parkinson’s therapists and shown them how to use neurotechnologies to improve gait and speed of walking of their clients, like in the case of Stephen above.

Similarly, I have taught movement therapists and specialists how to use neurotechnologies to improve their patients’ mobility and movement range, something very important if you are a quadriplegic.

I have also taught Chiropractors how to use non-invasive cranial neurostimulators to improve patient pain and mood outcomes. Pain is, in part, a computation made in the sensorimotor cortex on the top of your head. That computation and its inherent sensation of pain can be modified and often removed using these neurotechnologies, and I show these practitioners how to do this.

Many Psychotherapists have studied with me to learn how to incorporate neuroscience into their practice and accelerate the healing of their clients. Over the years of working successfully with people, I have discovered that not all mental discomfort or ‘neurosis’ has to do with the crazy ideas you are running in your head, sometimes the problem lies in your brain, the physical hardware.

Sometimes the hardware [brain] cannot run beneficial up-to-date software. I show therapists that these ‘hardware problems’ can be due to any number of causes of which there is a very long list. Sometimes OCD is a result of ‘hardware problems’, for example, due to connection issues between lobes within the brain. Sometimes ‘anger issues’ are partly caused by the beliefs and decisions clients have made about their lives, and partly by ‘hardware problems’.

Fortunately, there are non-invasive brain measurements that can be taken to reveal how the brain is processing information. I help Psychotherapists incorporate the theoretical and practical applications of the field of Brain Reprogramming into their practices. It delights me to see this successful transfer of training to other spheres of the healing arts. It matters a great deal to me that these skills be transferable and repeatable because it illustrates the strength and power of the underlying neuroscience.

Sound Familiar?
Change your brain ~ Change your life

START HERE

If the idea of substantially and permanently improving the way you think, act and feel excites you, please send me a quick message and I will respond within the next 24 business hours.

NO PRESSURE.  NO OBLIGATION.  PROMISE.