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All Training is Not Physical by Dr. Rayma Ditson-Sommer
ASCA Talk #010
This week’s American Swimming Coaches Association talk comes from Dr. Ramya Ditson-Sommer.
Dr. Rayma Ditson Sommer's presentation "All Training is Not Physical" (1997) focuses on the importance of understanding and utilizing brain waves in training. The talk covers the speaker's experience in working with attention deficit clients, including Olympic Champion, Gary Hall Jr.
Dr. Rayma highlights the critical differences between attention, relaxation, and focus, as well as the role of brainwaves (Delta, Theta, Alpha, Beta) in determining a person's ability to perform at their best. Remember what Romain Barnier said last week about relaxation...
Dr. Rayma also shares examples of practical techniques to help athletes improve their focus and achieve optimal performance, such as unrolling the ears for bilateral hearing, speaking into the right ear for direct communication, and utilizing neurotechnology with light and sound to achieve a relaxation response.
These methods have proven to be effective not only in improving athletes' performance but also in helping them better manage stress, anxiety, and overall well-being.
Enjoy!
Full Transcript:
All Training is Not Physical by Dr. R. Ditson Sommer (1997)
First of all, let me thank you for coming on a morning when you have no idea what we are going to say or who we are. You are to be commended for getting up. I would like to make sure that all of you are up, so if you will work with me, we will do some little exercises that you can do with your swimmers to make sure that they are listening to you. What we are doing is actually using part of the body to get them to be able to listen specifically. So take your hands and put them on your ears and find the very top part that is rolled over. You’ve got to do both, you can’t do just one. Then unroll your ear, unroll all the way down, just unroll it and do it about five or six times, just keep doing it. If you’re unrolling it and you are doing it correctly, then the brain will send little nerve signals and you will get what we call bilateral hearing and there will be a focus to the hearing. OK. Everybody awake now?
That’s a very important exercise to do because what you are doing is getting your swimmers to use both hands to do something which takes both sides of the brain and puts them into a focus. So now that I have your undivided attention, and both sides of your brain are awake, I will proceed. You will hear me speak a lot about the different sides of the brain. If you do a lot of study about the brain you will realize that the brain operates on its own and does its own thing when it wants to. It operates on stimulus and it changes dominance and hemispheres every 90 to 120 minutes. So you may be talking with somebody or working with somebody (that’s right dominant) and you will hit that 90 minute or someplace in-between and they’ll switch over to the other side. So you won’t have their full attention.
Another thing to remember is that if you really want somebody to understand what you say, and they are not necessarily listening and they are not good listeners, always speak in the right ear. The right ear is a direct route to the brain, the left ear is a long way around. So if you want to take the freeway, get over on the right side. Or if you want them to really hear you and pay attention, tell them to close their eyes and listen. Never say “look at me so I know you hear me”, because you are using two separate apparati and they don’t work together like that.
Over a year ago I started working with attention deficit clients and I got an interesting patient sent to me. He was suffering from an attention deficit disorder and this was Gary Hall, Jr., who sports psychologists realized had an attention deficit disorder and this was getting in the way of his training. I’m working with him as an attention deficit disorder and all at once he came in and said. “I have to swim the Olympic Trials - in a few weeks.” And I thought, well that’s fine, but what do I know about swimming? I very quickly tried to learn - and how you all know what you know.I don’t know. It’s amazing to me all of the mental action and all of the things that go together to teach swimming. But I got the books and I learned some things about it in turn with how it works with the brain and what he could do. It was important because he was unable to sleep. He was really ready to quit, he was frustrated, and he wasn’t getting anyplace. He had problems with time management. When should he work out? Nothing was working for him. So we sat down and we put something together, and I began to find out that he was suffering from what they call a fight-and-flight reflex, which all attention deficit or attention disorder people have. That is where you have a minus and a plus that goes with adrenaline and when you see it over to the left of the sympathetic nervous system, you will see the minus. When you see a minus like that, it means that there is a lot of adrenaline being secreted at the wrong time. It’s a constant. The fight-and-flight reflex can also go with the people in high stress. They don’t have time in attention disorder to have this picture show. So he was in an anxiety situation, was stressed, and was of course excreting cortisol and was not feeling well.
So my job was to have him move from the sympathetic up to the very sympathetic. Since working with Gary, I’ve had lots of swimmers that had to move up the line. We got him up to where there was confidence, calmness and endorphins in all of this, and we had to do it in a certain way. It was not a secret weapon, but it was definitely a way that had never been used before - that was because Gary had attention disorder - he lived in what we call the Beta Brain Wave. And he could not relax in Beta - Beta is a very thinking wave - and we had to get him into an Alpha Brain Wave. The only way to do that, that I could figure out at the time, was by using neurotechnology which was light and sound.
Hypnosis had been no good, because the sports phycologists had tried hypnosis, but because attention disorder people live in Beta, you cannot hypnotize them easily. So hypnosis was not necessarily very good. I read a study by Herbert Benson about how to get into the Alpha state, and to visualize his swim. Now it may be a surprise to you, but visualization takes place in the Alpha Wave. We will get to the waves in a minute. Imagery takes place in Beta. So I began to quickly try to get him to visualize and have an image and he was an extraordinary imagery ability person because of being in the Beta Waves. So what we had to do then was to take this, and through using light and sound, - we’ll show it to you with the lights flashing and the sound going - and it actually came into his situation through his eyes and ears and merged with the brain waves. After quite a few sessions we were able to get him into Alpha, but we had to go up to the Beta Brain Wave and come down and I’ll explain that in a minute, just try to remember what I said.
What we were after was a relaxation response. Relaxation response is needed because that is the way you get into the zone.That is the doorway to the flow of the zone - through relaxation and bilateral synchroning. We got that done through sensory stimulation. It didn’t take very long, and it worked beautifully. Gary still travels with us as do many, many other swimmers. We got a card the other day from Carla Gertz who was having trouble swimming the 800. She would get so nervous after 200 meters that she became ill. After using the protocol that we put together for her, we got a card from Spain saying that she got a silver in the 800. And at the bottom it said, “I don’t get sick anymore.” Which tells us again, that she’s developed the relaxation response and is able to do that. That’s very, very important, because if you are in the relaxation response, your heart rate slows down, you have slower respiration and you need less oxygen, and your blood level lowers in lactate acid when you’re in a relaxed state. So it’s very important to know how to get into relaxation.
Before I stop too many brain waves, let’s talk about what they are. You probably know this, but I always go through this because every time I write a program for the light and sound units, I have to put down a little table of what they are and yet I’ve lived with them for years. The brain waves are Delta, Theta, Alpha, Beta. Think of “Drink TAB.” Delta is the lowest, then Theta, then Alpha, then Beta. “Drink TAB.” Beta is the highest, it’s the most rapid brain wave, it’s a normal waking state, your eyes are open, you’re focusing on the world outside yourself - this is an important thing to remember. Especially in swimming. Many swimmers I see and many athletes I see, cannot focus outside themselves at the proper time. Well if they’re in Beta, they can do that. If they are not in Beta, they cannot. You can deal with concrete and specific problems if you’re in Beta. You’re alert, you’re aroused, you have concentration, you have cognition and you’re responsible for yourself and for control. Now, one thing that can happen in Beta is that you can get an excessive amount - because of stress, because of anxiety. So that’s about the only negative part of Beta. But Beta is a good place to be.
Alpha - I just told you to “Drink TAB” - OK, we’re going backwards, Alpha is what we call the “hertz.” Hertz are cycles per second. How fast something moves. It is an electrical normination for brain waves or electric waves, or all kinds of waves. Hertz - Hz - cycles per second. The cycles per second for Beta are 13 Hz on up. I don’t know that we know how high. In our light and sound unit we don’t go over 18. You don’t need to. Many people who are making these go up to 40’s and 50’s, it is not necessary to go that high. Now in Alpha we have 8.1 Hz to 13 Hz. The middle part. That’s a slower brain wave than the Beta. You have quietness, you’re relaxed, you’re somewhat mentally unfocused, you’re calm, it’s a pleasant state, it’s a visualization state and it’s the “Zone” state. When somebody’s in the “Zone,” in the flow, they’re in an Alpha state, just pleasantly non-focused, just going.
In Theta it’s 4.1 to 8 Hz. It’s a slow powerful rhythmic wave. This is one place where you can change a belief system, somebody thinks, I cannot get through this swim. I cannot do this, if you make a tape for them, and you play it programed that’s in Theta, you can actually help them unlearn and relearn by listening to your tape while using the machine. It’s sort of a twilight state and it’s a learning state. Delta is very slow and that’s where you sleep, that’s 0 to 4 Hz. It’s kind of an unconscious thing. The one thing you want to know about Delta is that you can have people secrete growth hormones and healing hormones during this time. So that’s very important to know. Then you would use a program for that. It’s a very deep relaxation state.
Now for Gary, we used the Sportlink and we got results in 3 to 4 sessions, where he was more relaxed, focused and rested. And he was ready to swim. He was no longer fatigued. He was able to achieve a relaxation response and he decreased his adrenaline drain and therefore he improved his neuromuscular system and his motor ability. He had no more fight-and-flight when he wanted to control it. He was ready for workouts, and then we came to the time, the energy.
Energy is a very important thing for all athletes. When I work with athletes, I ask them, “When is your best time to train? When is your best time to perform?” Some of them have no idea. They know when they don’t want to, They don’t know when they can. So one of the things I wanted to teach you today and you may already know these things, is how to plot a peak and a trough period for energy for your athletes. Now what you do is put down the time that they get up, and the time they go to bed. And then you put hours all the way through that. Ask them for almost a week to mark 279 on this line when they feel the lowest, or the sluggish or the tiredest, or the least attentive, or whatever. When you get that, then the trough period is when they’ve made a mark. Draw your circle and the top is your peak and the bottom is the trough. Now, do you want them swimming during a trough period? Not if you can help it. You want them training or swimming during a peak period if at all possible. But we can’t do that for everybody, with Gary we could do that. Or some of the other Olympians that I work with, we can do that. But the kids that go to school, you have to work with the timing.
One of the things that we do before a performance for kids and you can see age groupers, juniors, seniors who work through the peak performance center at the Phoenix Swim Club. Or before an event, they will have the lights on or they will have a Walkman with the music that they used during the training period with the lights. Because the minute the brain hears that music, it goes to that state that it has learned. So they don’t even have to use the glasses down in the ready room or any place like that, they can just be listening to the Walkman.
Anybody who wants to know how to write protocols or what to do, I’m here for the next two days to help you do that. I will sit down with you individually and help you. It’s very important to know how to do some of these things and it makes such a change in the swimmer and the athlete that it’s actually fun to do. What we wanted was to achieve a relaxation response and you can do that, but there’s a certain way to do that. You want to make sure that you have the peak and the trough. Now, if you are traveling, or if they are off of their time, you can actually use neurotechnology 15 to 20 minutes before they swim to bring the brain wave to a peak period. They ultimately can learn to that themselves.
This is not something that you are married to for the rest of your life. It’s like training wheels on a bicycle. Once you feel that state - we had some climbers - what do you call that when you climb without ropes? I know what I call it, but i don’t know what the real name for it is. Where they go up the face and they are not using ropes? The climber knows how to meditate all of these things and he was in our office the other day and he put on the neurotechnology instrument and within a second he was there - because his brain knew exactly where it was to go. He was amazed at the quickness of which this worked. This is not something you can’t teach, this doesn’t replace you, has nothing to do with anything that you know, it’s just a quicker way to get things done in a slower environment when people don’t have a lot of time.
The energy cycle mapping - the only problem with this is if you have a person who has attention deficit disorder, then you have to be a little bit careful about what you’re doing, with the light and sound. I can help you with that. The thing that you have to remember is that 1 out of 10 of your swimmers is an attention deficit person. There’s 17 million people, so if you’ve got kids in what you call the “clown lane” or the “don’t listen lane,” or the “get over there lane,” many of those kids are kids that cannot pay attention, they have not a clue of what you are saying. They don’t hear you. So if you have something to tell them, you need to tell them when they’re up on the deck - right in the right ear - and you can see the difference that happens with them or to use neurotechnology for them before they swim and then they will be on. This can be used twenty to thirty minutes before practice and it’s for peak performance.
For instance, as well as you have the kids who don’t pay much attention or the people you have who are so analytical, they squeak, every little movement is analyzed. I see this because I work with some European Olympians whom I wish I had the ability to analyze like they do, the only problem is, they couldn’t stop it. They couldn’t stop analyzing. So they get up on the block and they think, “OK, my arm was kind of - yeah, and ...” and the problem with that one is, that you don’t swim well in the left brain, that is where you analyze and train. But when you swim for the gold, you go into the right. And I tell them, OK, swim to Hawaii, forget about how you swim at that moment. Now not during training, but during performance, so it is very important for people to be able to cross over, and to learn how to cross over and there are many ways to do it.
If you see a swimmer who is training with us, for instance on the block, you might see a left hand going - just somebody standing up instead of flicking both, jumping up and down, you’ll see this left hand go - why is that? Turns on the right brain. That’s it. Now the way to do it is to put your finger aside your nose, take a deep breath and the right brain is turned on. You want them to turn on the left brain? Put a finger aside the left nostril. Always put your finger on the side you want to turn on. You close the right nostril and the right brain is turned on. So there’s a lot of little ways to do that and if you think about that you will feel it. You’ll feel that turn on.
There are ways to get over there and you need a bridge to cross. The bridge is called the corpus callosum. We made a discovery the other day that Bob (my assistant) doesn’t like to hear about, but the fact is that women have 10 more fibers in the corpus callosum then men. Whatever that says to you. Corpus callosum is the middle inside of the brain where you can cross over. Now children up to 7 and 8 don’t cross that bridge. They live in the right side. They stay in the right side. After 8 they should have crossed. If they’re not crossing, then they have developmental delays. One of the best places in the world for these kids is in the water because it is the best tibular stimulation. We have physicians in Phoenix sending kids to the Phoenix Swim Club for developmental delays because of the vestibular movement. The vestibular movement in the water signifies something at the base of the brain to a place called the Reticular Activating System and we call him RAS, and as he opens that door, that’s when learning takes place and not until. So all the time your swimmer is in the water, that door is open. Ready for learning.
We have in our peak performance lab a bed that goes around, a vestibular training bed and a chair that our swimmers are in, our athletes are in every day that they are there. The reason for that is that it dips 8 inches and it bathes the brain in blood and it also does the vestibulous stimulation so that anything that is put into the ear phones becomes learned and not a stimulus response, but a learned behavior. And I presume that’s what you want mostly, it gets these kids or people to learn what you want them to know. So remember that you need that bridge, and that the body itself crosses over every 90 to 120 minutes, so if you get a time when somebody is not working out right, just give them a second to cross over, because many times that’s what’s happening.
Both hemispheres are important for preparation, we all know that bilateral sychroning when both sides of the brain are coming to a point is the point of excellence. Right? But then we have to, very quickly, just for a second, get over to the right side for that award winning performance. That’s a relaxed, creative, free to go into the “Zone,” into the right. That’s where the winning takes place. Now hemispheric synchronization checks out everything. You don’t hear very much that is going on, and that is where your efficiency of learning and performance takes place. That’s what you call the “Zone.” That’s where it is. You can’t will yourself and push yourself into the “Zone,” you have to flow into the “Zone” - because it is in the right brain with things just being OK.
The ingredients of swimming are being able to access this kind of thing along with nutrition, time management, rest and recovery, mental training, hard work, dedication. And of course the love of the sport, which is the most important fact of all of this. If you’re not having fun, you’re not going to be a winner. It it’s always the hardest work in the world when you hate it and you’re not going to have many medals. All these things make up the good athlete. One thing that is different from that is you’ve got to be able to handle the stress to achieve maximum results.
Where do you get stress? We work with high profile athletes also. We have a golfer on the senior tour who came to me to work for a week. He’d been probably the top money winner for many, many years. Money was not a big thing to him. He was on the senior team though and he was not winning, and this was bothering him. He didn’t want to shot anything over 75. So we worked and worked and found out that what had happened was that actually he was bored, he was losing attention and he had forgotten how to love the game. So in working with him I noticed he’s pulled money the last six times out. What he has done has come back into fold, and he already knew how to do that. Sometimes it takes a wake-up call. He uses his Sportlink every day, plus a nutrition program that we put together.
Handling stress is very important and I noticed with the kids, and I’m surrounded by swimmers, including my own son who has severe attention deficit disorder, is now a masters swimmer, so my entire life is swimming. There’s nothing that goes on in our house that is talked about that is not swimming. I’ve learned a great deal about swimming all at once. And it’s very exciting to me just to stop in the middle of all this, I’d like to stop and really congratulate you and thank you for what you do for kids. Those of you who work with children, and for adults, the fact that you have something that teaches them structure and all of the different things that you teach them, throughout the day, it’s amazing. That’s probably one thing that will keep us going, because in other areas, kids are being taught many, many of the wrong things and that things don’t matter. And you’re teaching them time management, and teaching them loyalty, you’re teaching them a lot of things and I think you should be commended for that. And you certainly have my applause for it. I had no idea what went on with swimming a year ago. Swimming to me was when you got wet and had to use a hair dryer. It had no meaning at all.
I do watch kids as they go through taper, and I didn’t quite understand what taper is, and I still don’t understand totally what taper is. (inaudible audience remark) OK, I’m glad to hear that because I’m trying to learn, but it seems to all be different. I noticed though that some things happen with kids, and with adults too while preparing - there’s some stress that goes with that. Sort of an anxiety. Like - am I getting too much rest , am I not getting enough rest, what am I doing, and this is sort of how light and sound can come into this. When we were on the airplane I was using the new unit that we have and I was told to put away the toy. It looks sporty, and it is cute. And I have to tell you that neurotechnology started out with a machine as big as this blackboard. $25,000.00. This was 8 years ago. The newest light and sound machine on the market is ours and it’s very small. So it’s come a long way and it’s easy to carry. We’ve gone to amber lights and we’re using minoral sounds, which means one sound goes here, one goes here and you hear the third sound in a very low frequency, because that’s what the brain in the body likes, not high pitched sounds. So this is what’s being used. It’s a technology that’s been around a long time, it is certainly not something that I developed, it’s been around since about 1930.
We knew that brain waves were electric and had frequency, and we knew that electricity had frequency. So what happens is the lights are at a frequency like a brain wave that I told you about, and the brain sees that, and because they speak to each other, in frequency, they merge. And then the brain goes off with the lights and the big responsibility here is the programs that are written, where they go, what they do. Up until a year ago, most of it was for out of body experiences, relaxation, fun. But I guess it’s been longer then that, two years ago, I started using it for accelerated learning like Lazonoff’s Techniques. The reason we haven’t used light and sound is because Lazonoff who is Bulgarian, an accelerated learning specialist, was using 60 beats per minutes. And the American brain couldn’t keep up with it, we can only go 57, 58. I had to study at Arizona State University where we still had a lab and we had to slow that down.
The way we slowed that down was with light and sound. You will see kids out there with these just before finals, out on the grounds with the lights going - try to picture it. It’s very useful now, it’s safe and the only people who should not use this are people who have phonic stimulated epilepsy. I have some in my practice who are not a problem, but for your liability, you do not want to put this on a child who has epilepsy. It could invoke a seizure. I work with probably 4,000 people, I’ve never had that happen. But it has happened once or twice in misguided, high level frequency programs. I don’t want to scare you off on this, I just want to tell you. You know people can drown too and you don’t keep them out of the water. So it’s the same kind of thing. The good that it does is very important.
Now during taper, you can take away the stress of all of this by giving them schedules, and you know how to do that, I don’t have to tell you that. You can for instance though, take your Sportlink, use session 8 which is relaxation response session and help them balance themselves one time during the day. For instance if you want a positive mental attitude then there’s a program that works with the Limbic System. The part of the brain that does that kind of thing. And helps you do a tape that you make unlearn what they are worried about. This is what happened with Carla Gertz, unlearn what they are worried about and put the positive in. The body has to take out something before they can put it in. In the Limbic System, in the brain. As far as increasing positive influence, which everybody wants to do, use session 4 the Sportlink. Ernest Lawser did some research on the psychology of mind body healing and found that the Limbic System actually translates into molecules - those negative or positive things that you hear. Of course that’s one of the basics of NLP, Neurolistic Programing. So if somebody is speaking negative things, you must say to them, out of your mouth into your brain. Because actually it becomes a neuron, a heard impulse that goes through a synapse that literally becomes a neuron and stays there until it’s replaced.
So it’s very difficult to get negative things out of peoples minds. But you can do that if you do it the right way. And we are going to have a learning guide with ours, hopefully that’s better than any, to teach you how to use this in many, many areas. That’s also never been done. The light and sound. Now to guard against anxiety, which is one of the biggest things that I see, Dr. Herbert Benson told us how to get rid of guilt and unpreparedness and getting to the relaxation response. You can do that.
One of the things that I find, is that people will talk about visualization and mental imagery in the same breath. They are not the same. They take place in two separate parts of the brain. They take place in two separate brain waves, Visualization takes place in Alpha, mental imagery takes place in Theta. So you need to know that. Now if you’ve got a kid that’s all over the pool in the clown lane, that kid will be able to image. Show him a video of what you want him to do, he can image that in his own body and he can do that. That’s why they are such great swimmers. It’s hit that right “I care for nothing” - GO. It’s the kid that’s good in geometry, the kid that’s good in math, in science, that’s in the left side. But can’t turn loose of that analytical to goal. So the kid that doesn’t listen to you, the kid you have the trouble with, could end up being one of your best swimmers. If you can just get his attention. The physiological timing situation that happens with swimmers can be dealt with.
We’ve put into this machine, two jetlag programs, one for rest and one to wake. And it’s written if you go east to west every three hours you use it a certain way. Go west to east you use it a different way. The reason that this works is that you know what jetlag is I’m sure, it’s the lack of light. That’s the difference in where you were and where you’re going, so we use light more or we use light less depending on the travel. I think that this is something that will be very, very useful, for long trips or even short trips. I used it coming here, I use it a lot. And it’s just a wake-up call, a very short period. That’s another thing, in the Sportlink we have a five minute program for preparation just before a swim. We have a 15 minute program - we realize that people don’t have a lot of time. The only long program is the program that we use for sleep. If you cannot sleep, we have an 80 minute program, the reason for that is that after one hour of sleep, there is something called intermittent insomnia. People sleep for an hour and then they wake up. So this program goes past the hour into that next segment so that you don’t wake up. There is a lot of success with that.
There is a program, I’ve forgotten what program number it is, so that energy lag, that jetlag, the energy cycle need is something that is useful that way. Loss of mental balance is a theta-beta session. The research has already been done, I did not do the research, we built the machine around other peoples research, and then ended up doing our own. Dr. Jacklin Godfrey has realized that through research, mental balance is gotten by a theta-beta session. So our session in there is to promote focus, perfect timing, positive arousal 282 and energy by using the theta-beta wave in a protocol.
Loss of energy suggests a lower beta session, you can’t just drive. Dr. Zitzeng Leholley, has a research on how a performance and power balance and that would be relaxed alertness, concentration, external orientation. Where am I - what’s the pool like - what does it smell like - and bilateral synchroning. So if you use session 6 this is what it promotes. The extended secretion of adrenaline is very important and Maxwell Kabe has a report that you can move with the sympathetic if you move with the line. Remember, we had it from the minus to the plus, you can move from the sympathetic to the parasympathetic in fact in my office we can do it in three minutes. Three minutes is about the lowest that we have had it happen. And I have biofeedback which we have by the way up in room 233. We would be very happy to hook you up and let you see how that works. Any of this you can come up and try and do, just see Bob to make sure that everybody is not there at the same time because we only have two units and one biofeedback unit.
Sometimes inadequate oxygenation is a problem. Kids get tense and they just don’t have enough air. If you use the relaxation response or you can use the brain buttons. So right now put the pencils down, and the pens down and find your thymus, go down to about your first or second rib as far as you can go, and come up. Push up on you hip, your chest coming up, and do that about 10 times, and you’ll feel the blood in your carotid arteries going up. Just travel up. So this is another thing that you can get them to do, that increases oxygenation. Blood flow to the brain. Another way to wake yourself up is take your 3 fingers find where your jaw opens both sides, always do everything both sides, and massage this and go round, and around in a clockwise motion. Don’t do this easy, just get in there now how many of you have pain? This is why you do, because the muscles and the nerves , every nerve to the brain is right in here, so that is why it hurts so badly. So if you will very gently massage that 4 or 5 times a day, both clockwise and counterclockwise, you will feel it.
In the Peak Performance Center we use light and sound with world class athletes - seniors, age groupers, all of these. One thing that’s interesting is that the use of sensory stimulation light and sound does control the autonomic nervous system and just for every day working and being it’s very important to be able to do that. We have people at Merrill Lynch for instance who want peak performance. For A-T-&-T they come to the office and they have their own machine and for 15 minutes they stop their work and they use that and their mental clarity and their lack of stress is much, much better. So there’s lots of things that you can do with this. It’s important to know that if you are going to have an anti-anxiety producing situation you’ve got to produce anti-anxiety chemicals.
Some of the things that you can have are an increase in secretion, beta endorphins, serotonin, testosterone and the growth pain hormone, by using delta for instance, we talked about that before. You can have more coherent brain activity, quicker reaction and focus by using what? Maybe an alpha maybe a low beta You can have more fluid muscle movement , effortless rhythmic and less injuries, by having a relaxation and I know you do stretching, but some people, especially children don’t stretch to the limit. So it’s very useful to them to be able to have these chemicals secreting. Now for Masters swimmers, it’s real exciting, because you know that after 30 (which nobody in here is there yet), I just want to tell you what’s going to happen. When you get to thirty, you quit secreting the growth hormone, and therefor you have less pain controlling hormone, so you have more pain. You begin to have less muscle tissue, you have less energy, and you sleep in delta, a great deal less. Now if you want to keep yourself below 30, you can use a program to sleep in delta. Therefore you can secret more growth hormones. So we are not saying it’s an anti-aging situation, but believe me, I use it, ‘cause I’m almost there.
The sensory stimulation is useful in lots of ways, it is not however there to replace anybody or anything as far as workouts are concerned. It’s simply to help people quickly become better and have a higher peak performance. I’m running research so I get to use it on lots of people we don’t use it, it’s not a medical instrument, we don’t talk that it’s a medical instrument at all. I use it for relaxation. But it’s amazing what relaxation does. We’ve had people who were on Kemo therapy, who after the first time, were deathly ill, have never been ill since. There are people with migraines who come to relax who don’t have migraines any more. We have people with Lupus, fiber mialga, all of these are auto immune diseases caused by what? The autonomic nervous system and stress and they can be used for that and of course the most exciting use is using it with the attention deficit disorder. That is because these people live in the right side of the brain and have not crossed over. For some reason they don’t cross over. They are supposed to by 7 or 8 but they don’t so they live in the right side they are: Einstein, Whoopi Goldberg, Dustin Hoffman, Edison, all of these are brilliant, brilliant people. But they cannot manage their lives, they cannot manage anything analytical, so they need to be taught that. We’ve gotten into our schools now the situations that the child can’t sit down, he can’t learn. So many children are brought to us because they have been put on medication and because in our state, attention deficit disorder is brand new. We don’t even have any legislation to take care of them. You have to be learning disabled. So it’s extraordinarily exciting to see them come around and be able to do their math, to be able to sit down, to be able to improve, but the first thing we do with them is put them in the water. We will talk about improving groups and getting more of these kids in. If you’ve got a big enough “clown lane” then you can certainly handle them, there’s a way to do it.
Light and sound is used all over. It is used all over the world for healing, boosting immune systems, T-cells have been measured, increases strength, enhances muscle tone. It’s used in China, for relaxation and learning. It’s used in Japan for stress reduction for business men. Korea it’s for sports, peak performance. Russia is for learning and sports. Only the elite sports people of course have it in Russia. The only person who would not be able to have one would be Popov because he seems to be able to do those things himself, someway or other he has learned how to do that. So we might be a little careful about sending one over for that. Germany is stress reduction and learning, France is sports and peak performance and England is peak performance, learning and relaxation. So you see it’s used all over the world, it’s used the least amount in the US.
So we want you to come and try it, it doesn’t make any difference whether you use it with weekend warriors, or Olympic athletes. Everybody has a skill level and they have an athletic ability and they have a peak potential. This is to help them reach that and help you because we are all capable of that peak potential whether it’s in athletics, whether it’s in business, education, or personal life. I appreciate you coming.
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