NEUROFEEDBACK SESSIONS AND YOGA
At Los Angeles Neurofeedback Center, we love yoga. Some of us are yoga practitioners, some are even yoga teachers. It is effortless to find an overlap between yoga and a Neurofeedback session. They share a common thread. Both yoga and Neurofeedback can bring a client to a relaxed, focused state. Read on to learn more about the overlaps between yoga and Neurofeedback, as well as when one might be more optimal than the other.
What Is a “Yoga Buzz”?
You know the “yoga buzz” you feel after a class. You feel one with yourself and one with the world! That “yoga buzz” feels like a clear-mind and a resilient appetite for life. At the Los Angeles Neurofeedback Center, we call the “yoga buzz” a “calm alert” state.
Our coaches are motivated to connect our clients to that blissful “calm alert” state as easily and efficiently as possible. The best part? In a Direct Neurofeedback session, you can reach that “calm alert” state in very little time. Plus, you do not change clothes or break a sweat. Read on to learn about why you triggered a “yoga buzz.”
What Causes a “Yoga Buzz”?
Sometimes you enter a yoga class feeling like a harried wombat only to glide out after like a powerhouse queen or king. This shift in your experience is due to the poses and breathing balancing your nervous system. We know you are not a “harried wombat,” but that awful feeling is a clue you are lingering too long in overdrive, or, the “fight or flight” state of your nervous system. Through the yoga class, you took the time and inward focus for your nervous system to shift into a different mode: rest and digest. A balance occurred.
Your Nervous System
Your nervous system uses your fingers, eyes, ears to relay information about your world to your brain. Just as there are two sides to a coin, there are two modes to your nervous system. When these modes are balanced, we feel clear headed and capable.
For all our yogi/yogini scientists out there, the relaxation mode is called your parasympathetic nervous system. The alert mode is your sympathetic nervous system. To remember the difference, think of a pair of cozy warm socks you pull on to relax. Pair of warm socks > relaxing > parasympathetic nervous system.
Parasympathetic Mode: Relaxation
Relaxation mode is when your body focuses on its internal work. You are being: resting, digesting, relaxing. Your body digests your food. It eliminates the waste. You do not “think” about how to digest food. You do not stand up and manually digest your food like it’s your job. You sit back, don’t think, and let your body do its thing. But you know how your digestion can go wonky when you’re anxious? It’s because anxiety and racing thoughts are linked to the alert mode of your nervous system.
Sympathetic Mode: Alert
You enter alert mode when you’re stimulated and being pulled outwards to external events and people. We need our alert mode to walk, drive, cook, eat, work, solve problems. The alert mode is scientifically known as the sympathetic nervous system. To remember this, think of a time when you wanted someone to get you. You needed sympathy and you weren’t getting it and you wanted to pull your hair out! Emotional/alert > sympathy > sympathetic nervous system.
Beauty in Balance
One mode is calm, and one mode is alert. When they are work in unison you get “calm alert.” You get your “yoga buzz.” So during the course of a Neurofeedback session, by promptly shifting your nervous system into “calm alert,” we really are returning your nervous system to its optimal state. Just like a yoga class! Read on to learn the dangers of becoming imbalanced.
Stuck in Overdrive
Whether it was a conflict at work or a social disappointment, your thoughts got tense, your body followed suit, and you became a contracted, anxious, perhaps even temperamental, version of your true self. Ugh. Get me off this crazy train! Right?
It’s okay. Going into “fight or flight” is part of being human. The problem is when you get stuck in overdrive. Imagine if a car was stuck in overdrive! That car would be destructive to its own machinery, as well as destructive to anyone in its path. When you are stuck in overdrive it becomes your job to actively make a choice to reboot your nervous system and stop the madness. If you do not actively choose to address your nervous system, breakdowns in your body, mind and emotions will follow. These breakdowns can wreak havoc on your relationships and your livelihood.
Slippery Slope
Say you missed some sleep. At first it was fine because you had a great night out with friends. But the next day, you were distracted or spacey at work. That night you had to catch up on the work you didn’t really do during the day. Afterwards, you couldn’t chill out enough to fall asleep. So now you are more stressed and starting to get bloated or sick. Step by step you are heading to overdrive.
Another example: you have a great new opportunity at work. It means longer hours and you want to do it! You just have to make a trade on your downtime, your relaxation. If you cannot relax, your nervous system won’t shift gears, and you’ll start heading into overdrive. This doesn’t mean you stop working hard. It means you up your self care game. Do your nervous system a favor and read on to learn to actively support it.
Up Your Game
You know your true self. You are not perfect, but you are capable. You like being you. It can feel really good to be you. But sometimes life knocks you off our sweet spot. That’s when you know you need to get to a yoga class.
Yet life gains momentum and you find yourself with less time to get to a class when juggling so many other responsibilities. Pulling on the yoga tights, facing down traffic, can turn the experience into 2.5 hours and leave you as stressed as when you started. Or you are already so drained, the idea of holding Warrior II sends you for the hills.
How great would it be if you had another option. An option that was gentle, non-invasive, and a time-efficient way to get back to your optimal state of mind? Maybe one where you could sit passively and not have to do all the work for once?
Shift States With A Neurofeedback Session
There is. At the Los Angeles Neurofeedback Center, we want to help you get back to your true self. Not just your true self, your optimal self. Maybe even the self you thought you’d never get to see again.
We offer a special priced Neurofeedback session so you can experience how quickly your nervous system can shift states. Allow yourself to experience calmer thoughts, relief from stress, and stopping disruptive thought patterns that might be circulating in and out of your head.
Best yet? You sit and relax while experiencing a Neurofeedback session. You don’t have to change clothes. No spandex required. You don’t have to lift your knee to your nose. No flexibility required. And you have a skilled coach keeping track of your progress.
The most significant benefit to choosing Direct Neurofeedback: the work is enduring. Each session moves you closer to a paradigm shift in your nervous system. And as your nervous system returns to its optimal state… it maintains its optimal state.
We Still Love Yoga
By all means, if you have a yoga practice, keep it up! We do! It’s amazing for your hips, your back, your circulation, your glands. Yoga is an amazing workout. You can do yoga on your own time, anywhere. But you need the discipline to keep it up… and when you are in overdrive that can seem a very hard choice. Doing anything in overdrive can seem a hard choice!
To keep it simple, consider this: yoga is like you turning the light switch on yourself. A neurofeedback session is getting a direct connection to the power while you sit and relax. It’s time to get more by doing less. Come see us at the Los Angeles Neurofeedback Center and experience a neurofeedback session for yourself!
Frequently Asked Questions About Neurofeedback and Yoga
How are neurofeedback and yoga related?
Neurofeedback and yoga both work to regulate the nervous system, but they approach it from different angles. Yoga uses physical postures, breath control, and meditation to calm the body and mind from the outside in, activating the parasympathetic nervous system through deliberate practice. Neurofeedback works from the inside out, directly training the brain’s electrical patterns to produce calmer, more balanced states. When combined, they create a powerful synergy: neurofeedback optimizes the brain’s baseline functioning while yoga reinforces those changes through embodied practice. Many patients at Los Angeles Neurofeedback Center who practice yoga find that neurofeedback deepens their practice and helps them access meditative states more easily.
Can neurofeedback enhance my yoga and meditation practice?
Experienced yoga practitioners and meditators frequently report that neurofeedback accelerates their practice in ways that years of additional practice alone might not achieve. This happens because neurofeedback directly trains the brainwave patterns associated with deep meditative states, particularly the alpha and theta waves that characterize focused relaxation and transcendent awareness. After a course of neurofeedback, many practitioners find they can drop into meditation more quickly, maintain focus during challenging poses, and experience deeper states of awareness during practice. It is like having a personal trainer for your brain that helps you access the neurological states that yoga and meditation are designed to cultivate.
Do I need to practice yoga for neurofeedback to work?
Not at all. Neurofeedback is a standalone treatment that produces significant results regardless of whether you practice yoga, meditate, or engage in any other mindfulness practice. The brain training happens during your sessions at Los Angeles Neurofeedback Center, and the changes occur at the neurological level independent of any other activities. However, patients who do practice yoga or meditation often find that both modalities enhance each other, creating a virtuous cycle where the brain becomes increasingly skilled at self-regulation both during and outside of practice.
What brainwave states do neurofeedback and yoga share?
Research has shown that experienced meditators and yoga practitioners produce distinctive brainwave patterns characterized by increased alpha waves, which are associated with calm alertness, and theta waves, which are linked to deep relaxation and insight. These are precisely the patterns that neurofeedback is designed to train. Studies using EEG monitoring during yoga practice have demonstrated that certain postures and breathing techniques produce measurable shifts in brainwave activity that mirror the goals of neurofeedback training. This neurological overlap explains why the two practices complement each other so effectively.
Is neurofeedback better than yoga for stress relief?
This is not an either-or question, and framing it as a competition between the two misses the point. Neurofeedback and yoga address stress through different mechanisms that complement rather than compete with each other. Neurofeedback is particularly effective for people whose stress has become deeply embedded in their brain patterns, creating anxiety, insomnia, or emotional reactivity that persists even when external stressors are removed. Yoga excels at providing immediate stress relief through the body and building ongoing resilience through regular practice. The ideal approach for many people is to use neurofeedback to reset the brain’s stress patterns and yoga to maintain and reinforce those changes over time.
Can neurofeedback help with the mental aspects of yoga?
Many yoga practitioners find that the physical aspects of practice come naturally, but the mental components, such as quieting the mind during meditation, maintaining present-moment awareness, and achieving the mental stillness described in classical yoga texts, remain frustratingly elusive. Neurofeedback can directly address these challenges by training the brain to reduce the excessive beta activity associated with a racing mind and increase the alpha and theta patterns associated with mental quietude. Patients at Los Angeles Neurofeedback Center who practice yoga frequently describe breakthroughs in their meditation practice after beginning neurofeedback training.
See how we combine neurofeedback with complementary approaches for optimal brain health.
