Elizabeth Ann Williams

Introduction to the Electrodermograph

The changing electrical activity of the skin has been used as the basis of the feedback signal for the various measures of electrodermal activity (EDA). Equipment monitoring EDA has been used in a variety of clinical, nonclinical, and research settings: work has been done with hypertensives,2 phobic individuals,3 and women in labor,4 and technique has also been applied to studies of the orienting response.

Experience of Imagined Stressor with Feedback

Using the EMG signal as feedback, one can learn to decrease the tension in the muscle being monitored. In learning this skill, does one’s subjective experience of the imagined stressor producing the muscle tension change? In this lab, you will explore this question.

Home Practice Desensitization

This lab is intended to provide an opportunity to complete the hierarchy you generated in Lab XIII at home.

Guidelines for Learning Unstressing and an Introduction to Modified Progressive Relaxation

The objectives of this instruction set are to become familiar with the procedures and variables essential to learning unstressing (relaxation),2 and to learn a specific unstressing technique, Modified Progressive Relaxation (MPR).

Home Practice Breath Awareness

The objective of this home practice is to: 1. Identify situations during which you hold your breath or gasp. 2. Develop the ability to change this behavior. 3. Observe how a change in behavior affects your experience.

Home Practice Language Use

The objective of this home practice is to continue to: 1. Develop an awareness of one’s verbal behavior. 2. Develop the ability to change this behavior. 3. Observe the effect of such change.

Long-Term Biofeedback Training

The major labs of this manual provide, along with an introduction to biofeedback equipment and experiences in mind/body unity, brief experiences with learning autonomic awareness and control. However, often the learning of autonomic control requires practice over a long period of time. For example, the reversal of clinical pathology has been found to require more than fifty training sessions.2 Biofeedback has been found to facilitate the learning of autonomic control.

Introduction to the Temperature Unit

Temperature feedback has been used both in dealing with vasoconstrictive disorders such as migraine and Raynaud’s disease2 and as a tool to encourage general relaxation (a general decrease in sympathetic arousal).3 In addition, exploration has been done with the technique in facilitating childbirth and optimizing physical performance.4

How Do You Respond to Stress

Remember how your heart rate increased or your heart palpitated, or how you broke our in a cold sweat, or how your stomach sank when you were late for an appointment with your boss? Each of us reacts in ways like these to stressful situations, each with individual physiological specificity. In fact, we tend to respond with the same physiological system(s) time and again. Eventually pathology may manifest itself in that stressed system. Furthermore, it has been found that people who already have a specific pathology tend to respond to stressful event was excessive in that system already burdened by pathology. For example, people with high blood pressure tend to respond to a stressful situation with an increase in blood pressure.

Home Practice Learning Temperature Awareness

One’s peripheral skin temperature changes constantly in response to environmental changes and to any of a variety of stressors. The objective of the following home practice is to (1) develop an awareness of when your hand temperature changes, (2) begin to identify variables that may be causally related to this change (develop internal awareness), and (3) learn to warm your hands when your hand temperature has dropped.