Neurofeedback Therapy for Feelings, Thoughts & Behaviors

In the service of enhanced capacity for relatedness, empathy, and trust . . .

Traditional and innovative approaches to improve attention, anxiety, mood and behavior.

Lora Lonsberry, Ph.D

In private practice for over 20 years and in facilitated groups, I integrate body-centered psychotherapies, traditional cognitive and behavioral therapies, humanistic and archetypal perspectives, and the teachings of several spiritual traditions. Specialties include: relationship and intimacy issues, recovery from past trauma, working through past relationships, body image and self-esteem issues, unlocking the creative process, and deepening spirituality.

Always one to take the road less traveled, beyond traditional methodologies, I have endeavored to incorporate into my work such diverse fields as archetypal psychology as an Associate at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, sacred psychology with Jean Houston’s

Mystery School, Jungian perspectives with Marian Woodman’s BodySoul Rhythms, shamanism with the Holotropic Breathwork of Stanislav Grof and the Earth Vision Circles of Ralph Metzner, and most recently using Neurofeedback to address the spectrum from brain dysregulation to mystic states. Within my columns, "Rhythms of Awakening" appeared in Montana Woman Magazine and "The Awakening Mind" in Community Crossroads, I blended these and other diverse elements into a fabric of therapeutic containment honoring the chrysalis of the Self. For a review of these columns, click on Articles.

“She was a woman who had come to terms with herself, with both her strengths and her losses, and who knew how to balance one against the other in order to be faithful to the 'Mystery’ she served within.

~Emily Dickinson

 

We are a private multi-disciplinary psychotherapy practice dedicated to providing traditional and innovative intervention options for individuals with neurologically based difficulties in their lives. We work with children and adults who have problems with attention, anxiety, mood, social relatedness, learning, and behavior.

Neuroscience and innovation

The last decade has seen an explosion of knowledge about brain function, due primarily to the use of new technologies that permit us to see the brain at work. We closely monitor new findings from neuroscience and carefully evaluate new clinical methods arising out of these findings.

The role of scientific research

We recognize the need for scientific proof of the effectiveness of clinical techniques and methods, and carefully evaluate the scientific foundation and validation for the treatment approaches we offer. However, we also realize that conclusive scientific validation of clinical methods is a very time consuming process, and often takes decades to complete. For this reason, we do offer as an option to our clients some innovative methods that have shown unusual promise in preliminary research and clinical trials. We realize that many people do not want to wait until multiple large studies of a new treatment option are complete, as long as the method is safe and initial studies or clinical experience shows benefit. For this reason, when our study of the literature and others’ clinical experience persuades us that an innovative method offers significant advantages over existing methods, or that this method represents a valuable option for clients to consider when making choices about intervention, we make it available to our clients.

Our approach to intervention

Decades of research has made it clear that every aspect of our psychological functioning is shaped both by biological factors (genetics, brain function, nutrition, and a variety of other factors) and by our experiences – at home in the family, at school, at work, with friends. These two types of influence interact in complex ways: our experience affects the brain and body and our brains and bodies influence our experience.

We are committed to carefully considering all of these factors in understanding the challenges and difficulties our clients face and in devising intervention plans to make for positive change.

For this reason, our approach to intervention is eclectic. We make use of strategies from cognitive behavioral psychology, psychodynamic psychology, attachment theory, family therapy, and other developmental approaches.