First Meeting On Optimal Functioning

Meeting Vision

The vision of this meeting is to bring together the wide range of people using diverse practices and approaches to help people function better in all aspects of life, including work, sport, school, health,  creativity, developmental stages, states of consciousness, character, and mental and physical   functioning. Each speaker was invited to discuss her/his model, vision and cases or examples of special techniques or approaches.
After all have presented, a summit meeting will be held, discussing the future of the field and ways the presenters and registrants can further move the field  forward.   Plans for the next meeting will begin.

held February 5, 1998, Palm Springs California

Optimal Functioning 2000 Third Annual Meeting, Feb 3,4 Palm Springs, CA

Check out the 1999 Meeting on Optimal Functioning abstracts

Click here to order the recording of the entire 1998 meeting: Audio:$99/ Video $149 & $7/$12 shipping

Article on Politics of Self Regulation Responsibility, Consciousness & Optimal Functioning versus illness care

Optimal Functioning Central

speaker and topic listing and abstracts

Meeting Speakers

John Anderson: Neuro-technology in the classroom - a multi-faceted approach to training the mechanisms of learning.
Valdeane Brown: Peak Performance: “Get OFF it” and Take out the Garbage
Tom Budzynski:  Priming Performance in Mid-life
Dan Chartier: Peak performance in Golf
Jon Cowan: Mastering the Concentration-Relaxation Cycle for Peak Performance
R. Adam Crane: Integration of Mindfitness, Motivation & Neurofeedback Strategies
Les Fehmi: Optimization of Function: Attention to Attention
Thomas Hawes: Accessing The Zone
Michael Hutchison: Dimensionality & Exceptional Functioning;   Some Tools and Techniques for Optimal Dimensionality
Rob Kall Optimal Functioning; Old wine in  a new bottle:  a new and old paradigm of health and functioning
Rob Kall    The Varieties of Positive Experience & Good Feelings; Anatomy Training, Integration
Lynda Kirk EEG Neurotherapy and the Creation of Grammy Award Winning Music: A Model and Case Study  
Stephen Larsen The Tao of Neuroscience:  Len Ochs' Magic Lights and the Realization of  Cortical Flexibility
Joel Lubar Determining Optimal EEG Patterns For Enhancing Performance in Specific Tasks
Judith Lubar A Family Systems Perspective of Optimal Functioning and how it can enhance individual EEG performance.
Linda Mason Emotional Well-Being, Energy & Excellence: One Approach To Optimal   Performance Training Utilizing NF
Carol Schneider Optimal Self Functioning in the Eastern and Western Philosophies & Medicine: Integrating the 2 Worlds
Terry Patten  The Heart of the Mind Matter -- Insights Derived from a Systems View of Optimal Functioning
Gary Schwartz Optimal Functioning And The Energy Of Integrity
Mari & Paul Swingle Optimizing Second Language Learning
Mary Jo Sabo Peak Performance Training in a Public School
Lynda Thompson- The Ideal Performance State
Linda Vergara Optimal Performance for Children at Risk
Bob Whitehouse   Prime Performance; S.Q.R.T.  for Success
Sue Wilson Periodization:  "Mapping Your Way to Success"
Anna Wise The High Performance Mind

Optimal Functioning Summit Meeting Panel

Meeting Abstracts

Opening the meeting: Optimal Functioning; a new and old paradigm of biofeedback, health and functioning
Rob Kall  see my article, published in the Spring 1998 Biofeedback Magazine

Neuro-technology in the classroom - a multi-faceted approach to training the mechanisms of learning.
John Anderson
New Visions School (NVS) is a laboratory for the application of neuro-technology in the public school classroom.  Students at NVS have many characteristics, which are commonly thought to be barriers to developing optimal functioning.  Eighty percent of NVS students qualify for free or reduced cost lunches.  Nearly all NVS students are eligible for special education or Chapter One services.  More than 50 percent come from single parent families and 65 percent are African American, Native American, or members of other minority groups.  Most live in inner city neighborhoods and have limited access to resources.
In addition to these obvious factors which are often associated with educational failure, these same children tend to experience significant developmental challenges.  They often grow up in households where they are not allowed to go outside due to the perceived danger of their neighborhoods or due to limited financial or transportation resources, limiting opportunities for sensory stimulation.  They often do not receive adequate nutrition, and they rarely have adequate medical care. This environment often results in delayed development of, or damage to the nervous system and visual and auditory perceptual pathways
A study in 1989 and 1990 determined that in a group of inner city children (n= 44, ages 5 to 7 years),  66 percent had visual perceptual problems compared to a group of children from an affluent neighborhood (n= 58, ages 4 to 6 years) of which only 5 percent were found to have visual perceptual problems.
Ten NVS students with various learning delays who were given the SCAN, an auditory test, showed a left ear preference 93 percent of the time. Right ear preference is considered optimal for language processing.
Thirty students were tested by Hartvig Jensen et.al.  Of those with left ear processing problems (due to illness, etc.) but with normal right ear processing ability, only 5 percent had learning problems.  Of the students who had right ear problems and favored their left ear for auditory processing, 44.5 percent had identified learning problems.
More than a third of NVS students were given the TOVA or the Conners’ CPT during the ‘96-’97 school year.  All were at least .5 SD below the typical range on one or more scales, indicating attention problems.
Most of these same children have physical laterality problems such as mixed dominance of hand, foot and eye preference.
What can be done for these children?  Simply using one approach is inadequate and may not help them achieve their optimum potential.  All areas of functioning must be screened, assessed and addressed with
appropriate interventions.  New Visions School has developed and adopted programs to address these developmental issues.  We believe the human organism is resilient and can be encouraged to develop to its fullest potential with the right interventions.   EEG Neurofeedback, Audio/Visual Stimulation (AVS), Hemisphere Specific Auditory Stimulation (HSAS), Vision Therapy, and Neuro-Physiological Programming (NPP) all serve to encourage the development of effective sensory, cognitive, and regulatory neural pathways.

Peak Performance: “Get OFF it” and Take out the Garbage 
Valdeane Brown
Neurofeedback has been used in the treatment of many conditions including ADD, depression, substance abuse, and PTSD.  It has also been used to heighten states of awareness, to deepen meditative experiences, and to increase health and well being.  The term Peak Performance has been applied to these latter proactive or health promoting uses.   This term is unfortunate, however, because it implies a hierarchy of consciousness in which it seems that Peak Performance occurs at the “top of the mountain” of human existence.   Western culture has idealized expert performance as the ultimate indicator of personal worthiness, and this is especially troubling in an ear of down-sizing.  Many people believe they must appear to perform well in all situations, rather than simply function effectively because, as one Fortune 500 company puts it, “Performance Counts”.  This societal orientation has only heightened the pressure some feel to perform at their highest level at all times, and at all costs, regardless of the value of that performance.  But how can you be at your peak, or be a peak performer, all day long?  What happens when you take out the garbage, correct your child, or do your laundry? What does it mean to be a Peak Performer in those situations?
Optimal Flow and Function suggests that we Get OFF it and realizes that everyday activities are lived optimally by simply being fully present. Being fully present allows one to flow easily, effectively, and efficiently through situations while remaining fully aware and involved in them.  Disorders, and other difficulties in adaptive functioning, can be understood then as ways of not being fully present.  After all, what else does it mean to suffer from anticipatory anxiety besides not being present with what is.  Seen from this perspective, the pursuit of Peak Performance can easily become yet another way of not being present, especially in the mundane activities of living.  The question then is: how can we optimally flow and function within each experience that life presents to us?
This presentation describes the use of a new (21 Hz) and not often used (40 Hz) augment target to help the CNS reorganize optimally: i.e., in ways that allow us to come home to the present moment, where we can optimally flow and function.    When the CNS reorganizes in terms of its underlying non-linear, dynamical structure, we lose the garbage in our own EEG: viz., the 3 & 5 Hz attractors and other constrictions.   Whether we are Michael Jordan or not, we all have our own garbage to take out.

PRIMING PERFORMANCE IN MIDLIFE
Thomas H. Budzynski
Beginning in the 40s the brain often starts to lose hippocampal volume. Illnesses, stroke, build-up of cholesterol, cardiac problems, hypertension and stress are factors that can contribute to this phenomenon. Decreased cerebral blood flow studies have confirmed this condition in patients who complain of cognitive difficulty, particularly memory problems. For centuries, going back to the ancient Greeks, memory exercises and schemas have been used to aid these individuals and such techniques are still today the mainstay of cognitive rehabilitation. A new approach features computer "brain building" software that may be able to increase reaction time, multi-tasking ability, and memory enhancement. It is also possible that EEG biofeedback can increase cerebral blood flow and brain functioning in general, More specifically, this training can reduce slow frequency activity, and, as our research indicates,  it can also increase peak alpha frequency. Both of these parameters, excess theta activity and slowed peak alpha frequency, are characteristic of brains with cognitive difficulties.  Sapolsky and Meaney's research has shown the terrible effect that severe or chronic stress can have on hippocampal functioning and therefore memory and other cognitive abilities. Research with certain short duration stress-eliminating audio cassettes show promise as a mitigator of the chronic everyday stress of today's culture. Moreover, audiocassettes utilizing binaural tones seem to have some capability with regard to increasing peak alpha frequency and reducing slow activity in the theta range. The new  AVS or audio-visual stimulation technique may be of help because it facilitates cerebral blood flow as well as changing EEG activity toward a more optimal pattern. Finally, recent research revealed that the use of positive priming (sub-threshold) phrases resulted in increased performance in elderly individuals. In contrast, negative phrasing resulted in a decrease in performance compared with baseline.

Mastering the Concentration-Relaxation Cycle for Peak Performance
by Jonathan D. Cowan, Ph.D., BCIACEEG
The studies of Dr. Barry Sterman on B2 bomber pilots and other subjects doing continuous performance tests discovered a frontal lobe cycle consisting of a low-voltage, non-specific pattern during intense focus, followed by a theta burst soon afterwards.   The cycle is particularly well-defined over the frontal location (AFz) that overlies the anterior cingulate formation, which has been suggested to be the central portion of the Executive Attention Network (by Posner and Raichle in Images of Mind).
This cycle may be related to the frontal midline theta rhythm found by several Japanese researchers during problem solving, but it is clear from Sterman's work that it is the suppression of theta that corresponds to intense, one-pointed focus.  This presentation will review the evidence for the hypothesis that effective performance involves a continuous cycle between focusing on the task at hand and short microbreaks, which are characterized by frontal theta and widespread increases in alpha output.   Some typical cycles in task performance in sports and work will be identified.   Strategies for teaching more effective cycling will be reviewed.

INTEGRATION OF MINDFITNESS, MOTIVATION AND NEUROFEEDBACK  STRATEGIES
R. Adam Crane BCIA Senior fellow, BCIAEEG, NRNP Diplomate

Global Brain describes Consciousness Processing as becoming the dominant focus of human activity and economic growth within the early part of the next century.  The most inspiring and beneficial aspect of this evolutionary explosion is Performance /Life Enhancement (MindFitness) and Neurofeedback will play a key role.  Many  unique programs are being developed.  The Process (tm) is our offering.
As time allows, we will discuss our synthesis of  Neurofeedback, Logotherapy, The Psychology of Awareness, The Psychology of Mind, Quantum, Chaos and Systems Theory, Profound Attention, Voluntary Simplicity, The New Economics, both the value and difficulty of  integrating heuristic learning principles, and finally the need for at least some of us to develop something like Bohm's Participatory Thought Dialogues in order to enhance progress in our field.
Competition, comparison and consumption are evolving into more effective achievement strategies such as cooperation, voluntary simplicity and application of moment to moment MindFitness principles.  Exhilarating challenges and expansion beyond largely obsolete mental health models await those practitioners who can work in small groups and endure the humbling, the stretching, the humor and the beauty of life amidst the MindFitness Mirrors.  As Elmer Green said, "All of the body is within the mind (including the brain) but not all of the mind is within the body."
The ongoing mental health crisis poses danger to traditional therapy and economic models but  great opportunity for neurofeedback.  MindFitness  appeals to actualizers  (trend setters) thereby feeding the regular practice as well.

Optimization of Function: Attention to Attention
Les Fehmi, Ph.D.
To rehearse today, for tomorrow, is to be half dead.  To be all, or not at all, is the stuff of flexible attention, and its fruit, optimization of function.  Attention is that most fundamental behavior which organizes and integrates all other behaviors.   Can you imagine learning to pay attention so that you can fully accept all events exactly as they occur?
Can you imagine a more optimizing behavior?

Accessing The Zone
Thomas Hawes

DIMENSIONALITY AND EXCEPTIONAL FUNCTIONING:
Some Tools and Techniques for Optimal Dimensionality
Michael Hutchison
Optimal functioning may coincide with a wide variety of EEG patterns, types of attention, levels of arousal, states of consciousness. Is there a source or common denominator of all optimal functioning? Can this root or fundamental source be regulated intentionally?   
One key quality of nonlinear mind-body systems is dimensionality ("the dynamical silhouette of the attractor"). Aspects of dimensionalilty include flexibility, fluidity, sensitivity, and fineness of control. High dimensional states have high degrees of these qualities, and are characteristic of optimal functioning.  Low dimensional states, on the other hand, are predictable, rigid, inflexible. In humans, low dimensionality is directly linked with sickness, injury or age.
Dimensionality is a key to a vast network of interlocked and interdependent systems that make up the whole mind and body, including the cardiovascular, immune, nervous and endocrine systems. Dimensionality, and learning to self-regulate or alter it, may be a key to optimal functioning.
There is evidence that such tools as NF, light-sound, microcurrent stimulation and so on, can increase or alter EEG dimensionality as well as dimensionality of mind-body systems on many levels. CONTROL OF DIMENSIONALITY IS A LEARNABLE SKILL. Body-mind technologies may facilitate and accelerate the learning of this skill, just as the advent of BW biofeedback in the 1960s made possible instrumental self-regulation of BW activity.

What strategies and techniques can be used to regulate dimensionality? These may include a variety of approaches to altering mind-body rhythms and patterns, such as increasing a system's range of motion, flexibility and speed. Some approaches using NF, LS and other tools may include: synchrony/ desynchrony, hemispheric symmetry/asymmetry, establishing a dynamic "sweet spot" or points of stability, and moving to the dynamic boundary between order and chaos.

Rob Kall    The Varieties of Positive Experience & Good Feelings; Anatomy Training, Integration



EEG Neurotherapy and the Creation of Grammy Award Winning Music:
A Model and Case Study
(Presented by Lynda Kirk, M.A, BCIA-C, QEEGT)
Optimal performance is, bottom line, an act of intentional creation. It is the ability to enter a state of creating whatever particular "artform" we choose. It is the ability to create that artform in the best way we can at any specific moment of "now". Optimal performance is getting completely clear about what and how we intend to create, and then removing the limitations that block us from the effortless flow of creating, which is our birthright in connection with the All That Is.
As Michaelangelo was purported to say as he was in the process of sculpting "David", "I do nothing more than remove everything from this inert slab of marble which is not congruent with the image of "David" that burns in my heart, in my mind, and in my soul. My image of "David" already exists in the marble. It is my choice and desire, as well as my soul's purpose, to set him free."
Artforms are myriad. Our artforms may be repairing a car engine, music, golf, sculpting, skiing, teaching, painting, healing, writing, inventing, caring for children, the hungry, the sick, or the needy, and so on and so on. Living our life is an artform.
Associated with each artform is a set of skills that improve the quality of the artform, enhance optimal performance, and allow the creation to flow. There are physical, mental, and transpersonal skills that enhance our ability to enter a state of creating a particular artform.
This presentation will give an example of how EEG neurotherapy can be used to enhance these skills. A case study of a multi-Grammy Award winning musician will be discussed.

The Tao of Neuroscience:  Len Ochs' Magic Lights and the Realization of Cortical Flexibility
Stephen Larsen
The Tao Teh Ching tells us that to become succesful as human beings we must become like water, like clouds, overcoming obstacles by flowing around them, offering no resistance to aggression, inwardly in relationship to all things.  Nice ideal, but how to get there from here...
                We begin neurofeedback at Stone Mountain Center with the FNS protocol, feeding back to the subjects closed eyes, a gently flashing light just off the dominant brainwave frequency.   We record from 21 sites, using the international 10-20 placements, and from our initial measurement, a map is created, ranking the sites on amplitude of brainwaves, and a standard deviation measure that relates to erratic functioning.  The "site sort" allows us now to develop a kind of Tao of treatment, beginning with the healthiest sites.  Gradually we work up toward the worst (most dysregulated, with high amplitudes).
Now what is truly astonishing, and Taoish, is that during the course of this treatment, if we always stay close to the bounds of comfort, disrupting gently, but insistently, the brain's pathological systems (and we have successfully treated closed head and spinal cord injury,  PTSD,  Major Depression, and bipolarity) normalcy, water flowing around the rocks of dysregulation and  coherence, begins to reassert itself.
In this paper and presentation for the pre-conference Intensive, I focus on the already high-functioning people who have undergone the FNS protocol. These include professional athletes and martial artists, computer programmers, doctors and professors, a shaman or two, and practitioners of Zen and other  Mindfulness traditions.  In general, these people have found their own day-to-day functioning improved.  One man said, "The improvements in my functioning are extremely subtle, but unmistakable nonetheless.  I don't have that chatter in my head, standing between me and what I'm doing, for one thing, and I get out of funky states more easily."  Several found themselves suddenly resolving what had seemed to them and others to be "character flaws" such as disorganization and carelessness.  Others found they had more energy and clarity for their spiritual practices.
This presentation looks at the Tao of flexible brain functioning from both a theoretical and practical perspective; includes case histories, handouts, exercises.

Determining Optimal EEG Patterns For Enhancing Performance in Specific Tasks
Joel Lubar
In order to assess EEG during successful and unsuccessful performance of a specific task such as concentrated reading, or an aiming task such as golf putting, recordings and QEEGs can be done under both conditions. Differences obtained can be used in order to establish neurofeedback protocols based on frequency, coherence or even ERP measures. Examples of this methodology will be presented.

Emotional Well-Being, Energy And Excellence: One Approach To Optimal Performance Training Utilizing Neurofeedback
Linda Mason
                  This presentation will outline the procedures and processes for assisting a wide variety of people to enhance their performance in daily living, as well as in athletics, academics, and business.  The rationales  for the assessment interview,  the QEEG, and the subjective rating scale will be discussed. The neurofeedback programs used and the success experienced with them will be described.

The Heart of the Mind Matter
Insights Derived from a Systems View of Optimal Functioning
Terry Patten, founder, Tools For Exploration
What is optimal functioning? Is it faster cognitive processing? Shorter reaction time? These are narrow measures within a small set of parameters of human functioning. They can be improved, but unless the whole system functions better, the improvement of a few cognitive functions can be a little like stretching out a piece of bubble gum. A single wad of gum could be stretched a hundred yards -- but its breadth and depth would be tiny -- its strength and durability tinier still. Let's not identify optimal functioning with approaches that may improve one domain of function at the expense of others -- especially approaches that risk decreasing the balance, integrity, health or flexibility of the whole human being.
What's our best guide to approaches that won't thus distort the mechanism?  Those that check out when viewed in terms of the whole system. This "systems view" of the human being is being articulately championed by Gary Schwartz and Linda Russek, and also by Rollin McCraty and others at the Institute of HeartMath. This systems view has some key implications when applied to measures of the body's natural electropotentials in the context of EEG biofeedback therapy.
EEG activity is always "riding" the much bigger changes in electro- potential generated by the heartbeat. The degree of harmony between brainwaves and heartwaves (entrainment) may be a primary measure of the health of the total human system -- and thus of its capacity for optimal function. McCraty and others at IHM have observed and measured this phenomenon of brain/heart entrainment -- an entrainment between heart rate variability (HRV) cycles and extremely slow (sub-delta) brain activity in the neighborhood of 0.1 Hz. Interestingly, this extremely slow brainwave activity is clearly not artifact, distinct from respiration effects, probably vascular in origin, but under local brain control, and it has been repeatedly observed to be responsive to techniques designed to create "head-heart entrainment." Several studies demonstrating the effectiveness of such techniques on improving objective measures of performance will be cited, and we will consider the implications for the clinical practitioner.
Peak Performance Training in a Public School
Mary Jo Sabo
MaryJo Sabo will discuss the administration of EEG Biofeedback training:  How the biofeedback technologist and supervisory therapist work together with school personnel to enhance student's optimal functioning.

Optimal Self Functioning in the Eastern and Western Philosophies and Medicine; Integrating the Two Worlds.
Carol Schneider
                 The Western idea of Optimal Self-functioning will be compared with the Eastern Philosophies optimal self functioning in Taoism and Hinduism.  Western Thought concern self actualization and living the good life with respect to material success. What spiritual traditions are present concerns the connection of the Individual Person with his/her Individual God.  The Eastern tradition include much less emphasis on the self and more on the interconnections of all beings and either a multiplicity of Gods leading to the universal one-ness or a concept of the universal energy (e.g. the Tao).  There is much less emphasis in Eastern traditions in being successful in the sensory-dependent plane so important to the West, and also much less emphasis on the value of an individual's life, freedoms or rights.
This philosophical difference is reflected in the difference between Eastern and Western medicine.  Both Ayurvedic and Chinese Medicine emphasize the importance of Energy based systems, the Chakhras and the Acupuncture points, and natural healing method (herbs, diets) as opposed to the drugs and technology of the West.  The Energy based systems have much beneficial effects to add to our optimal functioning.
                 These systems, when integrated, have the potential of giving the best of all possible worlds.   Ideas on how this integration might be facilitated will be discussed.

OPTIMIZATION OF ADDITIONAL LANGUAGE LEARNING
MARI K. SWINGLE AND PAUL G. SWINGLE
Research indicator that additional language learning is facilitated by instructional methods that enhance student motivation and arousal.  Language game, for example, have been shown to be an effective method to facilitate vocabulary acquisition.
Although methods for potentiating motivation and arousal in instructional settings are often used, learning enhancers for home use are seldom prescribed.
PEAK LEARNING of Vancouver is an additional language learning service that utilizes neurotherapy techniques to potentiate language acquisition.  In addition to established neurofeedback protocols, students use cranial microstimulators (Alphastim) and the subthreshold audio harmonic (Sub/alpha) to enhance home study of vocabulary.
The application of EEG disentrainment, Alphastim and Sub/alpha for vocabulary learning will be discussed.  Recent data on the effects of Sub/alpha and a related harmonic ATTENTION on EEG alpha and theta will be presented.

S.Q.R.T.  for Success
an optimal performance technique
by Bob Whitehouse, EdD
S.Q.R.T. is a 4 minute technique developed originally for an Olympic contender by Dr. Whitehouse, but can be used for any upcoming experience in which one wants success.    He will guide you through the 4 steps and discuss examples of its use.

Periodization:  "Mapping Your Way to Success"
Vietta E. Wilson  York University
There may be many roads to the mountain top but there are essential elements common to all pathways to the top. Periodization is the art and science of systematically mapping long and short term eleminates necessary to accomplish a goal.  It illustrates steps for motivation, assessment, progress and error detection.  Finally, it allows for a snapshot view of how the different elements necessary for success can be integrated.

THE HIGH-PERFORMANCE MIND
by Anna Wise
We have a finely woven, intricate interrelationship of brainwave frequencies that delicately determines our state of consciousness.
Being able to intentionally alter this combination of brainwave frequencies is an intrinsic part of developing the self-mastery that leads to a high-performance mind - one that can enter the state of consciousness that is most beneficial or desirable for any given circumstance. 
The brainwaves of beta, alpha, theta, and delta are building blocks that, when produced in the appropriate combinations, create what British psychophysiologist and biophysicist C. Maxwell Cade called the awakened mind brainwave pattern.  In Cade's original research with the Mind Mirror EEG, he found these particular combinations replicated in swamis, yogis and people with "higher states of consciousness".  In my work, I have seen the awakened mind pattern not only in temples in the Far East; I have seen it in artists, dancers, musicians, mathematicians, inventors...; I have seen it in the executive offices of multi-billion dollar corporations; I have seen it in people with optimal performance and extraordinary capability in all walks of life.
This awakened mind brainwave pattern combines the intuitive, empathetic radar of the delta waves, the creative inspiration, personal insight, and spiritual awareness of the theta waves, the bridging capacity and relaxed, detached, awareness of the alpha waves, and the external attention and ability to consciously process thought of beta waves, all at the same time. This brainwave pattern can be found during "peak experience" or "peak performance", regardless of the content or intention, in all forms of creativity and high performance.  The awakened mind is also the "ah-ha", appearing at the exact instant of solving the problem, or getting the insight. 
It is not which frequency, but how the frequencies combine, that determines our optimum states of consciousness. Using the Mind Mirror EEG, we look at the interplay within the whole range of frequencies in order to understand what is actually happening within the state of consciousness.  The category of brainwave is distinguished by cluster formation and pattern recognition as well as function and subjective experience, rather than just specific frequencies, allowing for the fluid nature and changing qualities of the varieties of awakened mind patterns.  When reading the movement of the brainwaves displayed through spectral analysis on the Mind Mirror and understanding the states of consciousness represented, it is important to interpret the meaning of the "organization or disorganization" of the pattern as well as the "stability" of the individual frequencies. 
The fundamental requirement for a high-performance mind is that the flow of information between the conscious, subconscious and unconscious is available.  There are two ways of looking at consciousness - the "state" of consciousness, which can be defined in terms of brainwaves, and the "content" of consciousness, which can be defined as the material of the mind - the thoughts, feelings, images, sensations, and attitudes that make up the substance of consciousness.  State and content can be looked at independently or interdependently according to the situation. 
The high-performance mind is a combination of an individual's optimum brainwave state and the content appropriate for the given situation. 

August 5, 98