The history of biofeedback treatment is not a long one with the term being relatively recent. It has only been around for about four decades and began with studies in how to give people verbal instructions to guide them into a state of complete relaxation. This technique, called Autogenic Training, was developed by a German scientist named J.H. Schiltz. His methods were widely used in Germany and when they were first reported in the US in 1969 by Wolfgang Luthe, this relaxation technique was immediately embraced.
The technique known as biofeedback therapy had its roots in this Autogenic Training, but the biofeedback techniques used today also takes integrates the techniques of Progressive Relaxation, which was developed by Edmund Jacobsen in the 1930’s in the US. This technique used a series of muscle activities to help train patients how to be aware of the tension in their muscles and what they can do to help the muscles relax. The general effect of biofeedback benefits were to reduce the causes and symptoms of stress.
Next was the introduction of Yoga in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Yoga masters demonstrated that practicing this ancient ritual was an exceptional way of relaxing the body. Through this relaxation, a person could help lower blood pressure, heart rate, calm the mind, and reduce stress and the effects it has on the body. So, one could say that biofeedback treatment is a combination of all three relaxation techniques.
During the 1960’s scientists set up experiments using subjects in which they attempted to find out whether people could be trained, using relaxation techniques, to control the activities of the involuntary systems of the body – the activities which naturally occur and over which we have no control, such as our brain function or heart beat. They used instruments to record these activities and allowed the patients to receive the feedback about how their bodies were behaving.
Although these scientists were not able to prove that people can control all body functions because such an expectation was unrealistic, they were successful in showing that people can learn to recognize the signs the body sends them about health and ill-health. When you feel ill, you do so because you recognize changes in the way your body is behaving. You can take your temperature with a thermometer to know if you have a fever, check your weight on the scales or use digital blood pressure machines to check the level of your blood pressure and your heart rate.
If you eat some type of food and feel ill or have heartburn, then this is the feedback to tell you that this food does not agree with your digestive system. By avoiding this food in the future, then you are using biofeedback techniques to keep your body healthy. When you feel stressed, you may display a variety of symptoms that may be similar to that of other illnesses. For example, if you are worried about something, you may develop a headache and you take some medication for it, only to find that this does not relieve the headache or does so for only a short time.
This is your body’s way of telling you that there is something else causing the headache. Therapists engage in biofeedback therapy to help patients learn to recognize the signals the body sends them. They teach patients how to relax so that they can control the way in which the body reacts to different situations. In the case of reacting to stress, through, this therapy can help you identify the things that cause you stress so that you can learn how to cope with the various situations.