How did biofeedback begin ?
The biofeedback techniques used to treat patients were developed only recently. The word “biofeedback” is itself so new that it can’t be found in many dictionaries. It was coined in the late 1960s to describe laboratory procedures then being used to train experimental research subjects to alter brain activity, blood pressure, heart rate, and other bodily functions that normally are not controlled voluntarily. At the time, many scientists looked forward to the day when biofeedback would give us a major degree of control over our bodies. They thought, for instance, that we might be able to “will” ourselves to be more creative by changing the patterns of our brain waves. Some believed that biofeedback would one day make it possible to do away with drug treatments that often cause uncomfortable side effects in patients with high blood pressure and other serious conditions. Today, most scientists agree that such high hopes were not realistic. Research has demonstrated that biofeedback can h
