Your neurofeedback trainer

I'm Richard Foulkes, your certified NeurOptimal® neurofeedback trainer. I've been interested in human wellbeing since studying psychology at college. Like many people today, my working life has taken a few twists and turns, with previous careers as a translator (German into English if you’re wondering!) and a chartered surveyor. More recently, I've trained and studied as a therapist with a particular interest in trauma, qualifying as a hypnotherapist in 2022 (Hypnotherapy Practitioner Diploma). However, the field of hypnotherapy isn't entirely aligned with my professional values, which led me to look at other modalities.

The translator in me has issues with mis-spelling the word ‘better’! However, when I qualified as a therapist, I called my practice 'betta being', a name capturing all of my influences in the field. Experts from Alice Miller to Stephen Porges taught me the importance respecting all aspects of our internal experience and the sequence in which it occurs in the tiers of our nervous systems and triune brains. The 'betta', then, stands for 'Body', 'Emotions', 'Thoughts', 'Then'...'Action' or 'Awareness' (among other As!). And the 'being' comes from the existential philosophy that inspired Carl Rogers, originator of person-centred therapy.

Healthcare systems prefer to treat brain chemistry, because this can be done remotely, cheaply and (extremely profitably) in the form of pills designed to manage symptoms rather than facilitating healing. Meanwhile, the electrical impulses in our brains have been overlooked in healthcare since working with these requires costly equipment and one-to-one care. At a time when people are increasingly taking charge of their own wellbeing, and since technology is only going to move forward, I wanted to be involved at the leading edge of human wellbeing.

I could only offer neurofeedback aligned with my therapeutic  philosophy, personal values and professional standards. After  researching the market, it was clear that this was NeurOptimal®  - a technology that neither puts anything into the brain nor takes anything out. NeuroOptimal® simply reflects back the activity of the central nervous system at itself, allowing our brain to self-regulate using the innate wisdom of the body. Like my influences in person-centred therapy, NeurOptimal® respects the intrinsic healing capacity of living beings given the right conditions.

NeurOptimal® scans our brain activity via sensors placed on our scalp. This signal is fed to a computer and analysed by proprietary software. When the software's algorithm detects a significant shift in central nervous system activity, this activity is reflected back to our brain. Users perceive this via interruptions in the audio track they listen to in a session. During these interruptions, our brain is invited to use the information to self-organise, promoting flexibility and resilience of our central nervous system. For further details, see the NeurOptimal® menu tab.