Some, including singer Wynonna Judd, have relied on brain training to deal with addictions. Others claim it helped address sleep and eating disorders. Prison inmates have used this technique to overcome depression and enhance their well-being. War veterans get wired up to cope with posttraumatic stress disorder.


It’s called Brain State Conditioning, and it could be coming to a pharmacy near you.

Brody Rokstad, a UBC student, has undergone nine treatments at Finlandia Health Technologies, which is a Vancouver licensee of Brain State Conditioning. In a phone interview with the Georgia Straight, Rokstad said he learned about this approach from Jeannette Barrett, a self-regulation therapist who has helped him deal with anxiety, depression, digestive problems, and loneliness.

The sympathetic system relies on adrenaline and noradrenaline, increasing the heart rate and blood pressure and triggering the release of the stress hormone cortisol and blood flow to muscles. The parasympathetic system functions in the opposite way.


In the book, Gerdes, a self-described computer geek, likens brain training to a woman looking in the mirror to apply lipstick or a man using a mirror to avoid cutting himself while shaving. “Brain training functions as a mirror that enables us to balance our brain,” Gerdes writes.

He believes that many of society’s most serious problems—including various addictions, posttraumatic stress disorder, and even pedophilia—are often rooted in the brain being out of balance. Undesirable behaviour driven by unconscious motivations can be the brain’s way of self-correcting for this imbalance, he claims.

Gerdes maintains that with the right tools, the brain can heal itself. “It’s not brain surgery in terms of its invasiveness, and it’s not brain surgery in terms of its complexity,” he quipped in a phone interview with the Straight from Scottsdale, Arizona.