Insights from the Couch - Mental Health at Midlife

Ep.39: Rewiring Your Brain: Neurofeedback, Meditation & Healing with Natalie Baker, LMHC

• Colette Fehr, Laura Bowman • Season 3 • Episode 39

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Ever wondered how mindfulness, neuroscience, and therapy intersect to create profound healing? In this episode, we’re thrilled to chat with Natalie Baker, a licensed psychotherapist, meditation teacher, and Neurofeedback expert. Natalie shares how her unique blend of Eastern and Western psychology—alongside cutting-edge brain training techniques—helps people overcome anxiety, trauma, and other challenges. From rewiring the brain for resilience to cultivating self-awareness, Natalie’s holistic approach inspires balance and growth.

We dive into fascinating topics like neuroplasticity, how neurofeedback taps into your brain's natural ability to reset, and why meditation is more than just a stress-relief tool. 

 

Episode Highlights:

[0:03] - Introducing Natalie Baker and her groundbreaking work in holistic healing.
 [2:30] - How Natalie’s personal journey led her to integrate meditation and therapy.
 [7:08] - Neurofeedback 101: What it is, how it works, and why it’s transformative.
 [13:39] - A powerful story of trauma healing through Neurofeedback on a limbic level.
 [20:52] - Breaking free from survival mode: practical applications of brain training.
 [30:53] - Tapping into intuition through “First Thought, Best Thought” exercises.
 [36:32] - Embracing meditation as a tool for self-awareness and emotional balance.

 

Resources:

For more on this topic visit our website insightsfromthecouch.org If you have questions please email us at info@insightsfromthecouch.org we would love to hear from you!

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Colette Fehr:

Natalie, welcome to insights from the couch. We have another great episode for you all today with Natalie Baker, who is a licensed psychotherapist, seasoned meditation teacher and expert Neurofeedback trainer with more than 25 years of experience. She has a private practice in New York City where she combines the best of Eastern and Western psychology with cutting edge neuroscience to help clients achieve deep, lasting change. And I think you work with people with PTSD, trauma, anxiety, depression, relationship issues, right? ADHD, yeah, am I getting that right? Yep, the whole range. The whole range. So this is going to be great, because this is really a different take on the from the type of therapy Laura and I do, and that you specialize in integrating Buddhist psychology into therapeutic practice, which I'm really excited to hear about, and empower individuals to navigate life's challenges through mindfulness, compassion and brain training techniques. As a certified neuro optimal trainer, you merge Neurofeedback with extensive background and meditation to support mental and emotional well being, and Natalie's holistic approach helps reduce anxiety, improve relationships and foster personal growth, guiding people from all walks of life toward balance and resilience. Wow, very impressive and very exciting to hear more about. Welcome Natalie,

Natalie Baker:

thank you, and I'm just so thrilled to be here today having this conversation with you too. I've really enjoyed your podcast and the generosity that you have in sharing your personal lives and really normalizing, you know, all the struggles that we go through in midlife. So thank you. I'm

Colette Fehr:

really happy to be here. Oh, and thanks for saying that too. That means a lot, because we have kind of put it all out there, that's for sure, and then some. But it is so important to normalize that we're all going through this business of being human together. And so as we start to talk about your expertise and the way you help clients, you know, for our listeners, can you give us a little bit of insight into how you got into this specialty and what drew you to your particular form of therapeutic magic?

Natalie Baker:

I really came about it very organically. When I was 14 years old. I was watching the Phil Donahue show. Do you remember Phil? Yes, and he brought on Transcendental Meditation experts, and for some reason, that really piqued my curiosity. And I was like, meditation, what is this? Yeah, and so back then, there really wasn't much around and so I had my mom drive me to the TM center, and I went to their introductory talk, and I was like, wow, meditation, sounds so cool, but this isn't for me. My interest in being a therapist also started around that time. I kind of grew up in a family where my mom trained as a good Scandinavian Canadian farmer. She learned like, you know, you just got to repress it and get by. And my poor father was traumatized. His mother died when he was six. He was bullied by a step brother. His dad was an alcoholic, and so he also stuffed it. And just like as a kid, I could feel his four year old self and how much suffering he had, yeah, and I just thought, like, you know what we can do better than, like, not communicating, like it's really okay. And so I just sort of very organically found myself pursuing my meditation path. I found a Buddhist community when I was in university, and just continued on my passion with helping people communicate better, an undergraduate in psychology, and then a Master's in Counseling Psychology. And just for whatever reason for me, those two pieces have always been there. And then the neurofeedback piece kind of came also very sort of serendipitously. I was teaching a meditation weekend, and one of the participants was in private equity. And he said, Natalie, have you ever heard of neurofeedback? I've been asked to fund this Peak Performance Center in Manhattan. And I was like, No, I've never heard of that. And he said, well, it helps that brain to not go into like, anxiety and depression by like, really, like talking to the. Part. And I was like, wow, because, you know, as you two probably are well aware, right? Part of our challenge as psychotherapists is to try to figure out, how do we get that brain to stop doing that stress response? I did Neurofeedback on myself. I sent one of my really traumatized clients to go try it. She was also a yoga teacher, and so she was very aware of her felt experience. So I thought, okay, she's would be a good person to go try it. The end of the story is that I saw how when you give feedback to that limbic brain in the present moment that it's doing the wrong habitual pattern, right? That fight, flight, freeze energy that brain has the ability to take in that information, if it's shown it, and do something differently. I know you were talking to another guest the other week about neuroplasticity, right? This is the application of the principle of neuroplasticity, which you know, really interestingly, dovetails into what the foundation of Buddhism is, which is that suffering is part of our human condition. But it's not, you know, the only thing that we're capable of that actually we have the seed of sanity within us called Buddha nature, and that we have to allow ourselves to reset out of habitual patterns and find that basic goodness or that basic sanity that's present all the time. So I thought it was really cool that here this brain training technology showed me that our brain actually functions in alignment with this idea in Buddhism, that there is always the seed of sanity. We just have to find the skillful means to access it, to access

Colette Fehr:

it. Okay, so, you know, just for listeners, in terms of limbic brain, and, yes, right. So give us a little primer, like I'm in fifth grade, on how Neurofeedback what it is and how it works, because it sounds like this is a way that we can interrupt our unconscious patterns and do something more intentional, right, that we're not powerless. We have more control to design the way we respond to stress and life. So how does neurofeedback? What is it and how does it work?

Natalie Baker:

Yeah, thanks for for backing me up here and and giving that explanation, because, of course, it's new technology, and also we never think about how the brain functions, right, and specifically how the unconscious brain functions, right? We We focus on what we can do with our willful selves when we're aware, right, which is our prefrontal cortex, but we don't spend a lot of time thinking about all the functions that the brain performs outside of our conscious awareness, right? And I think that, in part, we don't think about that because it's kind of produces a little bit of anxiety, right? To think like, you know, there's all these things that I'm doing, but who's the me that's doing it, right? And so the limbic brain is part of that unconscious brain that is our survival brain. So this, when you look at the evolution of the brain, right? This is more of the core brain, the reptilian brain, and this is the part of ourselves that keeps us alive, what is considered a threat or what's dangerous. The limbic brain defines that very specifically which is what's going to cause me bodily harm in less than a minute, right? So I need to punch it. I need to run from it. I need to play dead in order to keep this body alive, right? So it has a very specific purpose in our, you know, human functioning, right now,

Colette Fehr:

survival, right? That's all it cares about. Exactly

Natalie Baker:

what we're doing with neurofeedback, we're putting EEG sensors on the side of the heads, right, and that's collecting the electrical communication of the brain. So the brain communicates through electricity and through chemicals or neurotransmitters, and we're specifically measuring the electrical communication of the brain, and the brain does a certain kind of electrical dance to. Just before it's going into a state change and performing a function, and this Neurofeedback technology reads your electrical communication 265 times per second. Wow, that's how many decisions your brain is making in any moment again, just to help us appreciate, right? We have the World Wide Web in our heads.

Laura Bowman:

I'm just so curious, so like, I'm just trying to envision this, because I've seen a little bit of neurofeedback, but I'm not super familiar with it. So the client sitting in a chair, they've got EEG things linked up onto their head. What are they watching? Something that's giving them the feedback, or like, what is what's coming in that's giving them feedback,

Natalie Baker:

because this system is working to show the brain everything that it's doing in real time. It's constantly giving feedback. And so Laura, your question of like, well, how does the feedback get delivered? So it with this system. It's auditory feedback, because that limbic brain uses auditory sense perception as its main way to gather data about the present moment, because we're listening even when we sleep, interesting. And so what happens is, whenever your brain is going into a state change and again, like 1000s of things it could be doing, not just the things that we're like consciously doing, like having a thought, or adjusting our body posture, just a lot of unconscious decisions are getting made, and in the millisecond that that decision is about to happen, there's there's a state change, the music is interrupted, and that limbic brain is listening for change. And so what happens is that in the exact millisecond the brain is going into a state change, we're now telling it pay attention, right? So the thing about the other thing about the brain, besides that, it wants to use energy efficiently, it also wants to make effective decisions. And so the efficiency part is that the brain goes on autopilot. And this is post traumatic stress. We take simple cues from the environment, and we go, Oh, now it's like, then I'm going to scream at that person, right? Meanwhile, this is a safe person standing in front of us. Why am I screaming at my spouse, right? And that's that brain using a simple cue going, Oh, love object. Oh, remember, you were traumatized in childhood by that love object. Great. Now you're in a dangerous situation. Scream.

Colette Fehr:

Use the same strategy that you use. Then, instead of being able to keep your brain open to taking in the safety of the current situation and updating and integrating new information, which is then what the neurofeedback is doing right, letting your brain take that moment before you go into that behavior and incorporate the New data so you can make a different behavioral choice.

Laura Bowman:

Are you talking about as the therapist? Like, are you talking with the client and and kind of doing a little bit of reprogramming, or is this all happening the client, with themselves and the feedback? Like, I'm just give like, can you ground it in the concrete? Like, yeah, absolutely.

Colette Fehr:

Like, an example. Yeah, the most

Natalie Baker:

profound part of this brain training, which is that this, there's a change that's going to happen over time. And then I'll go into the example. So what the brain is learning when it's hooked up to the system is it's being taught all the good informations in the present moment come into the present moment, assess your current needs, then make a decision. So because the brain wants to make effective decisions and use that energy efficiently, now it's motivated to do this practice even when it's not hooked up to the system, right? So we're actually teaching it to function differently over time. So now to go to an example, going back to this client, who I invited or encouraged her to go out and try it, when I was assessing whether this was going to be a good tool, she had been abused as a child by sexually abused by a neighbor, and also just really parents put her in a very unsafe environment over and over again. But one of her triggers, her trauma triggers, was large men being close to her on the subway, and she would go into the. Fight response. And boy, was she a fighter. I mean, she actually got into fist fights on like the subway. So she was highly motivated to, you know, really help her brain learn different strategies. And I think it was probably about a month and a half into her Neurofeedback sessions, I think she was doing twice weekly. So about 10 sessions in, she came into therapy, and she said, Natalie, I had the most profound experience. She said, I was on a crowded subway. This large man came close to me, and instead of getting like upset and angry, I noticed that my body took a deep breath and just turned around, and so I wasn't having to face him anymore. And so that's a great example of that limbic brain making a different decision in the present moment, which is, oh, this person is safe, but I don't really want to be looking at him, and so I'm going to just pivot my body to look somewhere else. And that is the limbic brain deciding to do that. Now, in terms of our conscious selves, we we want to have the motivation of recognizing like, yeah, that that fight, flight, freeze energy, that doesn't work for me, like, I don't want to do that anymore, to live in survival mode exactly, to be like, I don't want those strategies. And this is a really important thing when it comes to neurofeedback, because that anxious fight flight energy is going to want to calm down. We're going to want to regulate. But the person who has to consciously want to go there they you know, like people who are like, you know, my anxiety really isn't working for me, like it doesn't provide me anything, versus the person who says, No, my anxiety is my mojo. That's what gets me to do things and get things done. That latter group that's like, no, I need my anxious Fight, Flight energy. They tend to do about eight sessions of Neurofeedback and then give it up, because that's when they really start to calm down. And then they get nervous again, because it's like, no, I need that energy. So your mindset is also a really important part of the success of neurofeedback training. So talking about, you know, that unconscious brain wanting to re regulate, but then also as consciously, also wanting to go into regulation and live in that place. Yeah,

Laura Bowman:

I'm thinking of this client that I have who she's so bright and wonderful, and she has developed in the last 10 years like a terrible case of anxiety around public speaking. And she's a fantastic public speaker, which is the absolute joke of the whole thing, but she the limbic reaction she has to now speaking, and she's tried all these different things to medicate it, and we've tried exposure, but it's on that limbic level that she can, I mean, she would be desperate to rewire that, because consciously, she's like, I am a great speaker. I know I am. I get great feedback about it, but on the body level, she cannot control her reaction to it, right?

Colette Fehr:

But I wonder about that, because Laura, I relate to that example a lot. And you know, so many people have fear of public speaking. And consciously, I enjoy public speaking once I get started, I think I'm a decent public speaker, but I do go into a lot of fear, and I think of that as my innate survival wiring, that I'm a very sensitively wired person, and we are putting ourselves up in front of the herd for judgment. So what I'm curious about because I am certified in EMDR, and I only work with couples now, so I don't use it the way I used to, but EMDR, for listeners, is eye movement desensitization reprocessing, which sounds like a bunch of gobbledygook, but it's basically using a machine to move your eyes and also tactile stimulation to help the brain reprocess trauma and stuck points and kind of absorb what's happened in the past and move forward. So what I was going to ask you is tying this back to fear of public speaking, even though they say with EMDR, you can use it for everything. I have found anecdotally in years of using amdr that it works better when there is a specific event or series of events that created the fight or flight reaction, as opposed to, I'm not sure anything would work on me for fear of public speaking, because it's just my body. Sort of doing its thing, like I never got up and gave a speech and had tomatoes thrown at me or something. So is Neurofeedback like that, where, if it's just the way your your body's sort of natural states that it's may not work as effectively as it does with like, a specific damaging event.

Natalie Baker:

Yeah, it does make sense. And this is more about allowing that brain to get information about itself so it can decide whether it's over investing, we could say, right, putting too much energy into that reactive response. And that's the key. It

Colette Fehr:

could, right, like, so, yeah, exactly. I could do neurofeedback, and you could help my brain learn that getting up in front of an audience isn't doesn't mean I'm about to die

Natalie Baker:

exactly, because, I mean, that's the interesting thing, is that we as social beings, right? That that survival brain totally takes our relationships as the sort of life threatening event, and I put that in quotes, even though I'm not going to die because that person didn't like what I said in my talk, right? But meanwhile, you know, the body is acting as if it's like gearing up to have to go to battle, you know, for survival, exactly. And so when the brain recognizes that there's a safe environment, we're still going to have, you know, a stress response, because that's a fundamental part of who we are as humans, it's really about is it? Is it at a level that is inappropriate, given the current circumstance, and each brain decides what is appropriate. Which brings me to another important point, which is we all have ideas about how we should be, and you know, how we should feel, how we should be. We usually don't question our expectation about our performance, but that expectation is also a big player in whether or not we can re regulate, just in general, or whether we get we stay in that fight, flight, freeze, energy and kind of continue to self harass, right? The that fight energy is then internalized towards ourselves, because we're critical, right? We have an expectation that we should be over this, right, whatever thing it is that's coming up in therapy, right? What's wrong with me that I'm not over this, right? And now we're recreating a stress response, because it's like, oh, there's a problem with me. Yeah? I

Laura Bowman:

mean, I do ifs, I don't know if you're familiar with family systems, but it's all about that, like, you know, there's the protective parts for, you know, and then there's the people that even judge the protective parts that you shouldn't be protecting that way. Or, you know, the critic. There's a critic judging the critic. You know, it's like a meta thing. How are you dealing with that? Through the neuro, the neurofeedback model. What's the therapist role? Yeah,

Natalie Baker:

well, you know, the therapist role is really, I mean, twofold. One is that whatever therapeutic techniques that we want to use to help that client, you know, get combined with the neurofeedback. And so really, the neurofeedback is that add on piece to help that limbic brain recognize the here and now, right? Laura, like you said with your public speaking client, right? It's like her conscious self is in a great place, but that limbic brain is still misfiring and misperceiving. So the neurofeedback is really to help that part. And then I find my sort of role as the therapist when someone is doing neurofeedback is part psychoeducation, right? So to talk about, you know, expectation, because people think in a linear way, right? Which is, if something's positive or something's going to change in a positive way, it's going to do so in a very predictable, linear fashion, and then I know I'm good to go, right? But what is linear in life? Nothing, right? Nothing linear. Things are 100% predictable. And so that's the way we spook ourselves right? As we have this linear expectation of, if something's good, then it's going to be in that way. But the truth of life, and certainly psychotherapy, is non linear, and the brain is non linear, and this is a big piece of education. I do for people who are engaging in neurofeedback, is because they'll then have a linear. Expectation, right? So if I'm anxious, then every day I'm going to feel like 2% calmer, right? And then I know it's working for me, right? And and we can thank the pharmaceutical industry a little bit for this expectation, right? There's going to be this one thing that's going to help us, and it's going to help us immediately, and we're going to know it's helping us, but the brain is a non linear change agent, and so when someone is doing Neurofeedback and is anxious, they're going to start to feel, you know, depending on who they are and how self aware, they might notice, oh, I'm sleeping a little bit better. Oh, I didn't get so anxious about that situation. So there'll be things in their conscious awareness they notice shifting, and then they may have a day where they have, like, a spike in anxiety, and then they go, Oh, the neurofeedback is not working, yeah. And so part of my job is to help them understand, like, no, that's not how we change in a positive way, we change in a non linear way, and so we have to bake into our expectation, you know, that we're going to have those times when we do still feel a little bit of anxiety, or we feel a lot of anxiety, depending on kind of What our habitual neural pathways are around states like anxiousness, that doesn't mean abandoned ship. Things are not working, and so setting appropriate expectations and then really talking to people about like, where do they want to get to?

Laura Bowman:

But it's like a reprogramming that takes, like, months and years to do. I have a client who has bipolar disorder and has gone sugar free and has really changed his life and has really diversified his microbiome, and anytime he takes a step back from that protocol, he has a resurgence of symptoms, which is fascinating. That's exactly me. I went

Colette Fehr:

a year of eating really, really clean, and I felt kind of cured, like I remember saying to my husband, oh my god,

it's 6:

30pm and I've already eaten dinner. And guess what, I have no desire to eat anything else. And I mean, I was eating fish and vegetables and whole grain and really nothing refined. I wasn't drinking any alcohol. It was pretty clean, especially for me. And I didn't have the same like I ate when I was hungry and when I was full, it was over, but the minute I got back into that food, it went right back. Yeah, and,

Natalie Baker:

and that's one of the things we're learning is that, you know, we're not really one person. We are a host of all sorts of organisms that work together to produce this person I call Natalie or Colette. And we don't really want to acknowledge that, because it's kind of unsettling to think that we're just this host for for all these creatures that kind of contribute to who we are. But the truth of the matter is that you know we are, and the relationship between that gut bacteria and how our brain functions, there was Laura. There was a study that was just done showing schizophrenics and Bipolars who are put on basically like a ketogenic diet, which is like no carbs, right? That they really their functioning improves so much. So we're learning about Wow, when though, for those particular neurodivergent brains, right? They function so much better on ketones. And then the other piece is inflammation, right? Brain inflammation contributes to mental health symptoms, right? And so we're learning so much about mental health, the brain, the gut. What

Laura Bowman:

I so appreciate about what you're saying, Natalie, just in general, is that you have, like, a curiosity about what works for a client. I think it's so easy in our field to get pigeonholed into like, I do this thing, or I do EMDR, I do ifs or and this is all I do. But like, maintaining a curiosity about like, let's follow the research. Let's see what works. Let's be open minded to see, like, what's really effective with clients. And so I love that you pull from so many different I mean, you have your things, but you're looking at what really works.

Natalie Baker:

Yes, and also, you know, one of my training as a as a Buddhist psychotherapist, is trusting that the client's innate intelligence is always accessible if you provide the space and the expectation for it. How many times a day do we ask a client a question and they. Habitually go, I don't know, and then the conversation stops there, because they believe that. And so part of my training is to help clients get curious about what's on the other side of that, like, if we didn't believe that habitual, just blurt, I don't know, right? And instead, and so I I give people this practice to do, and it's a practice. It takes time to trust in this practice, but it's called first thought, best thought. And so I present a question, and I say to them, I want your first thought answer. Do not think about the answer. Blurt it, and I'm going to tell you nine times out of 10, it's absolutely a piece of information we need to take our next baby step.

Colette Fehr:

You're helping them tap into their intuition. Where, what is there that may not be as conscious can become more conscious and accessible. Yes, wow. I love that. I love that

Natalie Baker:

way of doing it. And, you know, some people can, you know, if people want to try it at home, just write out what like, what the problem is. And then just first thought answer, like, kind of like morning pages for people who've done The Artist's Way, just like, let yourself just start writing. Don't look at what you're writing. Don't look back. Just write and then stop and look at what you've written again. Another way to just start to access that basic intelligence or that intuition that's always there, but we have a strong mind habit of, I don't know,

Colette Fehr:

we're overthinking things to death, letting other parts of self hijack us and talk us into these like competing agendas that don't really serve us?

Laura Bowman:

Can we talk about meditation for a minute? Because I'm assuming that meditation is, like something that enables this voice to get even, like clearer and kind of come to the surface. But the thing you hear in therapy all the time when you suggest meditation, but I mean, what is the thing you always hear from clients? Oh, I'm so terrible at that, oh, I suck at meditation. Or, like, I hate that. How do you deal with that? And how do you integrate, like, sort of this eastern meditative piece into your practice?

Natalie Baker:

Yeah, I mean, that's, I mean, self criticism is probably one of our strongest habits and so, so what happens in meditation practice is that we become more aware, and so we become more aware of that critical voice. And so part of how I address the whole the whole statement of like, I'm a bad meditator. I tried. I couldn't do it. You know, whatever the criticism is is really to define what meditation practice is and to set the appropriate expectation. So in the tradition of meditation, mindfulness, awareness, meditation that's been around for like, 2600, years, right? We've recently founded in mental health, which is terrific, but just as a reminder, like people have been meditating for a long, long, long, long time, I'll give you the traditional analogy of why we meditate from a spiritual point of view, not from a Like I want to improve x in myself, but from the like meditation as a spiritual practice. So the metaphor is that there's the sun in the sky and the sun in the sky is that basic sanity that we were talking about, that basic good intelligence, intuition, which is clear, seeing, which is loving, which is fundamentally not aggressive, right? And that, that is the nature of all humans, that's the that's the sun in the sky. And then, like any skyscape, we have clouds, and those clouds are our thoughts, right? And clouds are not solid, right? You go through the clouds when you fly and you experience that there, you look at them and you think, Oh, that's a mass of clouds. They're dark. They're going to rain on me, right? But really, they're not solid. And that is our thoughts. And we work with this in mental health all the time, where we're trying to help our clients experience that their thoughts are not as solid, they're not true, real and meaningful in the way that we experience them, but they're also part of the landscape, right? There's no world where there are no clouds, and so part of the challenge of the clouds is that they have. Secure our ability to experience the sun and the warmth of the sun. Meditation practice is not that we're going to somehow magically remove all the clouds from the sky, because that's not reality. Reality is that there are clouds. Sometimes they're cute and fluffy, sometimes they're dark and like ominous, but they're actually always moving right. They're never static. And in the same way, when we're practicing meditation, we're practicing being present with, not changing something, being present with and so that's a big part of the psycho education, is that meditation practice, a great meditation teacher, a Tibetan teacher, once said, you know, meditation is more of a laxative rather than a sedative, but it's really not a tool for us to be able to tolerate our emotional experience, to know ourselves, to live in our own truth, to be in charge of our choices we make moment to moment. Right? It's about the opposite. And as mental health professionals, I just feel like this is a big area of psycho education that's so important because it does impact their quality of life, their quality of mental health, in

Colette Fehr:

such a profound way. So in terms of, you know, a couple of takeaways for the listener. It sounds like, first of all that Neurofeedback may be something a lot of our listeners would want to look into. I mean, it's made me want to do it after talking to you today, you know, and it sounds like it's applicable to a whole range of presenting problems and issues, depression, anxiety, the way you show up in relationships, certain unconscious coping or semi conscious coping mechanisms. You're drinking too much, you're eating too much, you're having trouble getting activated, you're scared of public speaking. So I think there's that, and then also really encouraging people to embrace meditation as a practice and a way of life, right? That allows you to be more conscious and intentional, and that's something you can do on your own. There are a host of apps that help to make it easier by doing a guided meditation, and you can start out with two or three minutes a day. And anything else you would suggest for listeners based on because you have this beautiful, unique kind of trifecta of how you approach things.

Natalie Baker:

What else would

Colette Fehr:

you suggest for listeners who are trying to live a more intentional holistic life?

Natalie Baker:

Yeah, I mean, that's a that's a great question, and I think we have a lot more available to us than we give ourselves credit for, including just our own intuition, our own sense. And I think that however, we can cultivate self awareness, awareness of ourselves in the present moment, whether it's through formal meditation and practice or just an informal like every time I pick up my phone, I'm going to first take a deep breath and just pay attention to where I am and how I'm feeling. Just notice my felt experience in my body, and then if I want to stare at my phone for 15 minutes, I can, but first I'm going to just ground myself in me in this moment. And that's a valuable thing to do, and I can tolerate that. And you know, for people who are curious about the neurofeedback, I have a lot of educational videos on my YouTube channel, because it's so new and so and I always find people who are educated have the best outcomes. So if people are curious, they can certainly check out my YouTube channel or my website.

Colette Fehr:

So Natalie, we'll have all that in the show notes. But also, can you share with listeners how they can find like what your YouTube channel is, called your website, and any other way they can connect with you.

Natalie Baker:

I have a couple of websites. I have Buddhist psychotherapy ny.com is my therapy website. And then specifically the neurofeedback is neurofeedback training.com and my handle for the YouTube is neurofeedback, NY. Or they could just type in my name, Natalie Baker, and I'll pop up anybody who wants to reach out, who has questions and they want to just continue the education for themselves on any of these topics. I'm more than happy to guide people. Oh, that's. Wonderful.

Colette Fehr:

Thank you so much. Thank

Laura Bowman:

you. This is really interesting, great

Natalie Baker:

that really warms my heart. Because more than anything, I want people to have confidence that they can keep going, you know, and keep exploring themselves and you know, not give up.

Colette Fehr:

Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and insights with us and our listeners, and thank you to all of our listeners for being here with us for this great episode with Natalie. Check her out and reach out if you have questions and if you're interested in trying some neurofeedback. I know I am now, and we will see you all next time on insights from the couch. Bye, guys. You