Can Anyone Use Manual Biofeedback?

Dr. Phil Maffetone

While health care professionals regularly apply the art and science of manual muscle testing, biofeedback, and other hands-on assessment and therapeutic activities, there are tens of thousands of other individuals who learn to use these important techniques every day. Almost everyone has used tweezers to take out a deep splinter (minor surgery), bandage an abrasion (emergency first aid), or in some instances even save a life by learning CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation). And it’s not uncommon to see, in many public areas, including airplanes, restaurants, and malls, automatic cardiac resuscitators for emergency treatment in cases where a person’s heart stops—complete with instructions for the average person to use to save a life.

Manual biofeedback is just as practical, if not easier, than some of these techniques, and its successful application to the majority of physical aches and pains can be surprisingly simple once a bit of experience is attained. Manual biofeedback can be used in the young and old, including children, athletes, and everyone else.

While traditional EMG biofeedback uses computer equipment, including mechanical sensors and electrodes attached to the skin, manual biofeedback does not use any equipment. Instead, it relies on the neurological sense of the person using manual biofeedback. This personal approach also allows for the recruitment of more brain-body stimulation with verbal, visual, tactile, and other sensory cues that further enlists the patient’s participation and motivation. Like many forms of biofeedback, manual biofeedback relies on basic manual muscle testing.

While it takes another person to use manual muscle testing and the basic biofeedback therapies, with respiratory biofeedback, you can do it on yourself without assistance from others.

The Family Hope Center, which is based in Philadelphia, helps brain-injured children and teaches their parents how to apply many home therapies. A couple of years ago, the center asked me to make an instructional DVD on manual biofeedback. I was happy to be of assistance. The DVD and user’s manual that I created contains an introduction to the concepts of muscle imbalance and how to remedy it, respiratory biofeedback, and proper breathing techniques. It also includes the detailed use of manual biofeedback and a library that demonstrates how to test and perform manual biofeedback on all the body’s major muscles.

This DVD is now used by virtually all types of individuals dealing with sports injuries, common aches and pains, as well as improving brain function.

Return to the Manual Biofeedback pages.
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