Accupuncture worked well the first time, but by the fourth session it was ineffective. So, I took her to a biofeedback therapist. While looking at a breathing pacer to guide her to six breaths per minute, she sat in a chair with monitors on either her finger or her head the output of which was displayed on computer screens. The therapist’s screen showed her brainwaves or her heartrate as a zig-zag line on a graph. Usually, what my daughter was looking at was a “child friendly” image that became more colorful as her brainwaves or heartrate became evenly paced or she might get a musical arpeggio cue that her waves were becoming more “coherent” …less spikey and erratic.

After three weeks – six sessions – two per week – my daughter was migraine free. She continued biofeedback and after a couple of months reduced her sessions to once a week. Her therapist gave her a loaner device that could act like a portable biofeedback session, but it was about the size of a big dictionary, not truly portable and actually designed to reduce blood pressure, but she used it at home between weekly sessions.

During one session, she had my daughter use the emWave while simultaneously measuring her waves with a fingertip device which measured her heartrate. She was very excited about the “beautiful coherence” my daughter achieved with the emWave. She ’saves’ all of the biofeedback sessions and can at any time show me the brainwave or heartrate pattern my daughter had on a particular date. She showed me the output of a few past sessions and compared them to the emWave session and indeed, the heartrate pattern she showed while using the emWave was actually “beautiful”. All the waves were conservatively high, of even height and evenly spaced… the gold standard …and yes, better than what had been achieved on perhaps half a dozen different programs or devices, none of which were portable.

My daughter can take the emWave to school. It has a light that can be regulated to rise and fall at whatever breathing pace you choose — we set it at six breaths per minute. It also has two heartrate monitors, one for your thumb and one you can clip on your ear and have your hands free. The machine does the math and gives the user FEEDBACK by glowing in a color that indicates whether your waves are evenly spaced or spikey and erratic. A three minute session in the morning, one at recess, one afterschool and one in the evening means that she can have a life again and not have to live undercovers in a dark room. The emWave is being marketed for simple stress reduction, but for my daughter the emWave is a biofeedback session that she can clip on her belt and take to school and get her life back.