Following the most recent weather related events around the nation, whether it’s fires out west or the recent hurricanes impacting those of us in the Caribbean, Texas, and Florida, emotions are running rampant; fear, anger, sadness, relief, discouragement, panic…the list goes on. Feeling left in a state of anxiety can be debilitating with secondary impacts on our bodies that are often unpleasant and uninvited.
What is REI?
Have you considered using Rhythmic Entrainment Intervention aka as REI? Creator, Jeff Strong (www.stronginstitute.com), has developed a variety of auditory brain stimulation programs that use musical rhythm to stimulate and re-pattern neurological function. He offers custom programs as well as a radio version to make listening easy and accessible to all. As Jeff shares on his website, REI is clinically-proven and evidence-based program that has positively impacted tens-of-thousands of clients with a variety of conditions including, attention deficit disorder, autism, bipolar disorder, depression, chronic pain, insomnia, PTSD, sensory processing disorders, sleep disorders, stroke, traumatic brain injury, and others.
My reason for writing this blog is to share with you some of my personal experience using REI as a result of experiencing crippling anxiety last year. And after this past week’s experience with preparing and dealing with Hurricane Irma, I can confidently share with you that this program works and has impacted my life for the better!
How I Got Started
I contacted Jeff to begin using REI after being around this program for years as a speech-pathologist and hearing about the wonderful impact it has had on many of my clients lives. So when an email from Jeff popped up about a program for anxiety for adults, I jumped on the opportunity to partake in this experience. After filling out a questionnaire, Jeff contacted me and within 24 hours I was up an running with a customized program tailored particularly to the needs I was experiencing with daily anxiety (i.e. not sleeping, GI upset, a constant ball of nerves, this unending feeling of panic and “fight or flight” etc.).
How to Use REI
To implement this program was simple: I just download via my online portal the track and listened to it once a day for the duration of a week until Jeff sent me another survey based upon my symptoms, modified the track, and then sent me a new track to listen to. I repeated this process for a month. While partaking, I also had access to general tracks for focusing, sleep, energy boost, and calming. I could, and still do, listen to these tracks as needed throughout the day. Most drumming tracks are no longer than 20-minutes in duration, again varying to meet your needs.
While this program is directly overseen by a licensed and trained REI Occupational Therapist, (which we do have here at AASL) for the pediatric population, Jeff oversaw my program and assisted me with the specifics of when to play the tracks, where to play them, and the volume of how the tracks are played; which is critical to its overall implementation nonetheless very easy.
Powerful Results
