The Balanced Brain Neurofeedback

the Neuro feedback has helped me sleep so well that I can complete dreams and remember them. Very therapeutic. cures restless nights. truly amazing. John Mekrut is a kind insightful person who genuinely cares and shares his knowledge to help facilitate your healing

I’ve been seeing John for Neurofeedback for a couple of months. I’ve had about 12 sessions so far. I echo everything other Unilocalers have posted about John. He is a gift. He is also incredibly adept at fine tuning Neurofeedback just for you and your issues. He’s great at helping you find «your zone» — that place where your brain and thinking slows down — like what deep meditation does.

John is a joy to work with. He is upbeat, fun, non-​judgmental and willing to explore. If you want to reduce stress, improve focus, dive deep into emotional issues, or just maximize your performance and enjoyment of life, neurofeedback is an invaluable tool. I was going to wait until I completed all my sessions before posting a review, but I’ve already benefited so much that I wanted to write something now. I’ve been telling all my friends to work with John or if they don’t live in LA to find a practitioner near them. I’m a physician and most folks in my profession tend to be close-​minded about alternative therapies, but neurofeedback is very powerful, validated, and even recommended by some medical organizations. Neurofeedback is akin to an accelerated form of meditation practice and I’m exploring various protocols with John to continue to be more present, engaged, and connected in the world.

Before I met with John, my life was a wreck. Since our first e-​mail exchange he has showed nothing but compassion for my military service and conditions.
I couldn’t focus, sleep, remain happy or at peace before I started doing NFB. 11 sessions in and I want to cry thinking of the progress I have made!
I am happy, energetic, positive and myself AGAIN. I can’t believe I was missing out on this for years. John saved my life in so many ways.
He is also very flexible and works with your schedule. NFB works! I will never take medication again. Thank you for this life-​changing experience!!!

[Warning: the following review is way too long, but I’m not editing it down. Just take it as evidence that I can follow one train of thought from beginning to end again. I’ll give John Mekrut all the credit.]
So I’d been dragging myself out of ADD hell for the last few months after 2013 started with a clatter and a smash and what was left of my marbles scattered when my building underwent noisy renovations all summer long. I’d diagnosed myself with ADD about ten years ago in the aisles of some big bookstore while reading Driven to Distraction and whatever was on the shelf next to it. Those books described how my brain worked and explained that time when I was in college & couldn’t concentrate for more than three minutes at a time when I was trying my very hardest to write a paper one night…
Looking back now, it’s clear that I was depressed and needed a break from school and some TLC from someone who knew what they were talking about. I didn’t get that for a long time. Thankfully, I’m not shy about looking for it anymore; I don’t have that kind of time to waste. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
So when my stress levels shot through the roof this year and my attention span went straight to hell, I spent a few months scrambling & playing tricks with myself — systems for everything. Timers, lists, rewards, internet-​blocking programs, anything to keep my monkey mind from keeping me away from work. What used to take me 6 hours in a day was taking 12. I wasn’t sleeping. I needed solutions.
I went to the doctor and got a prescription for Adderall. That was a life-​saver for a while; it did with one little pill what all my tricks might do on a good day if I did everything right. But it screwed with my sleep and gave me toxic sweat, and made me kind of hard-​edged and made my forehead hurt — my frontal lobe was sore. Tired. But I was getting work done again, and I didn’t have to work so hard to make it happen, and I kinda needed those all-​night binges to get caught up, so it was a good solution.
In the meantime, I called my therapist. My beloved sage who does teletherapy with me from her tower overlooking Forest Park in my hometown of St. Louis. She did what she does so well – sliced right through the Gordian knot and set me straight again. So that was nice.
I went one radical step further then: signed up for neurofeedback therapy, a three-​times-​a-​week, 20-​session commitment to something I’d never heard of before. I read up on it, trusted the process, trusted John Mekrut, and showed up on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays to watch movies with electrodes stuck to my head. For a month and a half, I didn’t see much difference. And then I did, and it was dramatic.
My head was clear. I wasn’t impulsive, or compulsive, or distracted or anxious. I was calm, and I could work and prioritize and plan my day again. And sleep at night. At night! What a beautiful thing.
I’m a big-​guns kind of girl. When I figure out what the problem is, I go for it with all I’ve got. This can be disconcerting, I’ve been told. All I know is that when all you’ve got is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, and that can’t possibly be an accurate assessment. So you might say I collect tools.
It seems to me like brain training taught me what it feels like to do one thing at once. I didn’t even know how that felt for a while there — in times of great stress, my brain just plain forgets how. Doing neurofeedback therapy with John showed my brain how to find the zone & stay in it.
Since my sessions with John stopped, I’ve been trying to reproduce the zone I got into when I was watching movies in his office. I’m figuring out some ways in. Today when I was doing laundry and wishing I could be working instead, I wanted to stay present, so I started singing. I needed something kind of mindless that I knew all the words to, so I sang the lullaby I’ve been singing to my little one lately – Down to the River to Pray, from Oh Brother Where Art Thou. And tonight when my attention was beginning to wander as I was working, I thought about what I wanted to be doing (editing a novel) and thought about how I could practice that. .. so I got in the bathtub with a novel to let my brain get used to reading one book at a time, and not switching over to a different window on the computer to see what was happening in my email account or on Facebook. Totally worked.
Everything is practice. I can practice being distracted and divided, or I can practice doing one thing. And when I can’t figure out how to practice doing one thing, I’ll go back to John for a tune-​up, like I did last week — and it totally worked again. I’m sold.

This is a great place to go for neurofeedback and John is a super clinician with a great worldview and a lot of experience. I have nothing but good things to say about going there and would gladly recommend his services.

Neurofeedback is a gift. John is a gift. The experience is a gift. I have done a variety of therapeutic techniques over the years, which have all helped to some degree with gaining clarity, lessening depression and anxiety too. Neurofeedback sets your brain in balance, which means you actually have more confidence, an ability to regulate and manage your emotions better, sleep and eat better, overall people notice the difference in you. It’s been such a benefit in how I process emotions and events. I find life is easier and happier, because I am processing and getting clear quickly. I take things less personally; I am more focused and I never feel depressed, ever! And a side benefit, it seems to attract the opposite sex, as in, you will notice a HUGE increase in attention.

give him 10 stars, John deserves ‘em.
ADHD does not need to be medicated — you can train the brain to focus on what matters and disregard the rest. My 7 year old went from distracted and disruptive to a focused and intent learner with normal classroom behavior.
Teachers, friends and family have noticed the changes in my awesome little man and I’m so happy I gave neurofeedback a shot before buying into drug therapy. No side effects, no life-​long prescriptions, his brain is actually becoming stronger every session.

Try Neurofeedback! We’ve had a wonderful experience working with John, my son for attention and focus issues, and me with anxiety and PTSD. Highly recommended!