Stone Mountain Center…… where Stephen Larsen PhD focuses his attention on neurofeedback and nutraceutical support to help patients restore their lives.

In 1990, after 28 years of teaching biofeedback and self-regulation techniques to college students (at SUNY Ulster), Dr. Stephen Larsen set up his own healing and counseling center at Stone Mountain Farm on a piece of choice Hudson Valley landscape, with forests, rock-climbing cliffs, and waterfalls. His wife Robin was already running a not-for profit center there, The Center for Symbolic Studies, which included seminars in personal growth, traditional wisdom, and sports challenges such as rock climbing and the flying trapeze.

Dr. Larsen had worked in state clinics and mental health facilities for a number of years as a consulting psychologist; he also had a private psychotherapy practice. He soon became dissatisfied with the dominant pharmaceutical approach, and cookie-cutter psychotherapies as ways of helping people deal with their mental and emotional problems.

For years he had observed his students and clients getting better simply from self-attention, and health-oriented regimens such as yoga and meditation, diet, exercise, and supplement use. To these was added his discovery in 1996 of a powerful new tool, the LENS form of neurofeedback, which uses minute doses of electromagnetic energy to help ameliorate a variety of serious disorders, including brain injury or TBI, attentional and other learning disorders in children, autistic spectrum disorders, and problems of anxiety and depression. The results were so dramatic that in 2006 he wrote and published one of the most successful biofeedback books of the decade: The Healing Power of Neurofeedback: The Revolutionary LENS Technique for Restoring Optimal Brain Function; now in its second printing. The book contains inspirational stories of overcoming problems, personal healings and transformations in quality of life, as well as informing the reader about the science and development of neurofeedback techniques.

The book initiated an avalanche of interest in the LENS technique, and in two years, has helped double the number of practitioners world-wide. In 2003, his colleague at Stone Mountain, psychiatrist Dr. Willie Yee, introduced him to Dr. Richard Brown, a highly regarded psycho-pharmacologist who was helping difficult cases given up on by conventional psychiatry and medicine. Dr. Brown combined his advanced expertise in conventional psychiatry with a broad knowledge of herbs and nutrition. He introduced many of his patients to yoga and breathing techniques as well. In 2006 Dr. Larsen and his wife accompanied Dr. Brown and his wife to India to present scientific studies on the effects of yoga breathing on physiology and mental health.

In the last few years, Stone Mountain Center began to regularly offer programs on yoga, breathing and the Chinese art of Qi Gong—in which both Dr. Brown and Dr. Larsen are certified. In therapeutic practice, these are combined with neurofeedback, diet and nutrition to provide a very complete approach to mental and physical health. Dr. Brown was also very instrumental, with Zakir Ramazanov, in introducing Rhodiola rosea, or Rosavin to the American public. (It had been utilized for many years in Russia to improve the performance of elite athletes, astronauts and the military.)

An adaptogen, Rosavin has many versatile uses: it helps stabilize the basic instabilities in bi-polar disorder and ADHD. It helps those with neurological problems subsequent to Lyme disease or neuro-degenerative disorders such as Parkinsonism. (See the book The Rhodiola Revolution by Dr.’s Brown and Gerbarg).

“Rosavin is now a staple on the shelves at Stone Mountain Center, along with a variety of other excellent Ameriden products such as ClearMind, EZ Energy, Bio-Antihist, AmeriZyme, and others. These are so useful for Stone Mountain Center patients, that Stone Mountain replenishes the stock on a monthly basis. Unlike prescription pharmaceuticals, the Ameriden products have little if any side-effects and actually promote health and metabolic balance. Our patients feel like these herbal supplements are friends and allies, tools and aids to help people to deal with today’s stressed-out and frenetic lifestyles,” writes Dr. Larsen.

More information about Stone Mountain Center can be found at www.stonemountain.com where there is material to read on how to cope with a variety of problems which, up until now, have seen mostly poor solutions. “By providing an integrative approach, we feel we not only address symptoms, but improve the quality of life for a large number of people. When they conclude treatment at our center, they are not only less troubled by symptoms, they have new tools and resources, and a new problem-solving attitude toward life,” concludes Dr. Larsen.