Will Taylor

[willtaylor]

My interest is two-fold, as a physician & patient. I was originally trained as an M.D. family physician, with a central interest in Mind/Body medicine, & began working with biofeedback (GSR, peripheral temperature, sEMG, respiratory) in my residency ~1984. I was active in the AAPB, and worked closely with Jeffrey Cram in sEMG biofeedback, particularly exploring dynamic applications in chronic pain assessment & management, and taught sEMG biofeedback for the STENs corporation for several years. I was closely acquainted with Eric Peper & his work with respiratory training, but left the field professionally around the time that HRV training began to take off, as computerization permitted the necessary signal processing. My professional focus since has been in homeopathic medicine. In September 2014 I sustained a hemorrhagic stroke involving the region of the right basal ganglia & 3rd ventricle, with ankylosing spondylitis-related vasculitis as a risk factor, & entered the realm of rehabilitative medicine as a patient. I'd been dabbling with the HeartMath platforms for a few years, and encountering this last fall in a superb multidisciplinary brain injury program I am now working with, began to work with it in earnest. Lost a lot of parasympathetic tone/regulation with the stroke, & once the initial gross motor deficits settled down, this has been the focus of my rehab, working with persistent postural-perceptual dizziness & other elements of "brain fog," motor dysphonia related to pharyngeal spasm, deficits in facial expression & vocal prosody, and somatic restlessness.
I was a student of Shunryū Suzuki & Kobun in the early 70s, and continue meditative practices, adding influences from Tibetan Vajrayana traditions to my Soto Zen background.
I recently obtained the Alive software for my eMwave sensor, and have since added the Wild Divine IOM sensor array, upgrading from the Alive Clinical version to the Pioneer application with Dreamscapes. Am using Alive Pioneer/Dreamscapes and HeartMath eMwave Pro on a Mac, & Inner Balance on my iPhone with HeartMath's bluetooth sensor for training, and have been dabbling with Kubios for analysis of saved data.
One of the most amazing experiences of my recovery has been long-distance Reiki, which in one session completely resolved my post-stoke profound left hemispatial agnosia (left neglect) and my longstanding ankylosing spondylitis. I was intrigued to see some HRV studies on the effects of Receiving Reiki (https://reikiinmedicine.org/clinical-pr ... cdbd8be024) & am interested in exploring this further, both in the Receiver and the Sender.

[willtaylor]

Just an addendum - I see some notes in the forum re "coherence"/HRV smoothness & meditative states. In my own experience, Tonglen practice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwqlurCvXuM is most particularly associated with a highly "coherent" HRV pattern. Wondering about others' experience.