Neurofeedback Therapy
Supporting veterans, families, and professionals in Ottawa, Pembroke, North Bay & online.
“You shouldn’t have to stay stuck in stress, overwhelm, or mental fatigue just to function. Neurofeedback at Renew Neurotherapy is a non-invasive, learning-based approach that helps calm and regulate the nervous system, creating the foundation for better focus, clearer thinking, improved sleep, and more steady emotional functioning. When your system is more regulated, it becomes easier to pay attention, manage daily demands, and feel more present in your work, learning, and relationships.”
What is Neurofeedback Therapy?
Neurofeedback Therapy is a learning-based approach that uses real-time feedback on brain activity to support self-regulation. At Renew Neurotherapy, we use neurofeedback to help clients build a calmer, more resilient nervous system so improvements in focus, sleep, emotional balance, and daily functioning can follow.
By reflecting the brain’s electrical activity back in real time, neurofeedback gives the brain information it can use to adjust its patterns over time. This process helps strengthen more stable and efficient patterns of regulation.
Who We Help
Our integrated approach to wellness combines various therapeutic techniques tailored to your unique needs and goals at different stages of life.
Adults
Managing the complexities of career, identity, and personal growth.
Children & Teens
Navigating neurodiversity, school stress, and emotional development.
Families & Couples
Breaking cycles of conflict with relationship and parenting support.
Veterans & First Responders
PTSD and operational stress support (Authorized Blue Cross providers).
Seniors
Addressing life transitions, grief, and cognitive maintenance.
Businesses & Professionals
Burnout prevention and mindset coaching for high-performance.
Benefits of Neurofeedback Therapy
Definition: Ongoing difficulties with mood, worry, stress reactivity, or nervous system overactivation that can affect emotional balance, sleep, focus, and daily functioning.
How Neurofeedback can help: Training may be used to support calmer, more stable patterns linked with stress regulation, emotional balance, and the ability to settle both mentally and physically.
Definition: Ongoing effects of trauma that may include hypervigilance, shutdown, emotional reactivity, sleep disruption, and difficulty feeling safe or settled.
How Neurofeedback can help: Training may be used to reduce patterns associated with chronic alarm, overactivation, or shutdown so the brain and body are better able to return to a more regulated state.
Definition: Differences in how the brain processes attention, sensory input, regulation, communication, and executive functioning, which may affect focus, transitions, routines, and daily life.
How Neurofeedback can help: Training may be used to support attention regulation, sensory processing, emotional regulation, sleep, and overall day-to-day functioning based on the person’s specific pattern of strengths and challenges.
Definition: Difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, or getting restorative sleep, often alongside stress, overactivation, or a system that has difficulty settling.
How Neurofeedback can help: Training may be used to support patterns associated with settling, staying asleep, and achieving more restorative rest over time.
Definition: Cognitive, sensory, emotional, and physical changes that may continue after concussion or brain injury, including brain fog, fatigue, overload, light sensitivity, and poor concentration.
How Neurofeedback can help: Training may be used to support regulation, reduce overload, and improve the stability needed for attention, recovery, and daily functioning.
Frequently Asked Questions
Evidence supports the use of neurofeedback to promote symptom improvement in a variety of diagnostic groups. These include:
- Anxiety
- Depression
- PTSD
- Autistic Spectrum Disorder
- Sleep Disorders
- ADHD
- Brain Injury
- Learning Disorders
A brain map, also called a Quantitative Electroencephalogram (QEEG), is one tool that helps us understand patterns in brain activity. It provides data that can be considered alongside your clinical history, symptoms, and goals to help guide treatment planning.
Neurofeedback is typically completed in a clinical setting, as environmental variables are more easily controlled. The equipment, however, is portable and in some cases may be appropriately utilized in the home, school or work environment.
Neurofeedback can be a helpful part of recovery for athletes after concussion, particularly when symptoms such as poor concentration, slowed processing, overload, sleep disruption, or emotional dysregulation continue to interfere with work, school, sport, or daily life.
Because neurofeedback is a learning-based process, the goal is for the brain to build and retain healthier patterns over time. Many people find that these gains last, especially when training has been repeated enough to support lasting change.
At the same time, the brain and nervous system are always influenced by life circumstances, stress, sleep, and overall health. Neurofeedback can create a strong foundation, and ongoing healthy habits help support those gains over time.
Depending on the training you are doing, a cap or sensors are placed on your head so that we can measure your brain activity in real-time. A computer program is set up to read your brain activity and to ‘reward’ your brain when the activity falls into the target range. For example, an individual struggling with anxiety, insomnia and racing thoughts may have a brain that is running too fast in some areas. To combat this, a reward (such as a Pac-Man moving on a video game, a movie that fades in and out, or a tone sounding) is provided every time your brain slows down in the target area. As sessions progress, you will learn how to slow your brain down, even without the ‘reward.’
A re-assessment takes place approximately every fifteen sessions to ensure that recovery is progressing. During each session, your clinician will speak with you to evaluate your progress. The intervention plan will be modified as appropriate to maximize recovery and support your concurrent therapies. If there is no progress, it will be recommended that intervention be discontinued.
Neurofeedback is generally considered a safe, non-invasive, drug-free intervention when provided by trained professionals. As with any therapy, it should be individualized and monitored to ensure the approach remains appropriate for the person’s needs.
- Infraslow Fluctuation Training (ISF) (Bipolar and sLORETA)
- QEEG-guided 1 – 19 channel amplitude training
- QEEG-guided 1 – 19 channel z-score training
- QEEG-guided sLORETA amplitude training (CSD)
- QEEG-guided sLORETA z-score training
Neurofeedback may be helpful for people whose brain and nervous system are stuck in patterns of overactivation, hypervigilance, shutdown, or poor recovery. By helping the system become calmer and more regulated, it can become easier to participate in everyday strategies that support healing, such as sleep routines, breathing exercises, therapy, school, work, and relationships.
Sometimes the challenge is not knowing what to do. It is that the brain and body are too activated, overwhelmed, or shut down to use those strategies effectively. Neurofeedback can help calm and regulate the system so skills like breathing, grounding, emotional regulation, therapy work, and daily routines become easier to access and more effective.
For some people, trauma symptoms keep the brain and body in a constant state of high alert, making it hard to settle, feel safe, or talk about what happened. Neurofeedback does not depend on verbally revisiting traumatic experiences. Instead, it helps support a calmer, more regulated nervous system, which can improve sleep, emotional stability, attention, and daily functioning. Many clients find that once their system feels more regulated, trauma processing becomes easier to approach when they are ready.