Why We Are Closing the Office for Two Days in October

We will be closed October 22nd and 23rd. We are back to normal hours on Monday the 26th. If you need to be seen that week, call or text us and we will get you in before we leave or right after we get back.

Now here is where we will be.

The kids went back to school in August. I go back in October.

I will be on Hilton Head Island at a BrainCore neurofeedback symposium, in a room full of other providers, learning the newest settings.

Settings is the word that matters, and most people have never had a reason to hear it. So let me explain what it is I am actually going after.

What a protocol is, and why yours is yours

When we map a brain, we are looking at how it communicates with itself.

It is almost like a forest. You have a tree that talks to an individual tree, you have a forest that talks to itself as a whole, and then there are groups of trees that talk to groups of trees. That is how the brain works across its different parts, and a qEEG brain map measures that out objectively, so we can see what sits inside normal ranges, what sits low, what sits high, and what would be worth working on first.

Out of that map comes a training protocol. The settings. What gets trained, where, how, in what order. It is built from that one person’s map, and it is theirs. Yours would not look like your neighbor’s and your child’s would not look like yours.

Those protocols keep developing, the way anything clinical does. New research comes in. Other providers find things. The system refines what it recommends.

Here is the part worth knowing as a patient. From the parking lot, the office running this year’s settings and the office running the ones from four years ago look exactly the same. There is no sign in the window. The only way you find out is if somebody tells you.

So I am telling you. I am closing the doors for two days to go and learn, and what I bring back gets used on the people sitting in these chairs.

I would rather be current than open. Two days is a cheap price for that.

The other thing I am going after

Health building practices.

That is my own phrase and I use it deliberately. I would rather be in the business of building something than in the business of fixing something. Whatever I pick up in that room about how people build health and hold onto it, I will bring home.

If you want to know whether we actually keep up, look at the equipment

We brought in a Clean Connect headset this year.

The old way of running a map meant conductive paste in your hair. Nobody puts that in the advertising and everybody remembers it afterward. The Clean Connect kit is paste-free. It is quicker to get on and off, it is a good deal easier if you are bringing a child in, and you can go back to work afterward without visiting a sink first.

It changes what the appointment is like to sit through. It does not change what the map reads or what the training does, and I am not going to tell you otherwise.

That is a small thing and it is the kind of small thing that tells you whether a practice is paying attention.

For what it is worth on the broader question: BrainCore is a national system with over 350 providers, and there are over sixty years of research behind neurofeedback as a modality. I am trained and certified in it, I have practiced in Elizabethton since 1996, and I am a Doctor of Chiropractic out of Palmer College. Chiropractors are masters at the nerve system. When we go through chiropractic school, the nerve system is our forte. That is a good part of why neurofeedback made sense to me in the first place.

What I ask when I come back from anything

This is the useful part, and you can use it tonight without setting foot in this office.

When somebody comes back from a trip, or a conference, or anything worth going to, I ask them for their top two takeaways. What I am really after is their aha moments or their magic moments.

And here is how I get at those.

I ask a person what they know good today.

Then I ask the question that does the actual work. What’s good about that?

The first question gets you a polite answer. The second one gets you a real one. I have been doing it for years and it still surprises me how often somebody has to stop and think before they can answer it, and then tells me something they had not said out loud to anybody.

Try it this week. Ask your kid what they know good today, then ask what’s good about that, and then be quiet long enough for them to get there.

That costs nothing and it is not a technique. It is just two questions in the right order.

Before we go

Closed October 22nd and 23rd. Back Monday, October 26th.

Call 423.542.3337 or text 423.380.0877 and we will get you on the schedule either side of it.

And if you have been wondering whether any of this applies to you or to somebody in your house, call for a consultation and see if you qualify. It is not right for everybody, and finding that out is the whole point of the first conversation.

I am looking forward to it.

Office Hours

Mon & Thu: 7:30am–Noon and 1:30–5pm
Tue & Fri: 7:30am–Noon
Wed: 8:30am–Noon and 2–6pm

Phone: 423.542.3337 | Text: 423.380.0877

Yours In Health,
Dr. Dennis & Your BrainCore of Elizabethton Team