About The Dubin Clinic Blog
Even back in high school I was completely fascinated by “”mind”. I was reading Freud, Jung, Judaism and Buddhism. To pursue my high school understanding “wisdom”, I tried to meditate. Using a tattered paperback book on Zen by DT Suzui for instructions, I had a really important insight–that trying too hard to meditate gives you a headache!
My interest in the brain and mind intensified at the University of Michigan, where I studied psychology. When I graduated, I went on to medical school intending to become a psychiatrist. That is, until I did my “clerkship” in psychiatry. It was at the inpatient psychiatric ward at a 1200 bed veteran’s hospital in East Orange, NJ. Every patient was either chronically depressed or severely paranoid. It was profoundly discouraging—there wasn’t anything to do other than to hand out medication.
I was so discouraged, in fact, that I dropped the idea of becoming a psychiatrist. , Instead, I decided to focus on medicine where I could see results. And a great way to do this was to become an emergency room physician.
I really enjoyed emergency medicine, but I was dismayed at how little we could do for head injuries and how little we could offer to treat anxiety and depression and a whole host of other “mental illnesses”.
All the while I was continuing in my personal journey via meditation and as a student of Chogyam Trungpa, both of which profoundly affected my life. And I was looking for something that could help patients more profoundly change their “minds”. When I first read about neurofeedback I thought it could be a useful tool to teach people meditation. When I looked into it, however, I found out that there were all sorts of clinical applications such as treatment for ADD, anxiety, brain injury and more. I started treating people with neurofeedback and found significant success. However, LENS neurofeedback, which is feedback to the brain in the form of a stimulation, absolutely stunning in the rapidity of improvement and its effectiveness. I dropped everything else and switched careers to being a full time LENS practitioner. LENS is a remarkable technology and an important one, which I will write more about in future blogs. Suffice it to say that I am fascinated by brain, mind and personal journeys and change. And that is what this blog will be about.
