Alachua Together

This Saturday I went to the Haile Village Farmers market, in Haile Plantation. Haile Village is the commercial section of the sprawling housing development, near the corner of SW 46th Avenue and SW 91 Street. It is open from 8:30am until noon every Saturday, rain or shine. Vendors have a really sweet deal here. They tell me it is only $10 per week to set up a table here, and it’s an extra $5 to rent a canopy. That means I am applying for a space for my business, Marsh Window Cleaning!

Jewelers, candle makers, and various services may also participate, although edible creations are in the majority. All along one of Haile Village’s interior streets, in front of a conveniently placed cafe, you can find fruits, vegetables, plants, biscotti, sea food, prepared food, and other worthwhile subjects to investigate.

Most things I saw, and tasted, were locally grown, with the exception of the fish that cannot be found this far inland. One man was showing off the biggest shrimp I have ever seen. He boasted that he is there every week, and that there are regular customers who travel from across town to get his meaty catches.

Not all of my pictures came out well, so you will have to come out to see everything. Some of the regular participants include:

• Custom Designs and Alterations by Ida Lawrence
• Bee Sweet Apiaries, Inc. Producers of Florida Honey
• The Green Mango, 100% Indian and Vegetarian foods
• Embros Orchestra, Greek American Entertainers
• Mobil Seafood Depot, Fresh Seafood
• In The Beginning Jewelry
• John Brothers, Guitar Lessons
• Verna Groger, RD, Registered Dietitian

With any luck at all, I will get some of these people to write here on the blog, so they can share their expertise with you, and let you know when they are available outside of the Farmers Market.

I met Tom a few months ago at a meeting of my local Leads Club. I had never heard of Neurofeedback, but I honestly thought of it as one of those squishy sciences somewhere in the realm of hypnosis. But, I do try to be open minded, and I am in this group of local business people who are dedicated to promoting one another. So I felt like I had a duty to learn more about neurofeedback, and a part of that was letting Tom hook me up to his electrodes and tweak my neurons.

I didn’t enter into this lightly. I had gone online to learn more about it, and I had heard Tom give brief presentations about it, but I was still fuzzy about what he actually did. So, I went to his office at his home and talked with him about his work, and let him literally hook me up to a computer that ran a neurofeedback program while another screen showed me a video game in which my brain waves drove the action. Tom told me to relax and let my brain learn new tricks in the background.

Well, it was after lunch, and I was pretty comfortable in that chair, so I found myself fighting drowsiness. I thought it would be unfair to Tom if I conked out and started snoring, perhaps invalidating whatever my brain was learning. But toward the end I suddenly felt very alert and awake and engaged with the video. When we were finished, Tom showed me some graphs on another screen that showed where the various types of brain waves were interacting with the program. He pointed at the graph at the end where it showed that I was suddenly very alert. I hadn’t told him this, so I was intrigued.

Later I also watched a DVD that cleared up some of my other understanding gaps. Neurofeedback therapists can actually exercise different parts of your brain by placing the electrodes on different parts of your head. We know a lot about brain activity now, and where various functions live, so that makes the brain more trainable than we have previously realized.

This seems to be a therapy that is as non-intrusive as regular exercise, but without the sweat. There are no drugs, no effort, and a lot of people have gotten help for a vast array of problems, from ADHD and Autism to Post-traumatic Stress, Pain Management, and Peak Performance for athletes. Below is a video on YouTube that is excerpted from the DVD I saw.

The rest of the videos can be found at this link.

Tom Swisshelm can be reached at 352-327-3689, and he is willing to give you a free evaluation! If you are stressed, depressed, in pain, overwhelmed, or have given up on other therapies, give Tom a call! Or reach him through his website.