Joe's Lightbox (continued - page 2)
Report by: Debra Pickman
After a while at the house, Joe mentioned a piece of equipment he had brought along with him. It’s difficult to explain, because I’ve only seen it once and didn’t fully understand the concept, but I will try my best to give you a visual image
It consisted of an electrical sort of box with several ways to adjust for the tones and lights emitted in the programs it ran. Plugged into the box was a set of headphones (no doubt noise cancelling) to allow the listener to hear specific sounds. Also plugged into the box was a pair of goggles. In these goggles were led lights that would light up in certain sequences and with specific timing, according to the program chosen. When the set up was complete and the user was ready, these were the only sensory inputs.
Now from what I understood, the unit was used by different people for an array of dissimilar applications, such as meditation, relaxation, hypnoses and a few others I can’t quite remember. With the unit you could pre-select programs or generate you own if you knew what you were doing. Some of the program sessions could last as long as 30 minutes or so, others as little as 4 or 5 minutes.
I decided to give it whirl and Joe, knowing more about the box, chose a simple session that lasted about 6-7 minutes. Before beginning the experience, I was told to relax and let the program guide me. When the selected program began to run, lights flashed and tones sounded in different patterns and quite slowly at first, then they picked up speed, and later slowed down again. This cadence occurred a few times.
I’m not sure what I thought about the whole incident when it was over. I did not feel like I had gone into any sort of meditative or hypnotic state, but Joe mentioned it could work differently for different individuals and depending on how open their mind was, might not seem to do anything the first time it was used. It was explained that in order to get a significant reaction or feeling I may have needed a different program. He noted that he was not quite as familiar with the unit, since he had only recently gotten it, but that after some research on it, we might try again at a different date.
Figuring that he would be next to experiment, Tony patiently waited for his turn. When we spoke of the idea, however, there was great hesitation from Joe and for good reason. From his previous visit, he was privy to some of Tony’s medical past.
Several years earlier, Tony took a severe blow to the head as he was thrown from a bull and the result was a concussion that had brought a few problems to include seizures. He had been on medication to control them for the better part of two years. Although at the time, he had been off the medication and seizure free for close to 3 years, Joe was extremely cautious and didn’t feel that taking that taking the chance of the flashing lights bringing one on was worth the experience.
Tony knew of this possibility and still felt he wanted to try the unit. Against Joe’s better judgment, he set the unit for the shortest program, and warned Tony that if he felt a headache coming on, or nauseous in any way he was to let us know. Tony agreed and then rather eagerly put the headphones and goggles on.
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