Viccis Story V2
Vicci's story // signal 02
The best biofeedback instrument she ever owned weighed seventy-five pounds.
Vicci Tibbetts has spent her career reading signals off the human nervous system. The clearest one she ever got came from an Australian shepherd who couldn't lie.
Vicci Tibbetts, with BaxterMental health and biofeedback therapist in private practice. Fifty years in holistic health. She reads signals for a living.
Input → response → adjust → repeat
Biofeedback is a simple loop.
You put a sensor on somebody. Heart rate, skin temperature, breathing, the space between heartbeats. They try something. The number moves, or it doesn't. They adjust. Twenty minutes a day, every day, until the nervous system learns to find calm on its own.
That's Vicci's work. She teaches people to read their own signal and steer by it. It is slow, honest, and it does not care what you believe.
Which is why, when the signal in her own house went bad, she noticed fast.
Subject: Baxter · 13.5 yrs · 75 lb · Australian shepherd
The signal went bad at sundown.
Baxter was the calm one. Six Australian shepherds over the years, and he was the only easy one. Then, about eight months before this was written, the readout changed. Pacing. Standing in the yard staring at nothing. Three days later, much worse.
Every night it started as the sun went down and ran until two or three in the morning. He rubbed his nose raw. He knocked things over and they fell on him. If they sat with him he'd settle a little, then ramp right back up. He bit them twice, a dog who had never bitten anyone.
The name for it is sundowners. And here is the thing a biofeedback therapist knows in her bones: a dog cannot fake a signal. He didn't want to be like this. He wasn't performing. The nervous system was simply telling the truth, all night, every night.
Loop one: everything on the shelf.
Fifty years in holistic health means a deep shelf. So she ran the loop the way she teaches it. Try something. Watch the response. Adjust.
- InputThunderCoat. Response: calmer for a bit. Then back.
- InputXanax. Response: calmer for a bit. Then back.
- InputCalming chews, pheromone collar. Response: same.
- InputEssential oils, homeopathics. Response: same.
- InputA vet tech's honest answer about what people do next. Response: She couldn't bear it.
Every input moved the needle for a moment. None of it changed the loop. Whichever one of them got the bed that night lay awake anyway, because the dog was downstairs hurting himself.
Then she got a signal from the research.
She went searching online. She found several people selling a device for the vagus nerve, and as a biofeedback therapist she knows the vagus nerve well enough to know that wasn't going to reach the brainwave states involved in dementia. She kept looking.
That's when she found Resona Health, and read the cognitive study and the PTSD study. And her own nervous system gave her a reading she didn't expect.
"As a therapist, initially I was a little scared. Maybe this is going to put me out of business. Thirty days? I can't achieve that with the stuff I do in therapy."
Vicci, on reading the studies
She'd never heard of PEMF, though it's been around for forty years. Within a few days she took it to her husband. His signal was simpler: if I can get one night of good sleep, it's worth three hundred bucks.
She bought two. One for Baxter. One for herself, because she wasn't going to put anything on a dog that didn't like the Dremel on his toenails until she'd felt it first. That's the other half of biofeedback: you calibrate the instrument before you trust the reading.
Protocol: Gamma AM · Vagus Nerve + Sleep PM
Loop two: same method, new input.
Gamma in the morning at full intensity, because 40 Hz gamma was part of the cognitive study. Vagus Nerve and then Sleep at night, at about a four or five, to bring the nervous system down. Then she did what she does. She watched the readout.
- Week 1A little shift. The frantic pacing eased. Not gone, but the needle moved and stayed moved.
- Week 2A big shift. Calmed easier, stayed calm longer. No more nose rubbed raw. Fewer things knocked over.
- Week 3Bedtime moving the right way. 3:00 became 2:00, then 1:00, then midnight.
- Week 4A regular bedtime. On the nights he stirred, one run of Vagus Nerve and he settled back down.
- Week 6Sleeping so well she dropped the night protocols. Gamma in the morning only.
3 AMwhere the readout started
4 wksto a normal bedtime
8 moof good signal after that
And a reading she wasn't even tracking: at the park, an old arthritic dog whose walks had become a sniffing fest started hearing tennis balls again, heading straight for them, going over to people to be petted. The daytime signal came back too.
Output: 8 months
Baxter passed about a week and a half before this was written.
Not the dementia. Age and arthritis, the years catching up with a big dog's back end. He'd lost twenty pounds, and when he could no longer stand to eat, they knew he was suffering in a different way and wouldn't do that to him.
What the loop gave her was the eight months in between. Not managed. Good. Not confused, not hurting himself. Happy, and it was easy to see.
"Thank you for eight months more of my dog. That's a gift."
Vicci, to Mark L Fox, founder of Resona Health
Why the dog is the better instrument.
Here is what Vicci says when someone gets skeptical, and she says it as a woman who has spent her life studying what the mind can do.
Baxter had no idea what was around his neck. He didn't read the study. He didn't want it to work. There was no expectation in the loop, nothing for a placebo to hang on. The input went in, and the response came out, and the response was a dog who stopped pacing, stopped bleeding, and went to sleep.
That is the cleanest signal a therapist ever gets. It's the reason Baxter's story is the one she leads with.
Then the loop started running on people.
Remember the second VIBE, the one she calibrated on herself? About a week and a half in, she started lending it to her husband. Very skeptical man, in her words. His response came back unprompted.
"He said, 'I want my own. I don't know why, but I want my own.' And I said, 'Okay honey, there you go.'"
Vicci
She had already ordered wholesale. She now runs what Resona Health calls the Power of Four, four protocols back to back, with every one of her clients, and she keeps a loose eye on about forty people who are using the device, dogs included. She has given it away to six people who couldn't afford it.
The readings she gets back are all over the map. A woman who'd lived with diabetes for twenty years told her that within about five weeks her A1C went from nine to six. A man with twenty years of back pain from a car accident said he used it twice and doesn't feel it. Vicci scraped her own knee badly, ran Wound Healing, and got no bruise and no scar.
Her own tally so far: she has not met one person she's been involved with who hasn't had some benefit.
HRV training: 20 min/day, every day → one button
The loop she teaches, without the twenty minutes.
Here is what amazes her most, as a biofeedback therapist. The heart rate variability improvement she teaches takes twenty minutes of practice, every single day, and it only works if you do the practice. She's now seeing the same kind of shift in clients from pushing a button.
When Mark L Fox told her that sounded like cheating, she pushed back.
"If there's something out there that gives us an alternative that isn't surgery or medicine or hours of meditation, I consider it to be a smart way of living one's life. You can still do all the things you want to do. You just don't have to put so much time into self-care."
Vicci, almost 70, alternative health since she was 18
She'll also tell you, a little reluctantly, that after five weeks on the Power of Four she's reading a difference in her own marriage. Two calmer nervous systems in one house. She's already wondering what that loop would do in couples therapy.
The inputs, in order.
Every protocol on the VIBE is a one-button preset. These are the ones in this story, with the notes Mark L Fox gave her on the call.
- GammaBaxter's morning input, at full intensity. Mark's note: 40 Hz gamma makes a dog more alert, so mornings only, never at night.
- Vagus NerveBaxter's evening input, and the one she reached for when he woke up. Now part of her Power of Four with every client.
- SleepAfter Vagus Nerve at bedtime, at about a four or five.
- AnxietyFirst of the Power of Four.
- PTSDMark's suggestion for any dog that's been through trauma, and automatic for any rescue.
- Relax and BalanceMark's pick as the closest thing on the device to a thunder blanket. Think Temple Grandin's squeeze machine.
- Wound HealingThe one she ran on her knee.
One reading from watching forty people: the biggest difference between who gets results and who doesn't is whether the loop keeps running. She went to Boston for a week and wore hers around her neck all day, every day. Some responses are immediate. Some take patience, like a deep cut takes time to close. Keep the loop going.
The VIBE, from Resona Health
$299 $399
A pocket-sized PEMF device with 60 core protocols and 70 expansion protocols built in, including every one above. One button. No app, no subscription, no sensor to read. Works on people and on dogs.
- Fits in a pocket, wears on the included lanyard, or tucks into a dog's vest, and works through clothing and fur
- Rechargeable, about 5 hours per charge at full power
- Safe for people and pets
- Free shipping worldwide
- 30-day money-back guarantee and 1-year warranty
Baxter's first reading showed up in a week. You get 30 days. If the needle doesn't move, send it back for a full refund.
Or get it the way Baxter wore it
VIBE + Dog Vest Bundle
$328.99
The VIBE plus a soft, adjustable, washable vest that holds it on the chest over the heart and vagus nerve. Small through Extra Large; when in doubt, size up.
Get the Vest Bundle
VIBE + Dog Bandana Bundle
$328.99
The VIBE plus a bandana with a zip pocket that sits it at the neck, right where Vicci ran Vagus Nerve on Baxter. Small through Extra Large.
Get the Bandana BundleInput → response → adjust → repeat
You already run this loop. You just call it something else.
You try a thing. You watch how you feel. You keep it or you drop it. That's all biofeedback is, and it's all Vicci did with a dog who couldn't lie to her.
A bad signal every night at sundown. A new input. Four weeks to a regular bedtime. Eight good months. And a skeptic in the next room who asked for his own.
Put the sensor on. Watch what comes back.
The VIBE is an FDA general wellness device. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Individual results vary.
Nothing on this page is medical advice. The stories here are Vicci Tibbetts's own and those of people and pets she knows. "Signal," "loop," and "instrument" are figures of speech, not a description of a clinical study or of how the device works. Protocol names are the names of settings on the device, not claims of treatment for any condition. See your physician for any health concern, including blood sugar or medication changes, and your veterinarian before using any device on a pet.
Vicci Tibbetts is an independent affiliate of Resona Health and earns a commission on purchases made through the links on this page, at no additional cost to you.