Mental: Tuneups for Mind : Is It a Case of Mind Over Matter or Just a Matter of Money?

Ann Rodgers rotates on a circular platform beneath 32 stereo speakers mounted on a geodesic dome. John-David dims the lights, steps in front of a microphone and pumps up the volume on four tape decks. They fill the room with natural sounds--Tibetan bells, whales, dolphins, the ocean. Strobe lights flash. The music pulses.

The impish man clad in Bermuda shorts plays Wizard of Oz behind a plexiglass curtain.

“Accept your power as a powerful woman, a live woman, a whole woman,” John-David commands. His voice echoes eerily.

Sound Engulfs Subject

Rodgers lies still, legs and arms outstretched. The sound grows louder, bouncing off the walls in time to the lights. The sound of a heartbeat pounds loudly within the room.

“I love and support my body,” John-David says, mixing tapes like some cosmic pharmacist. “I am a whole person. I choose to liberate myself and let go of fears of the past. Success is my divine right. It is my right to be prosperous, intelligent, successful.”

He chants. “Om, Om, Om. As your mind balances, your mind chooses to balance the body.” Then the music wanes. Ann awakens from her Theta state, slowly flexing her fingers and toes. She sits up. Euphoria. An “E” ticket ride.

“How was it?” John-David asks.

“Mmmmm,” she sighs. “I felt a profound depth, a peace that’s very physical, very tranquil. It’s a lot like being completely absorbed into the sound track of a movie.”

Or a TV show. Perhaps, “The Twilight Zone”?

Rodgers has just experienced a $200 brain tuneup at the nation’s first Brain/Mind Salon, a New Age mental workout that integrates the brain, mind and body through sound. Or so says self-proclaimed neuroscientist John-David, founder of the John-David Learning Institute in Carlsbad. The 50-year-old entrepreneur, who legally changed his name from Ronald Ramsey 10 years ago, opened his prototype brain-building salon in an industrial park here last January.

Why Neglect the Mind?

People spend hours exercising their bodies, concluded John-David, so why should they neglect their minds? He claims that the relaxation derived from continued mental workouts will eventually result in increased IQ, better memory, more self-confidence, enhanced sexuality, self-healing, and the ability to “multi-task,” his term for doing several complex tasks at one time.

By using his Nautilus for the mind, clients are able to dip below the conscious Beta state into a relaxed Alpha or even Theta mode. The Theta state precedes sleep.

Meditation or listening to a relaxation tape provides similar results, but “It’s going to take about 1,000 hours to get the same stress reduction that you’ll get from our tapes in 20 minutes,” he said.

“This way, you don’t have to sit for 10 years and contemplate your navel. I know Californians like to do that,” the state native said, chuckling, “but I’m not one of those Californians. I’d rather plop on a tape and get the results in 20 minutes.”

Come January, the stressed, the hassled, and the over-burdened can make a futuristic New Year’s resolution to clean up their mental acts. Instead of the annual promise to get their bodies in shape, they can resolve to exercise their minds for around $45 an hour at one of 20 Brain/Mind Salon franchises scheduled to open at sites across the nation, including San Diego, Los Angeles, Orange County, New York, Denver and St. Paul.

“We envision the gray-flannel executive coming in on his lunch hour for a quick brain tuneup,” John-David explained.

Despite the mental messiah’s attempt to make 30 minutes in a Brain Sync Machine sound like a jog around the block, a visit to a Brain/Mind Salon remains surreal, like stepping into a some futuristic television show.

The “reflection chamber,” for example, offers users “intense meditation and self-introspection” by allowing them to confront their reflection on the 360 degrees of mirrors that cover the box’s walls.

Or, they can spend time in a flotation tank, an experience that turned William Hurt’s character into an ape in “Altered States.” The darkened cubicle lets devotees float naked for an hour on 8 inches of warm water laced with 800 pounds of Epsom salts. Not recommended for claustrophobics.

Perhaps most bizarre is John-David’s own creation, the Brain/Mind Expansion Intensive Dome that Ann Rodgers found so relaxing. For $65,000, serious mental athletes can buy one for their home brain gym. John-David mixes a selection of 140 natural and computer-synthesized noises, then bombards clients with the sounds for the supreme relaxation-intense experience. Despite the loud music and flashing lights, Rodgers said, the end result made her “feel very, very quiet in my head.”

Each piece of equipment in the salon works differently but offers the same results--transformation from a Type A burnout to a New Age mindjock. John-David expects the salons to attract “yuppie, health-oriented, corporate types.”

“The Brain/Mind Salons are a natural extension of the physical fitness movement,” he said. “We’re going to appeal to the people who want to do very, very well.”

Certainly, his marketing techniques are geared to BMW, Jacuzzi and CD owners. Catchy phrases such as “brain aerobics” and “turbocharge your brain” permeate John-David’s ads and catalogues. A sleek, mirror-trimmed logo, mauve and gray salon color scheme, and trademark credo “Your Brain’s Fitness Center . . . “ echoes the sales pitch at trendy athletic clubs.

So do the prices. A 45-minute “sample tuneup” consisting of 30 minutes in an egg-shaped Mind/Body chair and a

15-minute session under the headphones and strobe light goggles of the Brain Sync Machine costs $45. A 10-session package is a bargain at $350. An hourlong brain-sync session sells for $65, while an hour in the flotation tank is $35. Counselors help clients program a workout that will help them achieve the relaxed Alpha and Theta mental states.

The idea behind the brain tuneup is nothing new, though John-David is the first to franchise salons. Flotation tanks have been around since the mid-1950s, when the military used them for sensory-deprivation experiments. Altered States Float Center and MindGym in West Hollywood, and similar centers in New York and Chicago, also feature the sensory-deprivation tanks. Deprived of light, sound, taste, touch and smell, floaters often compare the experience to intense, Technicolor dreaming.

“The more availability to this technology, the better,” said Jeff Labno, co-owner of Altered States. He does not think of John-David as a competitor. “The more people who use the equipment, the more business it will generate.”

Labno makes none of the claims John-David promises--that sessions will increase IQ, improve memory, elevate self-esteem and heighten performance at work.

“We promote relaxation. Anything else is icing on the cake.”

Official Support Is Limited

At UC San Diego Medical School, scientists are inclined to agree with Labno, if they go that far. Scientists note that relaxation benefits people who complain about stress, but it has never been proven to raise intelligence. Dr. Robert Livingston said neither the sound of Tibetan bells nor floating in a sensory-deprivation tank are guarantees of modern day Nirvana.

“I doubt it would be anymore beneficial than getting in your hammock and listening to music you enjoy,” Livingston said. “And if you want to put $35 from your right pocket into your left, you’ll be ahead. It’s upsetting to me that yuppies don’t donate $35 to help the homeless. Instead . . . to spend it on having a high-tech sound bombardment sounds, as economist Thorstein Veblen said, a little like conspicuous consumption.”

No newcomer to New Age philosophies, Livingston has tutored the Tibetan spiritual leader Dali Lama in Western medicine. The doctor also decried John-David’s lack of published research about his claims.

John-David makes no effort to conceal his lack of medical or scientific credentials. Labeling himself a “high school dropout and self-taught genius,” he said he was active in the civil-rights and anti-war movements of the ‘60s before traveling to Asia and Africa. He readily acknowledges that the doctoral degree he earned in clinical psychology from a university in Zaire holds no validity in the United States.

“My work should not be based on a Ph.D,” he said, “It’s based on 22 years of being out there on the edge and just being a giant sponge for the merging cultures of the East and West.”

John-David’s biggest assets may be his effusive laugh, jolly smile and the energy to create and market the fad of the 1990s. For every detractor, the cherubic, balding mindmaster can conjure up a doctor, educator or satisfied client to praise his $350 tape sets, $2,000 seminars and $45 salon sessions.

Pupils Were Helped

The principal of a troubled New Jersey junior high school claims the tapes helped a class of poor learners improve their behavior and increase test scores. The educator is applying for a $15,000 state grant to use the tapes on a regular basis. Meanwhile, administrators of Los Angeles County’s Head Start program are reviewing some of John-David’s tapes for classroom use.

“It’s a technological way of making your dreams come true,” said Jon Van de Wetering, who took a five-day seminar from the John-David Learning Institute in April. “It was such a transforming experience for me, I signed up for a 10-float package.”

Out-of-body experiences, a new-found belief in God, and more self-confidence are among the benefits the former “computer geek” attributes to flotation therapy.

The 34-year-old turned to John-David when problems stemming from divorce, amphetamines addiction and chronic loneliness consumed him. Working 14 hours a week as a free-lance computer consultant, “I was trying to play the role of the workaholic yuppie,” he said. Neither conventional therapy nor relaxation tapes had helped him deal with life’s ups and downs.

“It’s difficult and I still have some changes to make, but it’s been mostly a positive climb out of where I was,” said Van de Wetering, who drives to Carlsbad from Duarte for his weekly float. “My business is my gray matter, so it makes sense to get it turbo-charged as often as I can.”

But Beware of Addiction

While relaxation is beneficial, clients should not let their workouts become a new addiction, stressed Dr. Thomas Rusk, a professor of psychiatry at UCSD.

“What scares me about this idea is that (John-David) is claiming there are easy, quick fixes that don’t require a personal sense of responsibility . . . that the latest J. David is going to do it for us instead of finding out what our spirit needs,” Rusk said.

Perhaps the brain tuneup is just another in a long line of California fads, like est and crystals. John-David dislikes the suggestion.

“The people who really see the potential of this are non -Californians. It’s the people from Des Moines and Chicago who are buying our tapes,” he said. “California is a trend setter, so this just happens to be where it’s starting.”

In fact, John-David and his staff take great pains to eliminate California slang when discussing the salon. They even correct themselves when West Coast jargon slips out. Thus, self-awareness translates to “helping people become more aware of themselves,” and a “multi-sense experience” becomes simply hearing, seeing and smelling at the same time by listening to sounds coordinated by John-David.

The former Ronald Ramsey acknowledges that he has detractors but explains that he would rather concentrate on his supporters--everyone from New Age converts and university professors to young entrepreneurs and Fortune 500 CEOs.

“I’m not about trying to convince anyone,” he said. “I’m just putting it out there and letting people try it. We know we aren’t going to get too many Archie Bunkers in here or any Jerry Falwells, for that matter. And if we did, I’d probably shift the juice on them anyway.”