New Wave Answer to Stress on The Street?

On the morning before his first brain spa treatment, Frank Lindemann was stressed out, harried and generally in an unpleasant mood.

“That’s typical,” the 32-year-old financial executive said. “My work is nonstop and can be high-pressure.”

But after a 35-minute lunch session at the New York Mind Fitness Center, a new New Age emporium in the cold heart of New York’s financial district, Lindemann emerged “incredibly relaxed,” ready, even, to face afternoon client meetings.

Afterward, “I think I was walking around the street kind of smiling to myself without realizing it,” said Lindemann, co-owner of Riverside Consultants Inc., a New York-based maker of financial software. “I don’t usually walk around smiling.”

This is no joke.

Since The New York Mind Fitness Center opened its door at the end of September, dozens of New York’s most frazzled money makers and traders have cast their skepticism aside to get the “treatment,” which consists of staring into a sound- and light-emitting machine called Innerquest that allegedly tunes a user’s brain waves and induces blissful calmness.

There are about 20 to 40 brain spas nationwide that employ electronic machines similar to Innerquest, said Michael Hutchison, author of “Megabrain,” a book on brain enhancement.

Most such facilities cater to spiritual seekers, ex-hippies and the scientifically inquisitive.

But the New York Mind Fitness Center, which bills itself as “Wall Street’s First Brain Exchange,” is the first to market its services to business executives, Hutchison said. “These machines can help relieve stress, and stress is endemic on Wall Street.”

The New York Mind Fitness Center is in a small, doctor’s-office-like suite two blocks from Wall Street. Its wood floors are polished, its walls white matte; the shades are drawn.

Owner Dan Perl, 29, a former optician who wears cardigan sweaters and speaks in soothing tones, said he decided to open a Wall Street-based mind spa because “the great financial corporations are down here, and here is where high-strung executives work.”

At the spa, clients--about 20 a week--are asked to recline in one of six white Naugahyde chairs in the cozy “exchange room,” so called because stress, theoretically, is exchanged for relaxation.

To begin the treatment, users wear goggles containing small pulsing red lights. They also wear headphones that emit soothing music--a mixture of jazz, bird chirps, heartbeats, breaking surf and electronic beeps.

The principle behind Innerquest and similar light-and-sound machines is “follow the leader,” Perl said.

The lights in the goggles, connected to a programmed computer console, begin to pulse at a frequency associated with a particular set of brain waves. Proponents say that the brain locks onto that frequency, and as the lights “ramp down” to a slower rhythm, the brain follows.

At slower-pulsing speeds, Perl said, Innerquest induces in the user alpha and theta brain waves--electrical activity associated with deep meditation and calm awareness.

Cost for a 30-minute tuneup: $20.

Wilbur Robinson--Innerquest inventor, president of Psych-Research Inc., the machine’s producer, and an Arizona-based psychotherapist--says that since the mid-1980s, he has sold about 100 of the $7,500 console models like the ones used by Perl, and perhaps 6,000 to 8,000 portable, home-use models ($495 to $595 retail).

Robinson acknowledges there is “no real bona fide scientific study” backing up Innerquest’s claim of alpha and theta tuning.

“Basically, you get the same result by meditating or watching a beautiful sunset, but in this case the machine (creates the benefits) for you,” Robinson said.

But Victor Herbert, professor of medicine at the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York and a frequent critic of medical quackeries, said he is “skeptical, to put it mildly,” about the effectiveness of Innerquest and similar sound-and-light devices--including Synchro-Energizer, D.A.V.I.D. and Minds-eye--available at various spas.

“The fundamental rule with respect to all therapy is that no product works until it is objectively demonstrated to work,” Herbert said, adding that brain spas sounded like “a lucrative scam” to him.

In the court of human experience, several of Perl’s clients said they have gained great benefits from Innerquest.

James Searl, 43, a vice president in charge of futures trading for a New York money broker, found his brain-spa session “interesting . . . relaxing.”

“I work in a very high-pressure job,” he said. “You can feel the tension in the back of your neck and across your shoulders. (Innerquest) is a good release, kind of a quick fix when I don’t have time to go to a 90-minute physical workout.”

For Iris Bell, 37, assistant to the managing director of Robert Fleming Inc., an investment banker, brain tuning is better than other stress-busting pursuits: “Most people leave work and go out for a beer. I’d rather go down to Dan’s and get zapped. It’s a lot better and cheaper.”