Inside BRAINTOPIA: Neurofeedback, Education, And A Family’s Mission

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Welcome to Brainstorm, the BrainTopia Podcast, hosted by Sandra Hooper Murcott, founder of Brain Topia Neurofeedback Centers.
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With locations across the Dallas-Fort Worth area, BrainTopia helps children, teens, and adults improve brain function through advanced neurofeedback brain training.
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On this podcast, we explore the science of brain health and real-world solutions for symptoms linked to anxiety, ADHD, sleep challenges, emotional regulation, and cognitive performance.
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This is Brainstorm, where understanding your brain is the first step toward lasting change.
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Welcome everyone.
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I'm Chelsea Earlywine, co-host and producer here in the studio with Sandra Hooper Mercott, founder of BrainTopia Neurofeedback Center.
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Sandra, how are you today?
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Great.
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Good morning, Chelsea.
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Good morning.
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It's great to see you.
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So over the years, you've grown a remarkable following, but some of our listeners might not be familiar with the full journey.
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So let's take it from the top.
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Could you share a little background about your company and what you do?
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Sure.
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So I'm an educator by nature.
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A lot of people will ask if uh I'm if I'm a doctor, if I'm in the medical field.
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We like to say we're medically adjacent because I come from a medical family, started off my education pre-med, but went the education route.
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And so my master's degree, all of my work was in brain-based education under the um teachings of a psychologist named Howard Gardner.
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And his idea was that there were nine different areas of the brain that controlled nine different learning functions.
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And then when I found neurofeedback, it was very similar to that, just in the emotional realm instead of educational realm.
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So it really fit, it was a hand-in-glove fit for my education and for what I was doing.
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I've spent 25 years as an educator, just left that field.
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Um, and so we really wanted to be able to offer parents and families and people in general a look into their brain to understand why they were feeling what they were feeling.
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And that's what neurofeedback and the QEG brain mapping process gives us.
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That's amazing.
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Well, I'm excited to dive in further about Brain Topia in our coming episodes.
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So I know that marketing is key to any business's success.
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So how do you market Brain Topia?
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Right.
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So the most the the way that we started was going to the people that I was already working with.
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So parents in my class or um friends of my son, and just going to the people in our warm market.
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And what we found is something that we have now coined mom-to-mom marketing because we found that when one family experienced success, they're going to tell other members of their family, they're going to tell their friends.
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And so that's the best referral source that we can have is one person who has had success and felt better telling another person.
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And so that's really how we've grown this.
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Um, we also, you know, wanted to, again, education is my background.
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So I wanted to be able to be education forward of letting people know that this is a solution.
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Um, we're not anti-meds in our center, but we want to give people a solution that is not necessarily medicine-based.
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And so uh we we just want to educate people little by little in any way that we can that this is an option for them.
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So mostly that mom-to-mom or person-to-person marketing is how we want to grow.
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But um, we're we're working with doctors now and going out with uh different practitioners to to spread the word.
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I love that.
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Mom-to-mom marketing.
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That's a fantastic term.
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So, Sandra, when you are not busy running your business, what do you do for fun in your free time?
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Uh our family loves to travel.
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So that has been a big thing for us is being able to look at the world um and and really make the world.
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We have a 13-year-old son, and so make the world his classroom and make the world our classroom.
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So we know that the more that we can understand uh everyone in different cultures and different countries, uh, the better we can be here.
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So really travel is is what we would, you know, next to Braintopia, that's how we spend most of our time.
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Oh, I love that.
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Do you have a top destination that you've been to?
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Oh gosh, our goal uh for our family is to get my son to ever all seven continents uh before he graduates high school.
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So we have two more to go.
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So we we've we've done a great uh job with that.
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So Europe is probably the place we go most.
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Um, but but we love it all.
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I mean, we we love we we uh have been to Africa, we have been to Australia.
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So that really, I mean, you can't go wrong.
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They're all wonderful.
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Oh, that's so much fun.
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I love that.
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Well, you are a very busy person, in your own words.
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Why are you doing this?
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I am doing this because my family has been directly affected by brain health in a couple different ways.
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So the first is um my son is adopted, and so we knew that we were potentially going to run into some um, you know, ADHD potentially different different things, and we just didn't want to add meds into the mix because we didn't know how that might affect him.
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So that was number one.
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Um, number two is my dad, who's an MD, he went through a liver transplant um uh uh that whole process.
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And so what we saw is something called encephalopathy happen, which is the brain just losing, you know, function because of toxicity.
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And then we saw that come back after his transplant.
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And so we re we really started to see the the transformative and the healing power of the brain that this is not when we're in a certain state, it's not forever.
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And there is a way that we can help.
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And so, and then the third was um my little niece who had started with us before she was even two years old with some delayed language development, and not that anything was wrong, she just needed to open up those pathways a bit and was looking at potential diagnoses that we did not agree with and did not want to put on her.
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And so she's she started this, and now she is a vibrant, four and a half, like brilliant, talkative, amazing little girl.
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And so she always was that, but now she just is able to express it.
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So those are three specific reasons why in our own family we saw that brain health and needing to address this and wanting to address this was so important.
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And that's why we are so passionate in our family about bringing this story forward, is that we've seen it ourselves and we were our first clients.
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And if I'm gonna do this with my own family, I'm going to feel very confident recommending it for yours.
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Oh, wow.
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I love that.
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That's very deep and personal to have that connection.
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So wow.
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Well, thank you so much, Sandra, for sharing all of that.
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We will catch you in the next episode where we will dive into some frequently asked questions and get deeper into all things braintopia.
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All right.
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Well, thank you, Sandra.
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Have a great rest of your day, and we will see you next time.
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See you next time.
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You've been listening to Brainstorm, the Brain Topia podcast.
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If you or someone you love is struggling with symptoms associated with anxiety, ADHD, sleep issues, or focus challenges, neurofeedback may offer a safe, non-invasive path forward.
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To learn more about Brain Topia Neurofeedback Centers and our locations across the Dallas-Fort Worth area, visit BrainTopiaCenters.com or call 972-640-7022.
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That's BraintopiaCenters.com or 972-640-7022.
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Thank you for listening.
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We'll see you next time.