neurofeedback and meditation

Maxwell Cade

“Biofeedback is a new way of learning, a way of relearning, or realising for the first time, what the body already knows.” - Maxwell Cade

Max Cade was born in London 1918. At an early age his father introduced him to yoga and meditation. At the age of 12 a Japanese boy aroused his interest in judo, kendo, Zen and other esoterica.

The world of martial arts and meditation shaped Max's outlook for his lifetime.

After school Max went to study medicine at Guy's Hospital London. However medical school raised conflicts with many of his ideas.

  “All Eastern ideas, I found, were treated with scorn and derision, so I began to keep my interests strictly to myself for fear of being ostracised by even my closest friends . . . I began to understand, too, why my father, who had studied yoga, was so secretive about it . . .” 

Max then switched to clinical psychology and qualifed at Birkbeck College. 
In 1942 during the second world war he was an air cadet/navigator, he transferred to the Royal Navel Scientific Service and became an experimental officer working in the new field of radar.


In 1958 Max won the Royal Aeronautical Soceity's Navigation Prize for a paper on new methods of astronavigation. In 1960 and 1961 he won the Radio Industry Council's National Award for technical writing, with two papers on infra-red radiation physics.

Max did not fit the popular image of the scientist as a specialist concentrating doggedly on solving a single problem in a narrow field. His interests were broad, impelled by a restless urge to explore the most advanced ideas in any field that attracted him.

Max published about 150 scientific papers on navigation, radiation physics and clinical psychology, his reputation grew and became increasingly respected.

He he was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine and Royal Society of Health, a Member of the Institute of Biology and the Institute of Physics, Fellow of the Institute of Electrical Engineers, and an honorary member of the British Society of Medical and Dental Hypnosis and many others.

In 1969, he found a subject that was to hold his interest for the rest of his life and one for which his extraordinary background had prepared him well. He, together with Dr Ann Woolley-Hart - a medical researcher at St Bartholomew’s Hospital -began intensive research into altered mental states.

Max was influenced by a variety of people who demonstrated a way of being that Max later called The Awakened Mind.

Max began teaching biofeedback and altered states of consciousness in 1973.

In 1973 when Max began teaching biofeedback and altered states of consciousness, he had to be careful, as the average person was not ready for this leap into self-awareness.

. “Essentially, biofeedback is a new way of learning about ourselves, or a way of relearning, or realising for the first time, what the body already knows - how to act, how to feel, even how to heal - if we listen to it . . . biofeedback can be said to provide the means to become aware - acutely aware - of ourselves, and thereby gain the possibility of self-control.”  Max Cade

For a detailed history on Max Cade and his journey into biofeedback and meditation please click here

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