Gary Green:
CLASS OF 1959
Washington High SchoolClass of 1959
Kansas city, KS
University of Missouri - EducationClass of 1963
Kansas city, MO
Gary's Story
Gary Green "Made Life Better" During 29-Year KCKCC Career
For 29 years, Gary Green has been living Kansas City
Kansas Community College's motto of "Making Life
Better."
During the last 27 of those years, Green has worked with
21,555 persons through his Biofeedback program as a
counselor at KCKCC.
That does not include anywhere from 20 to 40 seminars, workshops and lectures a year nor a
trip to China in 1997 as a member of an International Stress Management team.
Now Green is stepping down. He'll end that 29-year career at KCKCC in late June although
he's not retiring from helping people.
"I'm going to get ready for my wife's retirement in a couple of more years and work part-time
with Dr, Nancy Russell of Combined Health Care Professionals, who I have worked with for
the last five years," says Green. "I'll be working with patients and doing workshops. It won't be
an 8 to 5 job. I'll decide how much and when, maybe three days a week with short days so I
can practice what I preach."
What Green has preached since starting the Biofeedback program in 1974 is "Kill stress before
it kills you."
Green describes biofeedback as an "Educational awareness process of learning to unlearn both
conscious and unconscious adaptations to stress."
"It's a course in disobedience and you begin the process by learning how to breathe," says
Green. "The first response to stress is a change in breathing. Either you hold your breath or
your breath is short and shallow in the upper chest.
"It's like driving a car with a foot on the brake and the choke pulled out. If you get cold sweaty
hands taking a test or giving a speech or doing an interview, the cold hands are the brake, the
sweat is the choke. It's not stress that does us in but our adaptation to stress. Stress happens
between your ears."
The good news, says Green, is that the adaptation to stress can be changed, which leads
directly to how a person feels.
"All habits are unconscious; you don't think about them, you just do them," contends Green.
"Some habits are good habits, some are not very helpful.
Biofeedback training brings a conscious awareness and deep breathing becomes a transformer
of stress into useable energy. Breathe deep, warm hands. It's the key to channeling headache
pain, emotional stress and so on."
The fact that he is "Making Life Better" can be documented by countless letters of thanks from
people Green has helped, whether it be through a test, divorce, athletic performance or family
or job crisis.
"They've kept my passion in knowing I'm doing something to help students make their lives
better," he says of the letters.
Green tells of an older woman who came to his biofeedback lab. After listening to a relaxation
tape, she told Green that the part of the tape that had her envision floating in water at a sunny
beach had first been stressful because she did not know how to swim but then through the
biofeedback tape she was able to see herself floating, relaxed and was fine.
"The next week, she started taking swimming lessons at the Y and she was going to see that her
grandkids were taught to swim," says Green. "It was just another case of 'Self-imposed fears
because of false evidence appearing real.' "
At one time, Green worked with several members of the Royals including Steve Braun, Willie
Wilson, Clint Hurdle an...Expand for more
d Frank White.
"Dennis Leonard didn't believe he could pitch until mid-June because everyone said he didn't
start pitching until mid-season," says Green. "We got him to release that from his mind and he
had the best April of his career."
Born in KCK in old Providence Hospital which is now Donnelly College, Green attended
Quindaro, Park and Welborn schools before graduating from Washington in 1959. He spent
two years at KCKCC before earning a BA in Education at UMKC.
He added his Masters in Counseling from Emporia State during an eight-year stint at
Northwest Junior High where he started as a geography teacher before moving up as a
counselor and then vice principal. He spent one year as Director of Student Activities at
UMKC in 1971-72, then came to KCKCC as a counselor when the college moved to the
present campus in 1972.
A year later, he attended a biofeedback workshop offered through the Menninger Clinic in
Topeka and was so impressed by it that he started a program at KCKCC. "We had a lot of
older students coming in and a lot of students complaining about stress in their work so we
started it on a non-credit basis," says Green. "It was so well received it was decided students
might as well get credit for it."
It was at KCKCC that Green met his wife, Lorraine, an instructor in anatomy and biology.
They were introduced by a fellow counselor, Jean Walker, and married in 1979.
While Green is leaving, the Biofeedback program will continue under the direction of
Counseling Director Nick Perica.
"It's been a very rewarding and growing experience," says Green. "I've been able do my work
as a counselor and still fill a passion of helping people and seeing that people are helped.
"I see the world as an outpatient clinic and everyone is on the road to recovery. Life is like
bank. The past is a cancelled check, the future a promissory note and the only time we have is
now. It's the cash. That's where we need to spend 80 percent of our energy instead of wasting
it on things that have happened or that will happen over which we have no control.
"I truly believe I have made life better for people I've worked with and they've made me
better."
Gary Green's Biofeedback Commandments
1.Thou shalt always be aware of your bodily "going-ons."
2.Thou shalt constantly be breathing deeply.
3.Thou shalt relax all your muscles daily.
4.Thou shalt lie down in imaginary green pastures for 20 minutes daily.
5.Thou shalt not eat junk food.
6.Thou shalt run and soar with eagles for two miles daily (or walk briskly).
7.Thou shalt be loving to thyself and others.
8.Thou shalt "let the body do its "thing" by rest and relaxation daily.
9.Thou shalt see thyself as being more and more in control everyday.
10.Thou art what you thinketh.
Gary Green's Ten Time Outs
1.Take time to love and be loved, it's God given privilege.
2.Take time to laugh, it's the music of the soul.
3.Take time to play, it's the secret of youth.
4.Take time to work, it's the price of success.
5.Take time to read, it's the foundation of knowledge.
6.Take time to give, it's too short of a day to be selfish.
7.Take time to be friendly, it's the road to happiness.
8.Take time to think, it's the source of power.
9.Take time to pray, it's the strongest power on earth.
10.Take time to relax, it's the health of your soul.
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