in partnership with the
Behavioral Medicine Research & Training Foundation

Non-profit Scientific & Educational Organization 91-1948669
operating under Section 501c3 of the US Internal Revenue Code
6576 Blue Mountain Road, Port Angeles, WA 98362

1 July, 2013

Psychophysiology Program Continuing Education Courses

Saybrook University and the Behavioral Medicine Research and Training Foundation have partnered to offer continuing education courses in many areas of psychophysiology including biofeedback and related topics. These courses are intended for professionals such as clinicians, coaches, and educators rather than the public. As these are continuing education courses, students earn CE credits for each course rather than college course credit. The courses are not part of a certification program but can be applied to several such programs. Students do receive a course completion certificate upon successful completion of a course.

Psychophysiology and its role in health care, education, and optimal performance coaching: Applied psychophysiology focuses on the amelioration / treatment and prevention of disease, reduction of stress responses, and creation of optimal performance through teaching people techniques for recognizing and correcting abnormal physiological responses. Every course offered in this program is based on solid research published in main-stream journals. Efficacy of each technique taught is discussed and substantiated.

About the courses : Our continuing education courses are available to clinicians, coaches, and educators interested in learning about psychophysiology and biofeedback. This combination of courses is intended to provide professionals with the basic knowledge they need to understand psychophysiology and incorporate it into their practices. They are all in distance / home learning, format including pre-recorded audiovisual lectures, movies, readings in texts, and frequent interactions with the instructor. Students work at their own paces and have up to a year after the date of purchase to complete a course. All course material is accessed from the course web site so people interested in our courses must have consistent access to the internet.

These are distance learning courses (rather than self directed learning courses) as there is substantial interaction between the faculty and student. Distance education refers to instruction delivered to students who are separated from their instructor and in support of regular and substantive interaction between them, whether in real time or through time delay. Substantial interaction is where a student and a faculty participate in back and forth discussions on an educational topic.

Personal attention : Each student gets personal attention from our instructors – each of whom have decades of experience in psychophysiology. They can help you with decisions on which equipment to purchase, guide you through psychophysiological portions of interventions with complex patients, etc.

Accreditation: / CE Approvals : These are CE rather than university credit courses. Saybrook University is regionally accredited and approved to grant degrees by the state of California. The Foundation is approved to give CE credits by (1) the state of California’s Board of Behavioral Sciences (Approval # PCE1895); (2) The National Board of Certified Counselors (Provider # 6270), and (3) the Behavioral Medicine R&T Foundation is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. The Foundation maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

BCIA credit toward certification and recertification : These courses are accepted by the Biofeedback Certification International Alliance (BCIA) for use toward certification and recertification. BCIA is the main certification organization for biofeedback.

Course completion certificates : The courses are not part of a certification program but students do receive a personalized course completion certificate upon successful completion of a course. The certificate indicates how many CEs were earned, the topic of the course, the presenting organization and the organizations which have accredited / approved the program.

Purchasing courses : Courses can be purchased from Biofeedback International Resources by clicking the Buy Me button for the specific course here.

Full refund will be made until the students are given access to the course website.

After getting access to the course website, there is no refund at all, as Saybrook University and the Foundation have committed their resources to you and you have access to all of the course materials.

A course would only be cancelled due to an extreme emergency on the part of the course instructor or the Foundation. In the highly unlikely event a course is cancelled, you would receive a full refund.

Course List:

1. Ethics for Biofeedback Providers (Ethics for People Doing Biofeedback) – 5 CE credits, $150. At home learning format based on audiovisual lectures and readings. You can start anytime and work at your own pace for up to one year. This APA approved course is intended for clinicians, educators, and coaches who have incorporated or are interested in incorporating biofeedback (including neurofeedback) intervention and psychophysiological assessment techniques into their practices. It emphasizes issues in ethics and professional conduct which are of special interest to clinicians incorporating biofeedback – many of which are not clearly spelled out in typical codes of ethics and conduct promulgated by clinical organizations. Participants attend three audiovisual lectures (hear the instructor’s voice while watching slides), read text files, and interact with the instructor via e-mail. At the end of the course, participants answer a set of short essay questions covering key concepts in the course. No text is required for this course.
2. General Biofeedback / Psychophysiological assessment and intervention – 50 hours of CE credit, $750. At home learning format based on audiovisual lectures and readings. You can start anytime and work with the instructor via e-mail for up to one year. Extensive personal attention to your individual needs and tailoring the course to your proposed uses of biofeedback is a key part of the course package.

Expand your practice to include more types of patients and different disorders. Learn how to do biofeedback, psychophysiological assessments, and the basics of many other behavioral medicine techniques. This is the BCIA required general biofeedback certification course. It provides the basic knowledge needed to perform psychophysiological assessments and interventions including biofeedback.

DISCLAIMER: Completion of this continuing education course is strictly for educational / informational purposes and does not imply competency, proficiency, and/or experience. The course completion certificate is not a clinical certification nor a license to practice.

3. Anatomy and physiology / human biology for behavioral clinicians – 45 hours of CE credit, $750. At home learning format based on audiovisual lectures and readings. You can start anytime and work with the instructor via e-mail for up to one year. Extensive

Personal attention. Learn enough about how the body works to get a better grasp of the physical bases for your patients’ disorders. Learn how the muscles work together to produce movements so you know what’s normal and what’s not. Be able to communicate better with your medical colleagues and understand their lingo and tests. This course is equivalent to a three credit undergraduate course in A & P / Human Biology and meets BCIA’s requirements for having this course for certification and recertification in biofeedback and neurofeedback. The course covers all the basic areas of A & P but from a behavioral perspective. For example, when we talk about bones, we concentrate on how stress effects healing fractures and reshaping bone structures. When we talk about muscles, we talk about how they work together to produce movements. Your tuition covers the CDs containing the audiovisual lectures and some reading materials as well as the web based chats but not the cost of the textbooks.

4. Basic EEG Biofeedback / neurofeedback: – 45 hours of CE credit, $750. At home learning format based on audiovisual lectures and readings. You can start anytime and work with the instructor via e-mail for up to one year. Extensive personal attention to your individual needs and tailoring the course to your proposed uses of biofeedback is a key part of the course package.

Expand your practice to include more types of patients and different disorders. Learn how to do EEG biofeedback / neurofeedback. This is the BCIA required EEG biofeedback certification course. It provides the basic knowledge needed to perform EEG biofeedback. After taking this course you will still need to get hands on experience using EEG biofeedback devices before you can add EEG biofeedback to your practice. Contact us about how to get this further training.

DISCLAIMER: Completion of this continuing education course is strictly for educational / informational purposes and does not imply competency, proficiency, and/or experience. The course completion certificate is not a clinical certification nor a license to practice.

5. Pain Assessment and Intervention for Behavioral Clinicians – 45 hours of CE credit, $750. At home learning format based on audiovisual lectures and readings. You can start anytime and work with the instructor via e-mail for up to one year. Extensive personal attention.

This course describes the physiological and psychophysiological mechanisms underlying acute and chronic pain. It then explains the common behavioral assessment and interventional strategies (relaxation training, biofeedback, cognitive restructuring, etc.) for both headache and pain. The course also delves into typical pharmacological, surgical, and alternative (hypnosis, massage, chiropractic, therapeutic touch, etc.) approaches to pain evaluation and control. By the end of the course, participants should be sufficiently familiar with the typical approaches to pain assessment and control used in the medical community so the participant will know how behavioral treatments and assessments fit into the overall program and to permit good communication with medical colleagues around pain related issues. Sample protocols for treatment of migraine and tension headache as well as upper and lower back pain are detailed and provided.

DISCLAIMER: Completion of this continuing education course is strictly for educational / informational purposes and does not imply competency, proficiency, and/or experience. The course completion certificate is not a clinical certification nor a license to practice.

6. Behavioral Assessment & Treatment of Pelvic Floor Disorders – 45 hours of CE credit, $750. At home learning format based on audiovisual lectures and readings. You can start anytime and work with the instructor via e-mail for up to one year. Extensive personal attention.

This course provides a basic understanding of pelvic floor functions and structures along with clinical etiologies of pelvic floor disorders, including urinary, bowel, and pain problems, treated by behavioral interventions. It provides detailed rationales, supporting documentation, and clinical protocols for behavioral interventions so health care providers have the knowledge base needed to provide these interventions to their clients within their scopes of practice and expertise after the providers gain hands-on experience by working with experienced practitioners. If you are only interested in working with adults having urinary and fecal incontinence, instead of taking this course you may want to take our course “behavioral interventions for adult urinary and fecal incontinence”.

DISCLAIMER: Completion of this continuing education course is strictly for educational / informational purposes and does not imply competency, proficiency, and/or experience. The course completion certificate is not a clinical certification nor a license to practice.

7. Hypnosis in psychophysiology – 45 hours of CE credit, $750. At home learning format based on audiovisual lectures and readings. You can start anytime and work with the instructor via e-mail for up to one year.

The standard techniques of Clinical Hypnosis are described and students are taught the elements of their application. Uses of hypnotic techniques with specific types of patients and integration of these techniques into other behavioral medicine interventions are discussed. It is the intent of this course to 1. Provide students with a basic background and appreciation of the history of clinical hypnosis and provide and introduction to a variety of current theories of the mechanisms of hypnosis. 2. Provide students with sufficient knowledge to understand pertinent legal and ethical considerations related to the use of clinical hypnosis, and 3. Provide an overview of the empirically validated uses of hypnosis. An optional in-person training session is available at extra cost to provide students with fundamental skills needed to induce a hypnotic state to make clinical use of the hypnotic condition in a variety of situations.

DISCLAIMER: Completion of this continuing education course is strictly for educational / informational purposes and does not imply competency, proficiency, and/or experience. The course completion certificate is not a clinical certification nor a license to practice.

8. Neuropsychophysiology (Nervous System Functions in Psychophysiology) – 45 hours of CE credit, $750. At home learning format based on audiovisual lectures and readings. You can start anytime and work with the instructor via e-mail for up to one year.

This course covers central and peripheral nervous system anatomy and physiology and finishes with an emphasis on nervous system pathophysiology. This is the course to take after completing a basic course in EEG neurofeedback. It provides advanced information so people performing neurofeedback have a better understanding of brain functioning. The brain/spinal cord plexus is discussed from both anatomical and physiological perspectives concentrating on plasticity in response to changes in the external and internal environment as well as viewing the system as an interactive organ with hormonal, nerve based, and blood flow based feedback and control systems. Psychophysiological recording methodology including EEG and scans such as MEG and PET are examined in relation to their uses in behavioral medicine. Neurological disorders centered on the CNS (such as epilepsy) are discussed in relationship to psychophysiological evaluations and behavioral interventions.

9. Neuromuscular Reeducation in Biofeedback – 45 hours of CE credit, $750. At home learning format based on audiovisual CD lectures and readings. You can start anytime and work with the instructor via e-mail for up to one year.

This course teaches the elements of kinesiological movement science and how control of movement is distorted by different clinical conditions. The course includes the elements of (a) trigger point, (b) posture, and (c) motor control / coordination assessment. Methods for using psychophysiological recording techniques for assessment of movement related disorders and postural problems are illustrated. The impact of poor posture and improper sequencing of muscle motions as well as of improper levels of tension on development and sustainment of various pain problems such as tension headaches and low back pain are discussed. Techniques for using sEMG biofeedback and other psychophysiological techniques to correct these problems are illustrated.

DISCLAIMER: Completion of this continuing education course is strictly for educational / informational purposes and does not imply competency, proficiency, and/or experience. The course completion certificate is not a clinical certification nor a license to practice.

10. Biological basis of behavior / Introduction to psychophysiology – 45hours of CE credit, $750. At home learning format based on audiovisual CD lectures and readings. You can start anytime and work with the instructor via e-mail for up to one year. Extensive personal attention. Learn the real basics of how the mind and body work together to produce behavior – and where the interactions go wrong. This course provides the basics of how the mind and body work together. It includes behavioral genetics, research techniques, psychophysiology of behaviors such as eating and drinking, respiration, pain, etc.
11. Research Techniques for Clinicians – 45 hours of CE credit, $750. At home learning format based on audiovisual CD lectures and readings. You can start anytime and work with the instructor via e-mail for up to one year. Extensive personal attention.

    This is a course in self-defense for clinicians who need to know how to assess the clinical literature and folklore to decide whether to try a new technique or believe in new treatments. It also teaches clinicians how to assess their own work to insure that it is optimally efficacious. The course material includes the book “research for clinicians”.

12. Introduction to Behavioral and Alternative Medicine – 45 CEs, $750 At home learning format based on audiovisual CD lectures and readings. You can start anytime and work with the instructor via e-mail for up to one year. Extensive personal attention.

    Complimentary and alternative (C & A) practices, including those which form the core of “behavioral medicine” are rapidly finding acceptance within the clinical community. Simultaneously, “accepted” practices are falling from favor as they are shown to be ineffective or even counterproductive. Patients now visit as many or more “alternative” providers as traditional providers and are spending billions of dollars on attempts to get care not available from the traditional medical community. This course is intended to acquaint you with many of those practices which may become the new standard of care in the near future. It is also intended to help you learn to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the claims made by the proponents of these practices so you can more readily separate the real knowledge from the emotional advertising.

    Certificate of Professional Studies in Psychophysiology –

    The Foundation offers a Certificate of Professional Studies in Clinical Psychophysiology to clinicians taking six of our core courses and receiving mentored experience performing behavioral interventions.

    This certificate can be a very valuable way to provide evidence of solid training in psychophysiological techniques and biofeedback. The certificate lists the courses taken, the number of hours of training in each, and the major topics in which training was provided. The training required for the certificate goes well beyond that required for certification in biofeedback by organizations such as the Biofeedback Certification Institute of America (BCIA) as it demonstrates a far greater depth of knowledge and covers a broader spectrum of behavioral interventions than only biofeedback. This is an academic certificate of knowledge rather than a clinical practice certification such as BCIA’s biofeedback certification.

    The courses which need to be taken for the certificate are: (1) Biological basis of behavior (Introduction to psychophysiology), (2) General biofeedback (psychophysiological assessment and intervention), (3) Anatomy and physiology for behavioral clinicians, (4) Hands-on training in basic psychophysiological instrumentation, (5) Individual training experience in biofeedback, and (6) either (a) Pain assessment and intervention or (b) Assessment and Treatment of Pelvic Floor Disorders. Clinicians who have already taken an equivalent course to any of the above may substitute one of the Foundation’s other courses for the one already taken. People wanting to take the certificate must be appropriately trained and credentialed clinicians. The certificate is not granted until the student also attains a minimum of 12 contact hours of mentored, hands on behavioral interventions with patients in specific categories depending on which courses are taken. The mentor must be physically present for all 12 hours. This training need not be provided by the Foundation’s staff but the trainer must have credentials and experience acceptable to the Foundation.

    Students participating in the certificate program receive the last course free as an incentive to complete the program.