The "Chronic" Chronicles - 4-part BCIA Webinar Series

Pain. We've all experienced it and as professionals, you've all worked helping your clients with it. Join us for 'The "Chronic" Chronicles' and learn about chronic pain and conditions and how Biofeedback, HRV and Neurofeedback can be used to help your clients.

Session 1: Thursday, September 3rd -  with Tiff Thompson, PhD, QEEG-D, BCN-L, LMFT, R.EEG.T 

Time: 11 am PST, Noon MST, 1 pm CST and 2pm EST  **Please note this is on a Thursday**

Profiles of Pain - NF Mentoring Webinar

This presentation traces pain from the periphery to the brain, beginning with the distinction between nociception, an objective physiological signal, and pain, a subjective conscious experience shaped by genetics, stress, trauma, and social determinants such as income and access to care.

Participants will review the ascending pain pathways (neospinothalamic, paleospinothalamic, and archispinothalamic tracts) and the descending pathways that can shift from suppressing pain to amplifying it in chronic conditions. The talk introduces the triple network model of pain as an imbalance between the lateral, sensory pathway and the medial, affective pathway, and shows how the medial pathway's salience network circuitry (anterior cingulate cortex, insula, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) overlaps with the circuitry implicated in depression, anxiety, and addiction.

The second half of the presentation reviews the EEG and QEEG literature on chronic pain, including the replicable finding of increased limbic theta, slowed peak alpha frequency, attenuated beta, and dysregulated gamma, as well as thalamocortical dysrhythmia and recent machine learning classification work. The presentation closes with a candid look at the current state of the pain biomarker field, including replication challenges and medication confounds, and what still needs to happen before these findings are ready for routine clinical use.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR SESSION 1

Session 2: Friday, September 11th - with Richard Gevirtz, PhD, BCB-L, BCB-HRV/L

Time: 11 am PST, Noon MST, 1 pm CST and 2pm EST

All Pain is not Created Equally: Incorporating HRV Biofeedback into Chronic Pain Treatment: BF/HRV Clinical Update Webinar 

Chronic pain is often characterized as a unified phenomenon. Pain from muscles is often lumped together with centrally mediated pain conditions (Fibromyalgia, Complex Regional Pain syndrome, etc.). In this clinical update I try and help clinicians distinguish the source of the pain and how HRV Biofeedback can be used in conjunction with other treatment modalities(  PT, Meds, CBT, ACT).

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR SESSION 2

Session 3: Friday, September 18th - with Saul Rosenthal, PhD, BCB-L, BCN-L, BCB-HRV/L 

Time:  11 am PST, Noon MST, 1 pm CST and 2pm EST

Train the Brain, Change the Pain? Neurofeedback for Chronic Pain - NF Mentoring Webinar

Chronic pain is among the most common and challenging health problems, significantly disrupting work, education, relationships, and quality of life while costing individuals and society billions in health care expenses and lost productivity. Because chronic pain is inherently biopsychosocial, it lends itself particularly well to psychophysiologic intervention. This mentoring webinar will present a functional model of chronic pain, review typical treatment approaches, and examine the evidence base for neurofeedback intervention. Two cases will illustrate the importance of integrative case planning and familiarity with multiple intervention approaches when incorporating neurofeedback into chronic pain treatment.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR SESSION 3

Session 4: Thursday, September 24th -  Donald Moss, PhD, BCB-L, BCB-HRV-L and Angele McGrady, PhD, LPCC, BCB-L

Time: 9am PST, 10am MST, 11am CST and Noon EST **Please note this is a different day of the week and different start times from the other webinars in this series.**

Integrating Lifestyle Medicine with Biofeedback for Chronic Conditions - BF Clinical Update Webinar

Chronic diseases constitute the greatest treatment challenges of our times. These illnesses are linked to lifestyle, habit, and health-related choices made by adults. Persons with chronic physical and psychiatric illnesses are treated too often in silos by multiple interventionists. The emotional aspects of the illness are not integrated with medical management, or the person is given few choices, resulting in feelings of helplessness and hopelessness. Chronic conditions are psychophysiological disorders of the mind, body, and spirit. It follows that mind body treatment plans are needed to manage them. Persons with chronic illnesses are often cared for by family and friends. The caregivers are sometimes under severe stress which affects their physical and emotional states.

Biofeedback offers promise for many chronic conditions. Current research shows therapeutic efficacy for biofeedback with hypertension, diabetes, irritable bowel, headache, depression, anxiety and many other conditions (Khazan et al., 2023). However, unless ongoing lifestyle is also addressed, the benefits of biofeedback intervention will be eroded over time with poor diet, sedentary lifestyle, and poor self-care.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR SESSION 4

How long will they last?  Each session will be90 minutes

Cost: $40 PER SESSION and each must be registered for individually. This price is for those in Group I (US, Canada, etc.) with a reduced fee structure with possible savings for international attendees. For more information on the international fee structure, click here.

Types of Webinars: The Mentoring webinars will provide 1 contact hour and 2 case studies toward the mentoring requirement for certification in neurofeedback or 1.5 contact hour toward the CE requirement for recertification.  The Clinical Update webinar are good for 1.5 CE's for recertification. There are no APA credits awarded for BCIA webinars.

 What if I can't attend the live presentations?  Purchase a seat for the live event(s) as we will record these webinars.  You'll be among the first to receive a links which will enable you to view the entire presentation and earn your CE. Links will be sent the following Wednesday after the live presentation.

Don't sleep on registering for these sessions - the seats will go quickly!

BCIA's New Performance Designation 

To better serve the evolving needs of professionals utilizing biofeedback and neurofeedback in applied performance contexts, the Biofeedback Certification International Alliance (BCIA) is introducing a new performance-focused certification designation.  **The new designation is only approved for certification in the US and Canada. International applicants must be licensed with a degree in one of our approved healthcare fields. **

New Designations for Performance Professionals

The new credentials—BCN-P (Board Certified in Neurofeedback – Performance) and BCB-P (Board Certified in Biofeedback – Performance)—recognize individuals who meet BCIA’s high standards of education, training, and demonstrated competence in performance enhancement, without requiring a clinical license.

This certification track was created to clarify the scope of practice, align with national standards, and formally acknowledge the distinct demands of working with performance populations, such as athletes, executives, and performers, as opposed to clinical clients. Please see our revised BCIA Biofeedback and Neurofeedback Certification Guides.

Impact on Required Courses and Your Practice

BCIA's new designations do not change the Biofeedback and Neurofeedback blueprints or didactic and anatomy course requirements. Likewise, they do not affect the services you can legally provide since your state's practice act determines this.

BCIA created these designations to enhance clarity about certificants' scope of practice, ensure alignment with national standards, and formally recognize the distinct and nuanced differences between working with performance populations and engaging in clinical applications.

Three Distinct Certification Categories

With this update, the Biofeedback Certification International Alliance (BCIA) now formally distinguishes among three categories of certificants, reflecting differences in professional roles, qualifications, and intended scope of practice.

Licensed (L) Individuals who hold a valid clinical license will be designated as BCN-L (Board Certified in Neurofeedback – Licensed) or BCB-L (Board Certified in Biofeedback – Licensed), clearly identifying their status as licensed practitioners.

Performance (P): Those who are not clinically licensed but work in non-clinical performance enhancement environments, such as sport, business, or academic research settings, will receive the performance-oriented credentials of BCN-P or BCB-P, provided they hold an approved academic degree and meet all other requirements.

Takeaways

BCIA's new performance designation will not affect didactic and anatomy course requirements or the services you can legally provide.

All future applicants will follow one of these three pathways, determined by their academic qualifications, credentials, and licensure.

BCIA will automatically reassign current certificants under this revised framework. Those with clinical licenses will transition to the Licensed designation, while those without licenses will be redesignated under the Performance category. This shift brings greater clarity to credentialing, helping to align professional titles with training, regulatory standing, and intended application.

International certificants will continue to be designated as BCN-L or BCB-L, as licensure remains a requirement for international certifications.

All questions and inquiries should be sent to [email protected].

We value your opinions and suggestions as we strive to make the website informative and convenient for you.  Please contact us at [email protected] with any comments, corrections or suggestions.