Biofeedback Society
of California
State Society
BSC is the oldest guild in biofeedback. BSC is more than an 'organization.' We are a group of professionals joined together by a common bond to promote, advance and protect biofeedback skills. BSC is a friendly place for beginning and established health providers to find out about the latest scientific discoveries in bio-tecnology. We are most interested in how bio-technology can apply to meaningful self-regulation skills for the advancement of health and well-being. We also advocate for a legitimate place in our health care system. Our members share a deeper appreciation of man's abilities to listen to and change subtle brain and body processes. Please join us at Asilomar.
-Robert Grove, PhD 3X past-President
Biofeedback is the process of obtaining information about psychophysiological or mind-body interactions and “feeding it back” for training. These interactions are measured via heart rate, breathing, CO2 breath measurement, skin temperature, sweat gland activity, muscles tension and brain wave activity. Information is received by noninvasive surface electrodes (sensors) and electronically amplified to provide feedback, usually in the form of an audio tone and/or visual feedback. Biofeedback uses the information that has been monitored from the sensors to help train the client to learn how to make voluntary changes in those biological functions and enhance self-regulation. This training helps to increase the client’s awareness first of their body and second, of the mind-body connection. For example, pain, stress and anxiety management increases as self-regulation skills are learned and then applied to daily life. Look HERE for a description of biofeedback modalities.
2008 Conference Member Benefits
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Having had a long view of the field's history and evolution, afforded by being in the field since 1972, provides me a basis for some opinion making... and being the president allows me the opportunity to share my perspective.
In the beginning there was excitement, and clinical success from varied approaches using difficult-to-use hardware, and there were few computers involved. The field's research support was spotty at best, and ephemeral when scrutinized. People tried many things in the 60s and 70s. The field faltered when research dollars went elsewhere, and researchers and academics drifted away, chasing federal funds as the nation's focus went to molecular biology and DNA.
Biofeedback persevered in smaller labs and in clinical groups, growing slowly and organically, as the research support slowly improved through the 80s and 90s, and the hardware shifted to digital computerized devices, and the software interfaces made vast gains. The last decade has shown huge gains in our field world-wide.
Today our field has an expanding literature, supporting claims of efficacy in some areas like epilepsy and AD/HD, and the field's emerging application research funding is improving, both in peak performance and in clinical realms. Our field has set a standard for efficacy claims, establishing and publishing a hierarchy of progressively better research designs that are needed to make progressively more solid claims of efficacy. The research funding issues are starting to resolve, as some controlled studies are now getting funding, and foreign funding for outcome research is starting to become a significant factor.
We now have published reviews of our efficacy literature, as our own field points toward the next step in building our own foundational literature.
Entire applications and new technologies have emerged, from hemoencephalography to heart-rate-variability with spectral analysis.
The field has matured. We now have various certifications, and competing societies, and a vast array of literature sources (remember when it was "all" in the Aldine Annual series?), internet resources, EEG and EMG databases, high end distributed networks of practioners, and the field has begun to penetrate new markets internationally, with interest expressed from all the various populated continents.
Some people feel "competitive", as is their right... but from my perspective that looks short-sighted. If our end-markets knew we existed, and we all suddenly had an assistant fully trained and ready to expand our work, we still couldn't serve even a small fraction of the actual marketplace demand.
In such rapidly growing market environments,"coop-etition" is a better model... "the rising tide floats all boats"... in this case you can imagine floating all the clinical, peak performance and research practitioners.
Somehow the image of floatation harkens back to the 70s... or was that the 60s... regardless... The field has grown, and it is large enough for all the various approaches and techniques to co-exist and flourish.
BSC has remained a stable resource through all these wild changes... thanks to you all for your loyalty and support!
Jay Gunkelman
2008 President
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