Professional Certificates

Professional Certificates generally consist of one course, one to two academic units (15 to 30 professional CE units), for which a Certificate is awarded after having successfully completed an exam and an associated practicum assignment. These programs are available from time to time and will be announced and made available for registration on this website (www.bp.edu). The following are the currently available Professional Certificate programs.

Optimizing Respiration for High Performance

with Scott Sonnon, Professional School faculty member

Mr. Sonnon will present an overview of breathing behavior biofeedback relevant to performance training and learning based on many years of ongoing research and practical applications in high-stress physical and mental environments. Breathing habit assessment and training for achieving high performance will be demonstrated live with participants who attend with capnometers. Case reports and data will also be presented.

Participants will learn about:

1. the role of CO2 in cognitive, emotion, speech, and exertion;
2. he dynamics of breathing during physical exertion and how it is conventionally assessed in exercise physiology and cardiopulmonary exercise testing;
3. the continuum of breathing behavioral changes that reflexively occur with increased metabolic demands of exercise; and
4. changes in baseline breathing behavior due to dysfunctional breathing patterns and how exercise-related breathing reflex can occur prematurely.

Participants will learn and practice how to use wearable capnography technology for:

1. assessing dysfunctional breathing behavior during light-to-moderate physical exercise,
2. identifying premature breathing reflex triggers, and
3. self-regulating respiration within optimal CO2 ranges during light-to-moderate physical exercise.

Mr. Sonnon presents the key respiratory biometrics of respiratory feedback instrumentation relevant to breathing behavioral changes that act as buffering mechanisms for maintaining and restoring acid-base physiological homeostasis, that is, the chemoregulation of pH balance in body fluids such as blood plasma. He examines how learned breathing behavior triggers, exacerbates, perpetuates, and causes acid-base physiological instability, known in general as respiratory alkalosis and more specifically as behavioral hypocapnia (Litchfield 2010). He describes maladaptive compromises that can establish baseline breathing behavioral patterns that trigger, perpetuate, exacerbate, or cause autonomic reactivity and associated symptomology.