A Two-Part Certificate Program for Health Professionals
Part 2
Our current health-care system is suffering from an internal malaise—a disconnect between body and soul. The most visible symptoms of this split are escalating costs and a nation plagued by a rise in chronic illness, obesity, and depression. A less visible symptom is professional burnout, loss of heart, and talented professionals leaving their practices. However, when patients connect with their health-care providers soul-to-soul (a respectful I–Thou encounter), instead of role-to-role (an I–it encounter), the result is healing. Symptoms are reduced and patients become more mindful, skillful, and empowered. The relationship is the medicine, a transcendent field that embraces both the practitioner and the person being served. In the process both participants reclaim the vital quality of wholeness.
When the split between what educator Parker Palmer calls, “soul and role,” is healed, the best physical, emotional, behavioral, and spiritual potential can express itself organically and gracefully.
The Soul Care in Health Care training, led by mind-body pioneer Joan Borysenko and organizational psychologist Gordon Dveirin is designed to reclaim the sacred in health care and heal the split between body and soul in patient care. Its goal is to introduce healing presence, generative listening, and the evocation of story as core competencies in the practice of medicine, psychology, nursing, social work and other health specialties. While not a training in health coaching or the art of spiritual guidance, it contains elements of both.
The training is an open process of discovery driven by deep questions that participants dwell in together. Through lectures on site and via telephone bridge, readings, papers, spiritual practices, the sharing of story, peer mentoring, and focused inquiries the following areas of study and practice will be explored:
- The healing presence
- Generative listening and narrative medicine
- The sacred dimension of story
- Evidence-based research on spirituality and healing
- Spiritual insights from psychiatry, philosophy, and world religions
- A depth view of change and transition
- Soul care in palliative and end-of-life settings
- The nature of resilience
- Forgiveness and self-acceptance
- Multicultural healing rituals
- Introduction to the art of individual and group spiritual guidance
- Meditation and prayer practices to touch the sacred
- Faith styles and stages of faith
- Self-care as soul care
- Peer group mentoring and practice
- Complex systems change/creating a soulful environment
The Soul Care in Health Care® training is a 6-month certificate program comprising 71 contact hours. It includes two 5-day intensives held at the Omega Institute and an intervening distance tutorial conducted twice a month online and via teleconference. The distance learning component of the training will also involve small group (5-to-8 people) mentoring circles. A commitment to attend both intensives and to participate in the distance tutorials is required. Register and pay for both intensives at the same time and save $150. Or, make a $100 deposit for Part 2 when you register for Part 1 and receive a $75 discount (if you register for Part 1 by June 1, 2010). Applications are required and there is a $10 nonrefundable application fee. Applicants must be practicing health-care providers. A minimum of one year’s practice in a contemplative discipline (meditation, yoga, martial arts, etc) is also helpful. Please submit your curriculum vita; a written reflection on why you are interested in bringing soul care to health care (two page maximum); and a letter of recommendation from a professional colleague to Omega by August 31, 2010. Applicants will be notified of acceptance by September 15, 2010. Upon acceptance, you will be mailed a suggested reading list. Syllabus material will be provided at the start of the program.
Joan Borysenko, PhD, Harvard-trained biologist, licensed psychologist, and trainer and supervisor of spiritual guides, is a pioneer in mind-body medicine. She is the founder of Mind-Body Health Sciences, LLC, and cofounder and former director of two Harvard hospital based mind-body clinical programs. The author of 14 books, she is an internationally renowned speaker, trainer, and journalist.
joanborysenko.com
Gordon Dveirin, EdD, is president of Dveirin and Associates, an organization and human development consulting firm. He is cofounder, with Borysenko, of The Claritas Institute for Interspiritual Inquiry, a founding board member of Integral Institute, and a key strategist for the Passageworks Institute, an organization dedicated to the social, emotional, and spiritual learning in schools. With Borysenko, Dveirin is coauthor of Saying Yes to Change and Your Soul’s Compass. claritasinstitute.com
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