Recapturing the Calling of Healing: Mindfulness Meditation for Health Care Providers

With Michael Baime, M.D.

February 12 - 14, 2009

Click here to download a PDF flyer.

Mindfulness meditation techniques are widely used to manage stress, reducing the stresses of time pressure and excessive workload that make modern health care such a difficult profession. But mindfulness has much more to offer health care providers. In some cultures meditation has been used in a spiritual context, but there is nothing necessarily religious or spiritual about these exercises. They cultivate presence, empathy, compassion, and connectedness in a simple and straightforward way.

These experiences are especially useful for health care providers because they restore a component of healing that is often overlooked, providing a practical way to connect with our own sources of depth and meaning. As we become more adept at dwelling in the living presence of our own experience, we begin to connect more deeply with patients and co-workers. Thus, mindfulness practice provides a simple and practical way to recapture the calling of healing.

This workshop will review the basics of mindfulness meditation and explore how these techniques can be used to manage stress, enhance communication, and promote empathy and healing in clinical practice. Practical adaptations of mindfulness techniques will provide concrete mindfulness-based tools that can be used to help you to recapture the calling of healing in your own clinical practice.

No previous meditation experience required. Sessions will include periods of guided meditation practice, discussions of the role of mindfulness in practice, and structured interpersonal exercises that demonstrate the application of mindfulness to the encounter between patient and healer.

The program will begin at 7:30 pm, Thursday, February 12, and end at noon February 14.

AMA PRA Category 1 Credits available. Continuing education credit for non-physicians:

• Nurses: An application has been submitted to the Vermont State Nurses' Association, Inc.
• Mental Health Counselors: The Vermont Board of Mental Health Counselors has approved this event.
• Social Workers: The Vermont Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers has approved this program for continuing education units.

Tuition: $295 Program fees include 3 meals per day served by the Karme Choling kitchen.

About Dr. Michael Baime

Michael Baime, M.D., is the founder and Director of the Penn Program for Stress Management at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, which has trained more than 5,000 people in mindfulness-based stress management. He is the director of numerous courses at Penn teaching mindfulness, meditation, and spirituality, and also electives offered in the medical and nursing schools, the Departments of Pastoral Care and Psychology. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1981 and has practiced meditation since 1969. A Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, he practices primary care medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine. He is also involved in many research projects, including investigations into the relationship between meditation training and empathy, cognitive neuroscience of meditation, and the clinical applications of mindfulness training, including as a treatment for obesity, multiple sclerosis, and A.D.D.

This program is being held at Karmê Chöling Shambhala Meditation Center in Barnet, Vermont.  To register please email registration@tailofthetiger.org with your name, address, phone number, email address, name of the program and choice of accommodations. You will be contacted for deposit information and confirmation of registration.

In an effort to make our programs accessible to all, we offer an interest free payment plan. This plan allows you to pay 50% of the total prior to or at the time of registration and give post-dated check or credit card authorization for the remainder of the balance for up to six month post program. If you are interested in this payment option, please let the registration department know when you confirm your registration.