In-depth training in unique caregiving skills - a three-day training seminar for social and healthcare professionals and trained volunteers

20th-22nd October, 2011 | 10:00am Thursday to 5.00pm Saturday

The Resource Centre, 356 Holloway Road, London N7 6PA | Google map | how to get there

With Rosamund Oliver , Anne Sadie and Margaret Tatham

£220 | £190 concession (students/pensioners/unemployed)

For more information contact us

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Responding effectively to the needs of patients remains an on-going professional and deeply personal challenge. Compassion and Presence offers the opportunity to learn contemplative resources that support you in your life and work, and enhance the way you offer care - with a renewed sense of joy, confidence, and fulfillment. Drawing from meditations taught in the wisdom tradition of Tibet, this training focuses on cultivating presence and mindfulness, and deepening the capacity for compassion, so that you can remain present, spacious and loving in the face of suffering.

The training introduces insights and contemplations from Sogyal Rinpoche's groundbreaking book, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, and demonstrates in practical ways how to appropriately integrate these practices of meditation, contemplative listening, and compassion in any medical setting.

Compassion and Presence is for anyone who cares for others in hospice, palliative care, critical care, gerontology, oncology, general medicine, nursing, emergency medicine, pastoral care, psychology, social work, health care education, and other allied health professions. It will resonate with professionals and volunteers from diverse cultural and religious backgrounds.

The training focuses on four core competencies:

• Holding authentic presence and communication.
• Deepening one's ability to extend compassion toward oneself and others.
• Developing a personal understanding of suffering, and how to be present with suffering.
• Applying contemplative practices for self-care.

Methods of training

Lectures, discussion, writing, reflection, contemplative practice, and interactive methods for integrating learning.

Training Topics

• Spirituality and healthcare - an introduction to the spiritual care model of compassionate care
• Cultivating presence through meditation and mindfulness practice
• Methods for deepening compassion
• Responding to suffering
• Training in contemplative listening
• Creating a sacred environment
• Compassionate self-care for alleviating stress, healing burnout, and transforming challenging situations
• Caregiving as spiritual practice
• Scientific research on the benefits of training in meditation and compassion in medical care work.

Faculty

Rosamund Oliver, BA, Dip Psych, ECP, worked for many years as a UKCP registered psychotherapist, supervisor and trainer. Her public healthcare work includes NHS psychiatry with the elderly bereaved, nurse education at St Joseph’s Hospice, London and co-creating a prison meditation project. She held a series of Buddhist psychotherapy seminars in South Africa. She is an international training manager and has regularly been invited to give professional trainings on behalf of Rigpa’s Spiritual Care Education Programme. She has been a student of Sogyal Rinpoche since 1981.

Anne Sadie began hospice work in the UK as a volunteer in 1984.  She became part of the Home Visiting team at the North London Hospice, and later with St Luke's Hospice in Harrow.  She is a trained Bereavement Councellor, and a Spiritual Care Educator for the Rigpa Spiritual Care Education Programme. She has been a student of Sogyal Rinpoche since 1994.

Margaret Tatham BA (Mod Hist),MA, MRCP. is a General Practitioner with nearly thirty years experience in both hospital and community medicine. She has extensive experience in teaching both medical students and post-graduate doctors, and has a particular interest in end of life care and care for carers. She has been a student of Sogyal Rinpoche since 1994 and has been involved in the Rigpa Spiritual Care Education Programme for eight years.

Register now by printing out this form and sending it back with full payment to us | Download a flyer