Talks, Workshops & Classes for General Audiences

Disease tells a story, not just about 'our cells' and a diagnosis but about 'ourselves' and our lives . . . about stress and the mind-body connection. Listening to this story, we are led to the truth of what happened to us and the emotions that lie at the core of our authentic being. Healing happens when we embark on a journey to our true and authentic self. Healing vs. Curing and how to integrate both.
all sickness is home sickness, and all healing is self healing, the journey home to your true self.

Facing and healing the dis-eases of the body, mind, emotions and spirit.

We will explore and live the questions:

• How can we deepen a healing presence within ourselves?
• How can we mindfully and heartfully open to our stresses, difficult mental states, childhood wounds and life stories?
• How can we use our healing journey and pain as an opportunity and vehicle to deepen and enhance our spiritual path?
• How can we be with and relate to our pain, difficulties, health issues and symptoms in a way that is wise, compassionate and healing?

The classes will include periods of silent practice, lecture, instruction, discussion, Q&A and guided meditation.  We will explore and integrate therapeutic and spiritual perspectives on healing through teachings and practices that connect us with and consciously engage the authentic self, awakening qualities and ways of being that lead into the heart of healing.

Since mind, body, heart, and soul are indissoluble, a change in one is a change in all. In the spirit of inquiry, discovery, and beginner's mind, we will listen within to find the meaning, message, and opportunity of life's challenges and explore how biography becomes biology. We will work with the mind-body-spirit connection through clinical guided imagery and the principles of Internal Family Systems.

Through mindfulness (insight) meditation practice and Buddhist teachings, we will

• Cultivate unconditional presence and wisdom 
• Awaken the noble heart of compassion 
• Learn to be fully present with and accepting of with all parts of ourselves. 

In the process, we will open to our heart wounds, our pain, and our suffering and directly experience how it is possible to free ourselves from our burdens, while awakening to inner peace, happiness, and joy.

Choose to Expand Your Vision of Growing Older.  Growing Younger while Growing Older - moment by moment. Learning how to expand your consciousness to meet your extended life span with peace, joy, healing, happiness, passion, compassion and adventure!

Attitude matters, and it's your choice how you experience growing older.

I will draw from a variety of disciplines in this discussion and experiential teaching exploring the experience of growing old and growing young.

Healing and the Mind-Body Connection

Our disease tells a story, not just of our cells, but of our selves. By taking the risk of listening, we may be led to the emotions, both positive and negative, that lie at the core of our authentic being. This workshop will focus on the importance of integrating the mind-body connection in health care, healing and treating disease, and how to listen to the meaning, message and opportunity of illness. We will explore how our life history, childhood wounds, traumas and stresses affect our health and how the body bears the burden.

If you don't know your history, are you doomed to repeat it?  How Have I Come To Be Like This?

All sickness is home sickness.  All healing is self-healing.  Discover how healing happens when we embark on a journey home to our true self.

The presentation will include lecture, discussion and experiential exercises of guided imagery and meditation.

If my symptom, issue, or pain has a meaning, what might that be? Am I willing to listen with the ears of my heart to the other voices of myself speaking?  

You will be guided to look inside and dialogue with your symptom and your inner self-healer.

Healing is the experience of wholeness and involves embracing and re-membering of all your wounded parts, healing your relationship with your self.

In this mind-body integrative medicine lecture and experiential workshop we will explore the deeper meanings, messages and opportunities of pain, stress and illness. We will discuss the mind-body connection and the role of attitudes, beliefs, stresses and emotions in the healing process and how biography becomes biology. Through lecture, discussion, writings, drawings, guided imagery and mindfulness meditation you will learn to listen to your symptoms and inner wisdom and live the question of how to face and be with whatever arises in a way that is wise, compassionate and healing.

"When any experience of body, heart, or mind keeps repeating in consciousness, it is a signal that this visitor is asking for a deeper and fuller attention….Under all the tears, the pain, the fear, and the anger we have contracted ourself around, we can find freedom, joy, and ease in the face of all life." – from Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart

In this workshop, we'll explore how mindfulness meditation practice can be integrated in the process of healing the dis-eases of the body, mind, emotions and spirit. Moving beyond stress reduction to explore mindfulness and healing, we will experience and live questions, see with new eyes and gain new insights.

• How can we be with and relate to our pain, difficulties, health issues and symptoms in a way that is wise, compassionate and healing? 
• How can we deepen a healing presence within ourselves? 
• How can we mindfully and heartfully open to our stresses, difficult mental states, childhood wounds and life stories? 
• How can we find inner peace and happiness, transform suffering and awaken joy?

Learn to cultivate healing qualities of being....patience, non-judgement, trust, and radical unconditional acceptance. The day will include silence, instruction, discussion, guided meditation, inquiry and contemplation.  Come with a beginner's mind and open heart.

"The real journey of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes it is in seeing with new eyes".

This course provides therapeutic support for people with stress-related disorders.  Learn how to move from the "Stress Response" to the "Healing Response." 

According to a study of the American Academy of Family Physicians, 80% of visits to the family doctor are for stress related complaints.

This practical and experiential workshop will focus on treating stress related disorders within naturopathic care by integrating and addressing the underlying cause ... stress. We'll discuss the basics of stress in health and disease and the sources, effects, coping strategies and evidence based mind-body skills and tools for self regulation, healing and healthy living.

While managing and reducing stress is an important therapeutic goal, we'll also explore moving beyond stress reduction alone to focus on transforming and healing the stress at its source.

We'll discuss PTSD and the effects of childhood and life trauma leading to stress and unhealthy lifestyles and stress related disorders,and the importance of mind-body psychotherapy and lifestyle counseling.

We'll review a study (ACE Adverse Childhood Experiences) showing childhood trauma is a precursor and predictor of chronic disease later in life and discuss how to integrate, "how biography becomes biology" as a component of treatment.

The workshop experience will emphasize mindfulness based practices and teachings, as well as exercises of breathing, relaxation, narrative medicine, guided imagery, yoga, journaling, perspective, cognitive restructuring and how to develop emotional resilience. Studies on mindfulness practice show its health enhancing benefits in treating people with a wide range of common stress related conditions and health concerns such as anxiety, depression, insomnia, weight, chronic pain syndromes, IBS, PTSD, high BP, immune disorders, skin disorders, fatigue, eating disorders and generalized chronic stress exacerbating all clinical conditions, illness and symptoms.

Facing, managing, reducing and healing stress is an essential component of naturopathic care.  

This topic explores how illness can be a vehicle for spiritual awakening.

This talk (or workshop) will be an exploration of how the teachings of the Buddha and mindfulness practice can be integrated in the process of healing the diseases of our bodies, minds, hearts, and spirits. How we are with and relate to our pain is as important as what we do to treat it. This presentation will delve into these very important questions:

What is healing and how does it happen?

How can we welcome and open to our pain and illness as an opportunity and vehicle for awakening, and what happens when we do?