Caring for Ourselves While Caring for Others

In this workshop sponsored with Sheltering Arms Senior Services, Micki Fine and Lucia McBee offer all caregivers (family members and professionals) essential tools for giving others the best of who we are - without giving ourselves away. A portion of registration fees will go to support the Client Emergency Food Pantry at Sheltering Arms, and participants are encouraged to bring canned food or monetary donations.

This workshop has been cancelled -- we apologize for any inconvenience.

How can we navigate the stress and demands of caring for others with a sense of great ease and gracefulness? An increasingly aging population and their caregivers face multiple challenges, including chronic conditions, loss, and often, economic instability.
Mindfulness, the art of paying open-hearted attention in the present moment, offers access to inner equanimity and wisdom needed to handle these challenges. Mindfulness practice includes mindfulness meditation and the cultivation of present-moment awareness during daily activities.

Mindfulness skills have been found to help people reduce the immediate effects of stress, and cope with pain and loss with greater compassion and effectiveness. Caregivers who learn mindfulness practices report not only a reduction in stress related problems, but also an increased satisfaction in the caregiving experience.
This workshop offers a morning of meditation instruction and practice, and discussion, in which participants will learn about this evidence-based treatment model and its application to elder care issues.

Recommended reading: Mindfulness-Based Elder Care: A CAM Model for Frail Elders and Their Caregivers, Lucia McBee.

Micki Fine, MEd, LPC has been in private psychotherapy practice since 1989. She has taught Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction since 1994. She earned the credential of Certified Mindfulness Teacher from the University of Massachusetts Medical School where Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn founded the Center for Mindfulness.

Lucia McBee, LCSW, MPH, CYI, the author of Mindfulness-Based Elder Care, is a geriatric social worker and certified yoga teacher who has worked with elders and their caregivers for 27 years. She has trained at the Center for Mindfulness, the Center for Mind-Body Medicine and Kripalu Institute. She is currently a Social Work Supervisor at Jewish Home Lifecare and an Adjunct Lecturer at Columbia University School of Social Work.

This workshop has been cancelled. We apologize for any inconvenience.