Boundaries, Self-Care, and Meditation

This 3 day retreat-like, self-exploration course is designed to help therapists heal and restore themselves through a shared responsibility model of clinical practice. There are three primary foci of this course: 1) Changing practice patterns to work away from a model of codependency and burn out, 2) Increasing patient participation in meditation/pain reframing and how to integrate that into the practice with many different patient personality types, and 3) Therapist self-care in and out of work.

Participants will learn new strategies to preserve their own energy, wellness and passion while practicing appropriate self-care and boundaries to lead to helpful relationships with complex patients. This course will explore new ways of dialoguing with patients to set up appropriate boundaries and expectation from the first encounter and throughout treatment. Providers will learn techniques to reframe their roles in a way that benefits their psychological and mental health as well as their patients’ through new interaction patterns. Instruction will include decision making strategies to decide which mindful intervention is most likely to be well received with different types of patients.

Come prepared for self-exploration with hours of meditation, reflection, and analysis of self, work and life patterns. The course will be a balance of lecture, labs, and practical experiences. Lab activities will include meditation and mindfulness activities, dialogue and treatment strategies for persistent pain, manual techniques, practice instructing and integrating techniques effectively within a treatment session, and how to preserve your whole self as a therapist avoiding compassion fatigue and burn-out. This course is designed for the therapist seeking a transformative weekend of changing their own deep patterns which lead to fatigue in their practice.

Practical experiences will include journaling, meditation, problem solving, exercise and self-reflection. Course content includes: mind-body medicine, meditation, neural down regulation, increasing patient’s perceived locus of control, integrating essential oils into self care and health care, external manual techniques to support and regulate the nervous system, pain theory, cognitive reframing and how to talk to patients about pain, provider boundaries and self-care. Participants will leave class feeling equipped, restored and renewed.

Please begin the pre-course reading and home program of meditation exercises at least one month prior to the course, as listed in the course assignments attached. Participants who do the reading in advance and take time to begin the meditation work two months prior the course experience a deeper, richer, transformative experience prior to and during the weekend experience.

Audience:

This continuing education seminar is targeted to physical therapists, occupational therapists, physical therapist assistants, occupational therapist assistants, registered nurses, nurse midwives, and other rehabilitation professionals. Content is not intended for use outside the scope of the learner's license or regulation. Physical therapy continuing education courses should not be taken by individuals who are not licensed or otherwise regulated, except, as they are involved in a specific plan of care.

Assignments:

Please begin your meditation practice.  You will need to download the CD, “Meditations for Pelvic Health” from google play or itunes.  You can also search “Nari Clemons”. The CD is also available at Amazon, Current Tech, or Current Medical Technologies.  The downloaded form makes it easier to catch your 10 minute daily meditation during lunch at work, or wherever you have your phone.  Using earbuds will enhance the experience, as the music has binary beats that balance the two sides of the brain.  Please find the self practice logs at this link.   We would like you to use tracks 1-7 each three times before the course.  This way, at the course, we can dive deeper and work more on application into your practice, as you will have familiarity with each technique and how it affects you.  Please start sooner than later, trying to get a sitting in each day. 

Please order Self Care for the Self Aware by David Markowitz.  It is around $9 from online retailers.  Please read pages 3- 40.   We will use this pre-reading as a jumping point for conversations and discussions.  As you read, please take a few notes on whose stuff you are owning and what comes up when you think of giving it back to them.  Again, please enjoy the experience and read slowly enough to process the information and let it work through you, rather than doing it all the night before.  Let the transformation process begin now!