Tending the Hearts of the Helpers: A 4-week Mindfulness Meditation Course for Mental Healthcare Workers
Many of us are drawn into helping professions through our hearts; we love humanity and our world, we are empathically attuned with those who suffer, and we are committed to helping create a more peaceful and just world. Yet, at times, there is so much harm and pain that can overshadow the call of our hearts. We get scared, feel shaky, enraged, and our hearts dim, get closed off, or go into protective hiding.
This four-week mindful meditation course will be centered in the heart: exploring the heart center as a resource, as well as coming to understand our personal obstacles to open-heartedness and groundedness. We will explore experientially our heart’s capacity to be supportive, compassionate, strong, and at times indestructible. All while tending to our pain and our fears.
This course aims to teach an individual mindful meditation practice, while also becoming a pop-up village of communal support and care. The series will support each participant in developing their capacity to be present with what is happening, with openness, curiosity, and without judgment. We will gently and tenderly turn toward both what's beautiful and difficult in an embodied, trauma-informed way. This course promises to not ignore or turn away from the systemic forces we are all up against, while also acknowledging that meeting these forces with greater steadiness, groundedness, and compassion, will make us more effective as individuals and collectively.
This course will meet on the four Thursdays of May, from 8-9am, on Zoom. The schedule is as follows:
May 7: Getting to know your heart, resourcing as practice: establishing a practiceemail Amy
May 14: Mindfulness of emotions and working with strong emotions
May 21: Compassion practices, for self and others
May 28: Taking our practice into the world
This offering will satisfy the practicum requirement for a meditation teacher training program with Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach. It is being offered free of charge and donations are welcome.
Please email Amy if you have questions or register here.