Healing at the Edge: Conscious Living, Conscious Dying
– Presented by Dale Borglum, PhD [1 DAY WORKSHOP] [CO-SPONSORED]

NARRATIVE:

For 35 years I have been blessed to be in close contact with many people who were approaching death. Almost all of these people were reaching out for healing – healing in relationship to death, healing in relationship to illness, in relationship to a wounded heart, to separation from their own self. My consuming interest, both personally and professionally, has been the healing process. Why do some people experience wholeness as they approach death, while others lose themselves in denial, depression, distraction? Why is it that some of the most alive and awake Westerners I’ve known have been, almost without exception, people near death? Is there some powerful truth about life and about healing that you and I can receive from these few who, as they went through the process of dying, deeply realized their own wholeness?

Bringing emotional/spiritual support to someone with a life-threatening illness is a twofold task.  First, help the client realize they are more than that which will die – the finite self – the body and personality. At the same time, honor this finite self, healing its woundedness, its identification with separateness. Rumi said “Grief is the garden of compassion.” This transmuting separateness of grief into the connectedness of compassion is that the heart of the work. Confusion, anxiety, depression, anger are typical responses arising as the end of a life approaches, both for patients and their families.

This presentation will explore possibilities for realizing wholeness at the edge of life where illness, grief, and loss arise. Both psychological and spiritual tools will be used in the investigation of these profound and challenging issues. We will offer participants the opportunity to explore the deeper questions surrounding death, healing, and the sacred, so that each of us can better embody an enlivened sense of being in the world in each moment rather than a sense of isolation and denial.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES: 

Upon completion of this workshop, participants should be able to:

1. Describe the defining characteristics of compassion.
2. Distinguish between compassion and pity.
3. Fully understand the somatic foundation for being able to let go of identification with separateness.
4. Understand how to transmute the separateness of grief into the connectedness of compassion.
5. Be familiar with several contemplative practices that will help a client transmute fear of dying into acceptance.
6. Skillfully work with one’s own fear of death as it is resonated by the client’s situation.
7. Enable one’s client to use the prognosis of a life-threatening illness as an opportunity to become more present and alive.

COURSE OUTLINE – 1 Day Workshop – 8 hrs.:

8:45 – 9:00 am   

Registration

9:00 – 10:00 am 

Overview of the healing paradigm-motivation, invocation, awareness, grounding, centering, compassion, empowerment, wholeness.

10:00 – 11:00 am

Motivation for healing. Cultivating awareness of the emotional patterns that cause suffering. Becoming present in one’s body as the foundation for opening the heart of compassion.

11:00 – 12:30 pm

Compassion

          A. Definition of compassion and discussion of its qualities and benefits

1. Connectedness, spaciousness and warmth

B. Relationship between compassion and appropriate boundaries

C. How compassion prevents burnout.

D. “Grief is the garden of compassion.”

1. Transforming the separation of grief into the connectedness of compassion

2. Grief work – We are all grieving

E. Guided compassion meditation

F. Group exercise exploring compassion.

12:30 – 1:30 pm

Lunch

1:30 – 2:00 pm   

Contemplative practices to transmute fear of death, to cultivate the heart of compassion, to accept loss of control.

2:00 – 3:00 pm    

Empowerment

1. 1. Definition of empowerment
   2. How the spacious mind of compassion leads to empowerment
   3. How empowerment leads to healing

3:00 – 4:00 pm 

Caregiving

1. 1. Caregiving as psychological/spiritual work on oneself
   2. Caregiving for the dying
      1. Special practices to heal fear of death
   3. Fear of death
      1. All fear is fear of death
   4. Working with physical pain
      1. Confusion between pain and fear of pain
      2. Pain meditation

4:00 – 5:00 pm 

What is it that dies and what is it that does not die?

What happens when you die?

How can the certainty of death yet the uncertainty of the time of our death

lead to awakening rather than to fear?

5:00 – 5:30 pm

Wholeness

1. 1. Definition of wholeness
   2. Healing as different from curing
   3. Wholeness or healing as the goal of all practice
   4. Healing guided meditation

5:30  – 6:00 pm

Complete evaluations and closing

 

CONTENT CURRICULUM

1. This program will build upon the foundation of a completed doctoral program in psychology by exploring the transpersonal, the meditative, and the spiritual components necessary for conscious death. We will explore how identification with ego structure and fear of death are intimately connected.
2. The aim of psychological practice traditionally is to create a healthier, efficiently functioning mind and particularly a healthy ego structure. In the potentially profoundly transformative time at the end of life, healing and understanding that transcend egoic concern are often more available than at any other time in a person’s life. The appreciation of this possibility is of central importance to those supporting clients who might be approaching death.
3. The target audience is clinical social workers, marriage and family therapists, psychologists and nurses working with patients confronting a life-threatening illness, their loved ones, and those grieving. Instruction summarizes introductory and intermediate foundational concepts which then leads to advance content for the majority of the workshop.
4. The materials presented during this workshop have been developed and utilized during 40 years of working directly with thousands of dying clients, their families and their caregivers. As well, these materials have been presented during trainings at hundreds of hospitals and hospices throughout North America. The efficacy of this content is limited by the willingness of the client to explore the possibility of deep transformation during a time of great crisis. The effects of opioid analgesic medication and also bodily symptoms that often accompany the end stages of terminal illness both can limit the transformative power of the materials presented. The only risk that has been encountered is that occasionally when a client is consciously working with her fear of death, long repressed difficult emotions can burst forth in her physically weakened condition requiring great sensitivity on the part of the practitioner.
5. Dr. Borglum spent years as a group facilitator at San Quentin Penitentiary and as an AIDS/HIV counselor at High General Hospital in Oakland. At both of these facilities there was a wide range of race, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic backgrounds represented. When supporting a client who is confronting a life-threatening illness, conditioned emotional patterns inherent in different backgrounds and orientations often mask the deeper underlying fear of death. Cultivating deeper awareness and compassion through the lecture and experiential materials presented during this workshop will enable participants to distinguish between cultural, individual, and role differences on the one hand, and, on the other, inherent fear of death.

 

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COST:

One Day – 8 CEs, $175

You may register online by visiting www.livingdying.org, and clicking on Healing at the Edge: Conscious Living/Conscious Dying. You may also send a check or money order to Living/Dying Project at P.O. Box 357, Fairfax, CA 94978. With your payment, please include your email address and if you wish C.E.’s includes license number and degree. You may also register by phone: please call 415-456-3915.