Jennifer Block, a Buddhist chaplain and caregiver educator who has made it her life’s work to provide spiritual care to people in crisis, mentoring caregivers and teaching people how to access their innate capacity for caring and healing, joins the San Francisco Zen Center in bringing the Bay Area caregiving community a breakthrough, three-part Contemplative Caregiver Course in 2013.

Jennifer Block

This breakthrough caregiver course utilizes the mindfulness teachings of Buddhism to equip the paid and family caregivers you may know with the skills they need to sustain effective, loving, and patient-sensitive care helping to ensure dignity and healing for a loved one.

SF Zen Center Dharma teachers Fu Schroeder and Linda Ruth Cutts also serve as core faculty for the course. There is a growing awareness in America that Buddhism can provide us with what we need to live our lives, especially during difficult and vulnerable times. Since Buddhism began it has always called us, individually and collectively, to mindfully meet some of life’s greatest challenges. Perhaps during no other time of life such as frailty, sickness, or dying do we need those who are entrusted with our care to treat us with dignity and compassion.

But many caregivers don’t always feel that they have the skills and understanding to offer the level of compassionate and patient-sensitive care they genuinely wish to offer those they are attending. There is little that arms them against depletion, frustration, and isolation. They simply don’t have the extra skills necessary to sustain mindful, loving, and personal care, leaving them susceptible to feeling apart, not in partnership, with their care receiver.

For a small investment in the three-part Contemplative Caregiver Course, paid caregivers, healthcare professionals, individual and family caregivers alike can learn how their daily caregiving tasks, no matter how grueling and difficult, can actually be a positive experience for everyone involved.

“I have seen what this training can do to transform the entire way a caregiver approaches their task. The Buddhist teachings of mindfulness and turning towards what’s difficult can make caregiving an enriching and healing experience.” – Jennifer Block

The Contemplative Caregiver Course can help caregivers develop new resilience and augment their current skills to transcend task-oriented, impersonal care by helping them transform their day-in, day-out caregiving into an empowering and dignified experience for everyone involved.

To learn more please visit carebeyondmeasure.org. Applications are due by December 15, 2012.