Integrating Mindfulness & Meditation into Clinical Practice

Posted on November 5, 2015 Updated on November 5, 2015

Bill Gayner, MSW, RSW

November 26-27, 2015, Stratford, ON

Regular Registration Fee: $339 + HST

Fee includes lunch, morning and afternoon refreshments.

Workshop Description

This interactive and experiential 2-day workshop will focus on fundamental skills involved in teaching and integrating mindfulness meditation in clinical practice (counselling, psychotherapy and other therapeutic and helping settings). The workshop will highlight an approach called Recollective Awareness Meditation, an open, gentle, psychologically-oriented meditation that builds on the practices found in other mindfulness programs such as MBSR/MBCT and is accessible to long-time meditators and beginners alike:

• for experienced mindfulness practitioners, it will deepen, refresh and clarify your meditation and clinical practices
• for those new to mindfulness, it will serve as a useful introduction on how to develop your own mindfulness practice for enhancing  self-care and therapeutic presence with clients, as well as orienting you in how to teach mindfulness to clients once you have had some more experience with it yourself
• for those in between (who have been practicing mindfulness and have some understanding of it as a clinical intervention), this workshop will enable you to start using mindfulness with your clients, integrating it into the clinical approaches that you are already using.

Topics Covered:

1. Six key meditative processes and the differences between them
2. How to use mindfulness to deepen therapeutic presence and attunement with clients
3. How to use mindfulness to deal with difficult clinical situations
4. How to assess, introduce, and coach clients in mindfulness and meditation
5.  How to cultivate compassion and self-compassion in treatment
6. Key challenges that come up when teaching mindfulness and meditation, and strategies for navigating these challenges
7. The recommended guidelines for your own mindfulness practice in order to effectively teach mindfulness to others
8. Resources for further learning and practice

Who Should Attend? Any helping professional who provides some form of counselling and would like to gain mindfulness tools and strategies to use with clients.  This includes social workers, counsellors, psychiatrists, family physicians, nurses, occupational therapists, chaplains, and other social service and health care professionals.

About the Presenter Bill Gayner, MSW, RSW, is a registered Social Worker, an Adjunct Lecturer with the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto, and a faculty member of the Mount Sinai Psychotherapy Institute.  He works in the Clinic for HIV-Related Concerns at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, where he integrates mindfulness into individual psychotherapy and leads mindfulness programs for clients and hospital staff.  Bill co-led a randomized-controlled trial of mindfulness-based stress reduction for gay men living with HIV.  His interests include mindfulness, community mental health and integrative psychotherapy.

Registration Information>