Workshop for Hospice & Palliative Care Professionals, Patients & Families
Meditation can be practiced in many forms – from guided imagery to mindfulness to compassion and loving-kindness. Each has a special place in the hospice and palliative care setting, and can empower patients, families and professional caregivers alike to skillfully tend to physical and emotional suffering, deepen interpersonal connections, build resilience, and explore themes of forgiveness, gratitude, meaning, and love. Participants will learn how to choose situation-appropriate techniques for both end-of-life care and bereavement, while exploring ways to apply the practices to their own life, so they can
authentically share them with the people they serve.
- Summarize the research and philosophies that support meditation as an effective intervention in the hospice and palliative care setting.
- Differentiate three types of meditation practices and their specific applications.
- Discuss a trauma-sensitive approach for facilitating meditation-based interventions during end-of-life care and grief.
[ Learn More About Grief Speaker Heather Stang ]
Grief Speaker Heather Stang is a thanatologist and author of Mindfulness & Grief: With Guided Meditations To Calm Your Mind & Restore Your Spirit. Her focus on teaching others to use mindfulness-based techniques to reduce stress, cope with grief, and cultivate personal growth is inspired by her own journey of love, loss and posttraumatic growth.
A former crisis hotline call specialist for the Frederick County Mental Health Association, Heather provided information, referrals and supportive listening for callers of Maryland 211, the Frederick County Hotline and more. She relied on her mindfulness training to maintain a calm and compassionate attitude both on the job and at home after difficult shifts. Additionally, Heather volunteered as a trainer and call specialist on the New Orleans hotline just weeks after Hurricane Katrina devastated the region, and was a research assistant for a NIMH funded National Suicide Prevention Lifeline Research Project.
Heather earned a Masters in Thanatology (Death, Dying & Bereavement) from Hood College in 2010, and founded the Frederick Meditation Center, where she is a yoga therapist and mindfulness meditation instructor. In addition to Mindfulness & Grief (2014), she is a contributor to the volume Techniques of Grief Therapy: Assessment & Intervention (Neimeyer, 2015).
