TRAINING THE CONTEMPLATIVE CAREGIVER
ABOUT US
Our world’s contemplative traditions arose to help people make sense of life’s challenges. Jonathan Prescott founded Wise Caregiving to help caregivers, patients, and seekers use this contemplative wisdom to become more effective, joyful, and sustainable.
Contemplative care leads with the heart and responds with expertise. It is rooted in an intention to serve, a commitment to explore the human condition, a willingness to be with suffering, and a desire to understand the nature of life and death. It is expressed in the most ordinary ways: kind speech, gentle care, patient listening, and with the skills unique to each caregiver’s history and life. There is no checklist of contemplative skills. Each act arises to meet the need at hand, even if that takes the caregiver outside their comfort zone.
Wise Caregiving offers workshops, retreats, and presentations to help professional and private caregivers thrive in today’s challenging environment. We consult with patients and families seeking to clarify goals, cope with losses, set boundaries, and find meaning in illness and end of life. Private consultations are offered by video conference.
Consultations
Jonathan Prescott offers private video consultations to clients throughout the world. As a Board Certified Pastoral Counselor and Clinical Chaplain, Jonathan helps people rediscover meaning, clarify goals, cope with loss, and navigate illness and end of life. He is not a mental health counselor and does not treat mental health issues.
For Professional Caregivers
Learn to make your work more effective, joyful, and sustainable. Consultations with Jonathan can help you set boundaries, improve listening skills, and prevent burnout.
For Patients and Families
Find your way through the confusion of illness and end of life. Jonathan helps you reconnect with your own wisdom so you can better clarify goals, face grief and loss, and find meaning in the midst of difficulty.
Contact us to learn more about scheduling a consultation.
Workshops
Wise Caregiving uses a 3-step approach to teaching the art of contemplative care:
Introduce – Caregivers are introduced to basic contemplative care concepts in 1-4 hour classes.
Deepen – As caregivers utilize contemplative care practices, they deepen understanding through personal experience by attending retreats lasting 1-3 days.
Sustain – Communities of learners formed at classes and retreats meet locally and through social media to extend expertise and provide mutual support.
Introduce – Caregivers are introduced to basic contemplative care concepts in 1-4 hour classes.
Deepen – As caregivers utilize contemplative care practices, they deepen understanding through personal experience by attending retreats lasting 1-3 days.
Sustain – Communities of learners formed at classes and retreats meet locally and through social media to extend expertise and provide mutual support.
Introductory Workshops
Open Hearted Care
Stop, Listen, Engage
Understanding Loss
Finding Balance
The Art of Listening
- 1 hour
- This introduction to the arts of contemplative care helps providers learn to lead with an open heart then follow with appropriate professional skills. Using stories and exercises, caregivers learn the importance of listening, flexibility, vulnerability, and presence. They begin to see that self-awareness is a foundation of sustainable effective care.
Stop, Listen, Engage
- 2 hours
- Stopping, listening, and engaging are keys to effective care.
- Stop: Caregivers engage in exercises that relay the power of creating pauses in the midst of busyness so that they can listen deeply before responding appropriately. We explore how triggers within their particular circumstances can remind them to stop.
- Listen: Listening to ourselves creates the ability to listen to others, so caregivers are introduced to concrete self-awareness practices. We explore the healing power of listening and discuss the importance of our patients’ stories and languages of meaning.
- Engage: Caregivers learn to trust both their professional skills and the intuition, empathy, and compassion that arise from deep listening.
Understanding Loss
- 1.5 hours
- This powerful guided module invites caregivers to experience the losses of illness, decline, and death as though it were happening to them in the present moment. Caregivers then use this experience to respond more appropriately and authentically to their patients’ losses. Students report that this ‘Guided Death’ exercise often brings profound changes in the way they relate to themselves and, consequently, their patients.
Finding Balance
- 2 hours
- We sometimes crave the simplicity of black and white answers, but contemplative care recognizes that wisdom includes the gray areas between. This module explores how to find balance within dynamically changing situations by focusing on five paradoxes:
- Self/Other: Learners are introduced to a boundary setting model that encourages simultaneous respect for self and other.
- Competence/Compassion: Caregivers learn to balance hard professional skills with soft open-hearted skills.
- Giving/Receiving: Providers give naturally, but can they also receive? Contemplative caregivers recognize that within the roles we play, we must do both.
- Soft/Firm: Knowing when to yield and when to firmly stand our ground requires self-awareness, confidence, and practice. We’ll explore a model for balancing a soft belly with a firm spine.
- Results/Futility: Our society (including the medical profession) is focused on measurable results. This module helps caregivers value both their measurable and unmeasurable contributions.
The Art of Listening
- 2 hours
- Listening is a foundation of effective caregiving. We can’t help appropriately if we don’t listen effectively. This module explores the importance of creating a listening space that not only allows us to hear others, but also to hear ourselves. We will learn Three Centered Listening so we’re able to hear with our minds, feelings, and bodies. And we will gain an understanding of how deep listening can improve patient assessment and inter-team communication.
Deepening Opportunities
Contact Wise Caregiving to learn more about scheduling 1-3 day retreats to personalize and deepen contemplative care concepts covered in introductory classes.
Sustaining Together
As part of the Introduce and Deepen steps, local and social media communities are fostered to support and extend contemplative care practices. These communities nurture relationships forged at Wise Caregiving events and help sustain growth.
Meet Our Facilitators
JONATHAN PRESCOTT |
MICHAEL MELANCON |
KARLA JOHNSTON |
SUPPORT US
Wise Caregiving is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization (EIN 82-0730492). All donations are tax deductible and help us train effective, joyful, and sustainable caregivers.