specializes in clinical ethics and pediatric palliative care and the other who specializes in hospice
care and PNI research; two psychologists, one specializing in trauma and the other in palliative
care; a chaplain specializing in end-of-life care; and a yoga teacher.
Six Core Contemplative Strategies Taught during the BWD Training
All participants are guided each morning through successive reflective practices. These are
unpacked in the mid-morning session by skilled practitioners, and the group explores how to apply
the practices in their clinical work. Other practices are introduced in the course of the day. In the
late afternoon, there is another hour devoted to a non-sectarian mindfulness practice. In the
evening session, as well as during short periods throughout the day, stretching, yoga and other
embodiment practices are taught.
The practices that are taught fall into six categories:
1. Focused attention and concentration practices with an emphasis on equanimity and
compassion, including mindfulness of breath, somatic awareness, body scan, walking meditation,
yoga, stretching,
qigong
.
2. Cultivating investigative/discernment faculty that includes insight practices focusing on values
and ethics, altruism, pain, suffering, death, priorities and the development of metacognitive
capacities; these include insight meditation, Nine Contemplations, contemplation of priorities,
writing practice on death,
sandtray
practice.
3. Presencing pain/suffering and practicing deep listening, including learning not to personalize or
pity/console; practices include seeing purely/bearing witness, co-meditation, council practice.
4. Cultivating prosocial mental qualities, including altruism, empathy, kindness, compassion,
sympathetic joy, equanimity; practices include the G.R.A.C.E. intervention, the Boundless Abodes
(
Brahmaviharas
), sending and receiving (
tonglen
), exchanging self with other.
5. Subjective familiarization with psycho-physical aspects of sickness, dying and death and
practices utilizing visualization and imagination; practices include the practice of the dissolution of
the psychophysical elements in the process of dying, dissolution of the body after death.
6. Open presence and the practice of panoramic, receptive, non-judgmental attention; the key
practice is choiceless awareness.
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