Artistry of Wellbeing At Work

This course is for all of us who are responsible for the welfare and safety of others. If you are a mental health service provider, home carer, nurse, health and emergency services, paramedic, criminal investigator, family child protection officer, police enforcement, highway patrol, cybersecurity officer, law enforcer, this list is endless, we know you work with people, situations, under extreme pressure and high work loads. Your role brings you into contact with extraordinary complex and distressing material and traumatised vulnerable people. You are qualified and trained to do your work, registered to practice. The expectation that we can be immersed in suffering and loss daily and not be touched by it is an unrealistic. What can sustain you and keep you whole will be guided by self care practices that build insight, self awareness, compassion and value alignment. Spirituality comes into play, there has to be more to this life spark of time you are on this Earth.

Maybe, maybe not! Your ability to ask for help, to have trusted and kind leaders and team mates where you have psychosocial safety, trust, respect and kindness, they sustain you when the going gets tough. Your family, friends and outside interests. Keeping you whole and well is a shared responsibility. Defining compassion fatigue, moral injury, vicarious trauma symptoms is one aspect toward greater self awareness. You as the individual, your workplace culture and the institutions, organisations are connected and play an important role in maintaining your wellbeing too. During this 9 day Insight timer course you will be able to practice evidenced based best practices for deep and nourishing care. We will touch on the importance of Peer support programs, wellbeing champions at work and the role of your manager and team in contributing to maintaining your wellbeing. A whole person, strengths based, dynamic compassionate leaders and healthy relationships, will sustain your wellbeing. The wisdom gained from your life of service (vocation) is invaluable and I encourage you to share your wisdom and compassion with all of us in our student question and answers portal. I am sharing with you important practices and mindful ways, that have helped to sustain me over a long period of service as a psychologist - through the many thousands of compassionate conversations and stories I have held through the years of my work, including a commitment to my meditation practices and wellbeing, I have been growing neural pathways in my prefrontal cortex that have enable me to feel responsive, present, kind and fun loving. Compassion grows and expands, I wish to share these practices with you. Let's begin.

Lección 1: Compassion and Wisdom Are Gifts from Your Vocation

We gain wisdom through humanitarian roles; such as providers of care, advocacy, rescue, and support; justice and community aid, and child protection. Those times when I feel compassion rising in my heart and stinging my eyes, I see this as a directive for action and a compass showing me what path I am best to take. Equanimity and humbleness are gifts that arise from listening and supporting others when they are in extreme distress, confusion, or fear. Witnessing the resilience and strength of the human spirit when hope is alive. A reminder that life can be filled with intensity and complexity of perceptions and approaches. Being humble, the learner is open and curious about other people and their unique sufferings, struggles, and resilience in the face of hardships. Wisdom to remain present, to listen, to care, and to ask "What can I do to support you now?" The wisdom to know if you are the one to provide that support or be with them until the best support arrives.

Lección 2: Social Awareness Deepening Our Relationships

Social awareness: Cultivating within ourselves a joyfulness and appreciation for other peoples success and happiness. Yes we can feel empathy for their struggles and the suffering of people. We can also cultivate sharing joy in their successes and happiness. This practice encourages you to ring up a friend and make a date to share your joy in their good news, even if their good news is something you wish for yourself. Cultivating altruistic joy we are all together in this.

You are encouraged to experiment with a home assignment. I would like you to connect with a friend, who has experienced great success and happiness in their lives. Call them up or catch up in person and ask them what good things have been happening in their lives. Then with wholeheartedness share how happy you are for them. the second activity is to enjoy giving a gift to your friend. What gift could bring joy to your friend? Can you give this to them? Can you rejoice with them? If yes, this is the experience of empathetic Joy. This is one of the four Nobel truths

Lección 3: Compassion Practice: Intention & Goodwill

Loving-Kindness Meditation practice is brilliant for restoring your energy and hopes for the future. It also quickly dilutes anger and frustration at other people. It is a practice that has been found to support and buffer the effects of vicarious stress or cumulative trauma.

Self-care and an orientation toward self-kindness and self-compassion for being human with vulnerabilities and a sucker for saying yes to everyone. In this session, Simonette will guide you in the classic practice of Metta, loving kindness which is one of the four Nobel Truths.

Lección 4: Empathetic Joy: Uplifting Each Other

Uplifting each other through genuine empathetic joy in other's success and happiness in life. The Nobel Truth about Sympathetic Joy describing, 3 types of Joy we can experience: 1. Appreciative Joy 2. Altruistic Joy and 3. Sublime Joy. You will be guided into a beautiful practice to bring you to a place of cultivating Altruistic Joy and a generous heart. Holding this positive intention and goodwill to all people everywhere. In this session, Simonette will give a short introduction to the teachings around cultivating empathetic joy. This will be followed by guided practice.

Lección 5: Equanimity: Living the Four Nobel Truths

Equanimity is the ability to be in a state of acceptance and ease with what is arising and passing in the present moment.

Perhaps we are not able to live with equanimity all day every day, it is something we can practice in short bursts until we become more accustomed to the experience. Often described as being the witness and observing with kind regard and acceptance of all that is arising and passing, moving and changing in life. After all the only constant is change. During this meditation, Simonette will guide you to turn your attention within and to experience moments of equanimity and peace. I find Equinimity the most difficult of the four Nobel truths. How about you?

Lección 6: Trees Photosynthesis Metaphors for Transforming Vicarious Trauma

In this session, Simonette describes how trees draw in pollution through their leaves, inside the trunk, where the process of photosynthesis occurs, giving a combination of nutrients for the tree itself, and then giving off oxygen to the atmosphere - which is our life force.

Metaphors can be a useful guide for the Buddhist practice of Tonglen. We breathe into ourselves the suffering of others, we give attention to this and add some goodwill intentions and a feeling of compassion arises within our hearts to be offered on the outward breath. We send outward our goodwill to others. Breathing in suffering, breathing out compassion. Our intention is that all people everywhere be safe from harm, live in harmony with each other, and may all people everywhere have peace in their lives. Wars, famines, and refugees, people, families, and communities who are suffering hardship. May they feel safe, may they have peace, may they live in harmony with each other. May they be loved and loved. May we take care of our beautiful planet and protect our beautiful forests and trees, oceans and mountains - compassionate ecology. You are already active in helping through your vocations.

Lección 7: PERMA model of Wellbeing

Dr. Seligman the grandfather of positive psychology, and he researched people who were thriving in their lives no matter what hardships they may face. He studied optimal wellbeing and for our session today I will run through his famous acronym guide for wellbeing. PERMA. Positivity, Engagement (flow), Relationships, Meaning, Acknowledgment. Check in with how you are functioning in each of these domains of well-being. Please bring your journal to take notes and answer the questions raised throughout this session.

Lección 8: Compassionate Ecology: Wisdom of Interconnectedness and Interdependency

Interdependence is a fundamental law of nature. Not only higher forms of life but also many of the smallest insects are social beings, who without any religion, law, or education, survive by mutual cooperation based on an innate recognition of their interconnectedness. All phenomena, from the planet we inhabit to the oceans, clouds, forests, and flowers that surround us, arise in dependence upon subtle patterns of energy. As you progress along the path of insight into selflessness then happiness and love and compassion increase.

"When people love each other, the distinction, the limits, the frontier between them begins to dissolve and they become one with the person they love. There is no longer any jealousy or anger. There are many waves on the ocean, each wave has its own height, and breadth and moves in its own particular way but just as the wave is not separate from the ocean, Supreme compassion is not separate from our essential nature.

Who is being compassionate to whom? At a deeper level compassion which includes the concept of "others" is not the highest form of compassion. So as your compassion for those you work with and the awareness of the suffering of humanity grows, there is no sense of you, me, them, or others. Compassionate ecology is the wisdom to recognise the interconnectedness of all beings that we work with and to have moments of complete oneness. Sometimes these arise when we look into someone else's eyes or those quiet times in nature.

Reviews

Artistry and Wellbeing for Work and for Life! Great course! Thank you so much!

A very empowering profound and spiritual course. I have studied the Buddhist teaching about tonglen, metta, joyful appreciation. In this course the exercises and affirmations really brought the teaching to life and I have gained a great deal of inner well being bringing these in to my daily practice