Mind-Body is about Comprehensive Health Care

The Small Group Program teaches an extensive array of coping skills to guide women and men searching out a healing path through difficult times of stress, such as occurs in chronic medical conditions and life-threatening illnesses, infertility, divorce, grieving loved ones, job loss, injury and pain, and other life trials. Newest medical research has proven that belief systems and social supports directly influence healing of medical illness. Often these illnesses provide us with new perspectives on ourselves, sparking us to find new ways of celebrating life in a heartfelt way. The Small Group Program explores a wide variety of issues to assist with healing. It touches on the topics of meditation and relaxation, nutrition, alternative exercise, stress, humour, spirituality and faith, ritual, end-stages of life, intimate relationships, family trees, visualization, body awareness, pain, biofeedback, alternative medicine, and other themes directly related to the mind-body-spirit connection. 2 ¾-hour workshops are held weekly for the 12-week program.

The Small Group Program is also used for teaching health care professionals mind-body approaches, self-awareness and self-care. By learning these tools themselves, health care providers are better able to understand their patients' needs, and to understand the important influences of perception, emotion, and spiritual belief on physical well-being.