What causes Disease? Most of us in the West consider genetic predisposition, environmental factors, and sometimes look towards our behaviors when it comes to thinking about substances that we put into our bodies from medication to foods and beverages. Mental Health professionals in the West work with emotional responses and habitual behaviors as well as education and skill training about the above factors as a way to decrease and sometimes even to eliminate disease. Eastern and other more traditional cultures tend to focus on all of this, with the addition of strong spiritual understanding and devotion as perhaps the most important method at relieving disease. This four session workshop will explore all of these disease processes and provide you with tools to cope with your disease process.  Dr. Pollyanna V. Casmar, a clinical psychologist and Buddhist practitioner in the Tibetan tradition for 17 years will  instruct and facilitate these meetings. 

Session I:

 will provide information about chronic illnesses from the above perspectives and will focus on how to manage taking proper medicines, nutritional guidelines, plans to improve your habits and thinking and ways to engage a breathing meditation practice with a basic understanding of the nature of suffering from a Buddhist perspective.

 We will also discuss traditional psychological methods for coping with chronic pain  including keeping a pain diary, using pacing of activities and thinking differently about the nature of pain based upon a scientific explanation of the types of pain and their management. The session will close with a brief review of breathing meditation which will be extended with a specific visualization practice designed to minimize pain and a discussion about mindfully living each day.

 Session II:

 will discuss how relationships with others influence our mood and behaviors. The three ways of  communicating with others: moving toward or pleasing others, avoiding or ignoring others and moving against or asserting one’s opinion will be explored for optimal effectiveness in specific situations and each participant will have the opportunity to share which method they usually use in communication with others. We will talk about how relationships continually change and how flexible use of all three strategies helps us to focus on 6 perfections in Buddhism (generosity, patience, ethical behavior, joyful perseverance, concentration and wisdom) and to avoid the rigid application of the three poisonous attitudes (desire/clinging or grasping otherwise known as attachment; distancing/delusion otherwise known as ignorance; and anxiety/aggression/hatred otherwise known as aversion.) We will close the session with a meditation on friends/enemies and strangers to assist us in cultivating equanimity.

 This class will focus on healing oneself with compassionate concern for one’s needs and extending that loving kindness, if possible, to all other beings and to the environment. Living gently will be explored for its effectiveness in bringing relief from disease using evidence from psychological research as well as from group member’s lives. We will review the principles of suffering and its causes, managing pain, breathing and mindfulness meditation, communicating using the 6 perfections and focusing on equalizing ourselves with others. Members will be encouraged to remain in contact with one another if desired, for support in these guiding principles.