Navigating Chronic Conditions:
Companioning Ourselves and Others as Spiritual Practice
SDCO Webinar Video Series
We are pleased to offer this important webinar in a series of 4 videos. For full content please read below.
If we live long enough, each of us will navigate a chronic condition. This condition might be physical, but it could also be emotional, mental, or even spiritual; and it may be our own or that of someone we love. Far from being an interruption in our spiritual work, as it can initially seem, such a condition can actually provide a potent portal through which our spiritual path can grow in new and surprising ways. This webinar series offers the opportunity to approach such conditions as part of our spiritual path. It combines work directed toward exploring our own chronic conditions with guidance for supporting others as they journey through their own terrain of chronic health and wellness situations.
In a culture that presents a narrow and fixed view of health, the chronically ill face multiple barriers that are often invisible and inexplicable. Can one share the transformative spiritual journey with someone who is chronically ill? We believe that the gifts offered through such companioning have the opportunity to change not only the individuals involved but also their communities and even our collective culture.
This dynamic webinar series is led by four dedicated spiritual companions, each of whom supports folks experiencing chronic conditions. They will share their perspectives, their stories, and their enthusiasm as they guide participants to expand their spiritual path to include any of the chronic conditions they may experience in their life and in their work.
Participants in this webinar series will:
Encounter a variety of viewpoints about health, wellness, and illness.
Expand their understanding of the personal experience of chronic illness.
Learn practices to integrate illness into the spiritual path and the spiritual path into illness.
Explore their beliefs and assumptions about chronic conditions.
Receive tools to question their culturally-learned assumptions and beliefs about wellness.
Be introduced to body-based practices that can enable them to more mindfully support themselves and others.
Learn more about companioning and its foundations.
Discover ways to frame how to encounter the other and what it means to encounter the other.
Understand how to stay grounded in self as we encounter the other.
Gain greater confidence and additional tools for companioning oneself and/or others with chronic illness.
This four-part webinar series includes:
Four 90 minutes gatherings, which include both presentation of rich content and time for dynamic discussion. Participants will receive links to recordings of each of the webinars, so they can watch as their schedule permits and view multiple times.
A pdf workbook to use for taking notes, journaling, participating in exercises, and exploring further resources.
Weekly Topics
Week 1
Robin Pfaff, The Transforming Power of Chronic Illness
Together we will explore how to live your BEST life (Body, Emotions, Social Support, transcendence) while managing chronic illness. We will highlight strategies for strengthening our well-being physically, emotionally and socially, then we will take a deeper dive into utilizing the power of our transcendent or spiritual life as healing tools. Finally we will consider chronic illness as a shift, an agent of change, a potential passage of transformation in which reflection can take the reality of chronic illness in all its many manifestations and turn it into something enlivening, something meaningful, something that bestows wisdom and expands our vision of ourselves.
Participants will learn that: chronic illness is common, chronic illness does not have to define the individual, a wholistic approach to managing chronic illness is vital, chronic illness can be transformative, chronic illness can be an agent of change, chronic illness can be a meaningful way of diving deep into the Divine and expanding our vision of ourselves and others.
Dr. Robin Pfaff is in the business of helping women live their best lives and reach their full potential. After 25 years as a psychotherapist and educator she recently retooled as a National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach specializing in helping women 50+ with fibromyalgia feel better as they manage their chronic illness. Robin, who also has fibromyalgia, offers Fibromyalgia Wellness Coaching as a unique treatment option that addresses not only the physical issues, but also the emotional and spiritual and social aspects of coping with chronic illness. She has a special expertise in helping women recover from the trauma that is often a factor in developing chronic illness and move through post traumatic stress into post traumatic growth. You can find more information about her work at DrRobinPfaff.com. Robin, and her husband Ron who is a systems engineer, are the proud parents of a blended family of four awesome adult children, their wonderful spouses and six amazing grandchildren. They love living in the beautiful Denver, Colorado area and on summer weekends can often be found RV camping in the many lovely campgrounds of the southwest.
Week 2
Amy Agape, Contemplative Companioning: Chronic Conditions at the Intersection of Self and Other,
A significant danger of healthcare and wellness support (including spiritual companioning) is a tendency to position some persons as subjects and others as objects. The language we use to describe these roles itself indicates that they are often transactional; they involve someone giving something to someone else, someone caring for another person. Fulfilling such roles in the manner of give-and-take can cause caregiver burnout and resentment as well as feelings of guilt and invisibility on the part of the care-receiver. Such roles can never encompass the fullness that is possible in each human interaction. Furthermore, such approaches to companioning (ourselves or another) concretize and bolster some of the most misguided and harmful attitudes about health and wellness. This webinar introduces an embodied approach to companionship that moves us beyond the realm of transactional, objectifying relationships and into a world where we partner in mutually transformational ways.
We will begin by examining the intersection between our own health and that of others in our world (those we support and/or those who support us). Participates will be guided to investigate any ideas, beliefs, and fears they hold about chronic illness and scrutinize the ways these may impact their ability to navigate their own chronic conditions and those of folks they support. Building on these new insights, we will introduce body-based practices to aid in our exploration as we investigate: the creation of a new health care team, the place of grief and loss throughout chronic illness, and the role of identity in learning to live with a chronic condition.
Amy Agape, PhD, is devoted to contemplative companionship. Her organization, Passings (www.passings.us), provides support for everyone experiencing any of life’s transitions. A rare terminal illness led her to the terrain of actively dying three separate times. Throughout this journey she amassed gifts from diverse wisdom traditions, teachers, texts, and spiritual practices; she passionately offers these resources as a Death Awareness Advocate working to integrate death into our cultural lexicon. Her doctoral dissertation weaves together Thanatology and Theology, comprising groundbreaking work in conscious living and dying. A hospice chaplain and bereavement coordinator, Amy accompanies persons during their final days. Her work as a Spiritual Companion integrates the gifts of dying in support of her clients’ unique spiritual journeys. And as an educator in the fields of End of Life Care, Spiritual Companionship, and Bereavement, she teaches individuals, loved ones, and professionals working in ministry and medicine to become compassionate, contemplative witnesses.
Week 3
Roger Butts,The Face and the Spirituality of Chaplaincy: Exploring the Intersection of Chaplaincy and Spiritual Direction
Facebook. Facetime. Emojis with all kinds of faces. Everywhere we turn, it seems, there is a face. Most of us, though, in real life, miss out on the beauty and complexity and power of the face of the other, because most of us simply miss out on looking. Even if we’re tuned in to the power of the face, there is a deeper theology of the face that speaks to the work of both chaplains and spiritual directors. It is foundational to our work to see the face as the pathway to the transcendent and to help others do so as well.
Drawing on the works of Levinas, Buber, Toni Morrison, and others, Roger Butts lays out a contribution to the theology of the face that helps to guide a spirituality of chaplaincy and provide a framework for the intersection of chaplaincy and spiritual direction. When we encounter a patient or a client we are invited to see the sacred in that person, the divine in that person. It takes us “beyond” our conceptions, beyond our ideas, and into the realm of transcendence.
“The brilliant Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas says the only thing that really converts people is ‘the face of the other.’ He develops this at great length and with great persuasion. When the face of the other (especially the suffering face) is received and empathized with, it leads to transformation of our whole being...” (Richard Rohr, Center for Action and Contemplation)
In addition to exploring the conceptual, this workshop will incorporate experiential components, including the visual arts and guided meditation.
Roger Butts is a Staff Chaplain at Penrose St Francis in Colorado Springs. He is ordained in the Unitarian Universalist tradition. He practices centering prayer and leads two groups: one at the hospital and one at Black Forest Community Church, UCC, where his partner, Marta Fioriti, is the minister. Three teenage children and a black lab, tennis, reading, and music occupy his time. Especially music. And the writings of Thomas Merton. Roger's recent writings have appeared in Testimony and Conversations With the Sacred (Skinner House Books), Quest for Meaning, and at contemplativelight.org He's holding on to his deep hope that in the end humor and grace will save us all.
Week 4
Barbara Creswell, Story-Telling in Palliative and Chronic Care
In a culture which extols fitness and health, the chronically ill can struggle with image. Their journey can be frustrating and lonely. The sense of struggle can seem endless, and their life can seem inconsequential. Eliciting their story, when done with intention, can help take the disparate threads and weave them into a new whole, allowing them to view their journey more holistically. Pilot research has shown that eliciting patient's stories while they are hospitalized improves their perception of care, and decreases stress. A person does not have to be hospitalized to benefit. Story-catching can be learned by anyone. This workshop will provide tools for eliciting patient stories, along with lessons learned along the way. A story-catching ministry can impact the lives of patients, families and their care-givers.
Participants will learn the importance of patient stories, how to honor and elicit the story in others, and tools to assist them with catching another's story.
Barbara Creswell, MMA, is a graduate of the Benet Hill Spiritual Formation program. Drawing upon her experience working in academic health environments and her eclectic spiritual explorations, she developed a story-catching program for palliative care patients at UCH. She is passionate about story as a vehicle to reveal the uniqueness of each person's journey. She has presented workshops on spiritual topics in the USA, England, and Australia.