Mountain Burnout Retreat…

Re-Membering the Healer’s Spirit

Originally designed for nurses with burnout, the retreat is open and adaptable to anyone. It is great fit for artists, writers, and creative persons wanting to delve deeper, and more abstractly, into the source of our creativity. The retreat has its basic “bones” for the presentation, but also follows an organic path that shows up with each group. A wonderful handout is given which includes many resources for further investigation.

Retreats are scheduled per individual request. Minimum of four persons is encouraged, but retreats can be scheduled even for one person.

To schedule a retreat, call 559.561.4671 or email elsahc@dishmail.net
Offering 24 hours CE’s for CA nurses, many other states also accept California CE’s
California Nursing Board Provider #13161

3 day retreat: registration fee is $595 (for 1-3 persons), $495 (for 4 or more persons)
(includes cost of books used for inspirational reading assignments)
Deposit of $300 required at time of registration, the rest is due the first day of retreat.  Cancellation must be made 2 weeks in advance for refund of deposit, minus $100 fee.  MasterCard, VISA, Discover and personal checks accepted.

The retreat size is limited to eight persons to foster a smaller group experience. 
The retreat starts on day one in the morning and ends on day three in the evening. 
It is advised that only persons who are enrolled in the workshop accompany you for the retreat.
 For lodging located nearby in Three Rivers, visit  threeriversvillage.com. You can also stay at my bed and breakfast cottage next door, see cortcottage.com for details.

[Lake Kaweah at the entrance to Three Rivers, California, photo © Elsah Cort]

About the Retreat

The retreat is organized around six passages, with one and six occurring before and after the retreat. Each passage involves individual reading assignments, some creative projects including mandala making as a contemplative exercise, gathering together for group sharing, and a directed meditative walk among the Giant Sequoia trees at Crescent Meadow in Giant Forest in Sequoia National Park (if snow has closed the road to the meadow, an alternate site with a shorter walk will be chosen, along with time spent in nature at lower elevations.)

Retreat Objectives

1. To present the participant with an opportunity to engage “job burnout” as a creative process, one that is dynamic, organic and inherently healthy.

2. To provide foundational information about origins and stages of burnout, both from the individual’s perspective and within a broader nursing professional perspective.

3. To allow for a retreat setting to encourage the participant to read, journal, and discuss a diverse range of ideas, approaches and bases of knowledge about many aspects of healing.To offer practical ways to experience burnout transformation.

4. To offer practical ways to experience burnout transformation.

5. To support the person in this experiential exploration in ways that are compatible within a holistic healing philosophy.

6. To nurture what happens without judgment, preconceived ideas or pressure. To allow for a natural enfoldment of the person’s own process, one that intertwines within the person’s professional practice.

7. To serve and support the person’s re-membering of spirit, enhancing the dignity of the human spirit and bringing healing and authenticity to the world.

[Crescent Meadow in Sequoia National Park, photo © Elsah Cort]

 

Follow your heart…

Loved this TED talk that showed up as a gift today…
just after I posted the 2011 schedule for The Deeper Well workshops.

Now I need to go do my laundry, including washing the sheets…

Here is Neil Pasricha’s awesome blog.

Return to Wholeness: walk a mile in my shoes

I often read posts in an online nurse community called allnurses.com and today, one particular question by a frustrated nurse really struck me. “Should ‘we’ pay for the cost of non-compliant obese patients?”

Here is the full post this nurse wrote for this question, opening up over eight pages of response from other nurses in a very important discussion.

This is a controversial subject that I bring up but … should we – the tax paying public– have to pay for the cost of non-compliant obese patients and all their problems (htn, chf, dm, metabolic syndrome, depression)? Recently we had a 40 something female patient in with a celluliitis and she was totally non compliant with her care, meds and diet. Her ‘boyfriend’ was seen several times bringing large quantities of fast food from the outside. And this gal was younger then me and already chronically ill, and weighed well over 450 lbs. Now I’m not a skinny mini, but you can’t tell me the extra 300 pounds was from hormone problems.

Geeze what the heck is the matter with people????

Yet she expected to be waited on hand and foot and was one of the most obnoxious patients I’ve ever cared for in all my years of nursing.

So why is it she qualifies for all sort of aide – and free insurance — when she has chosen a life of sloth and gluttony?

So my question to you reader is should we pay? Would she have become this aberrancy if we (society) hadn’t supported it in the form of welfare and social security disability? And should we withdrawl her benefits if she remains non-compliant?

My response:

I have just read every response to this very important thread. “Walk a mile in my shoes.” We truly have no idea what has led any person to make the choices they have. It is not our job to judge them. So what would be the best care plan for this “obese” (or insert whatever other so-called non-compliant condition here) patient? Are you a nurse who knows how, and is willing, to listen and communicate with her spirit? Who could access what is at the core of her pain? Because, yes, this patient is in pain of some kind. She cannot just will the weight off of her body. Her body now “needs” the sugar, food fix. Where is the nurse who will assist her in this? Who will nurse her pain (now described as a vital sign, remember) and support her as she changes deeply ingrained patterns, which have invaded her life for whatever reason. Where is the healthcare infrastructure and insurance payment for this kind of follow-up?

Non-compliance is a serious issue in healthcare, but not because of so-called non-compliant patients. It is because of the judgment handed down by caregivers. If someone feels uncomfortable to take a lot of pills, and their gut instinct says it is not for them, then they are judged non-compliant. Who determines what the best healthcare course is? The for-profit drug companies?

Health is about wholeness, not following orders. Nurses have a huge opportunity to support this return to wholeness, which has to come small step by small step.

Perhaps the frustration of the nurse, who asked this important question, is also related to a feeling of helplessness, not really being able to help someone who “appears” not willing or able to help themselves? Being able to be neutral is the key. Judgment can energetically land on someone, even contributing to a need for more adipose padding to deflect that energy hit. Obesity, is more than eating food. And the fact that so many people in this country are over weight, is bigger than just the number of calories in and calories burned.

“I am not a mechanism, an assemblage of various sections.
And it is not because the mechanism is working wrongly, that I am ill.
I am ill because of wounds to the soul, to the deep emotional self
and the wounds to the soul take a long, long time, only time can help
and patience, and a certain difficult repentance,
long, difficult repentance, realization of life’s mistake, and the freeing oneself
from the endless repetition of the mistake
which mankind at large has chosen to sanctify.” D.H. Lawrence

Many aspects of life brought both this patient and this nurse together at this exact time….with an opportunity, a mirror (because we are all mirrors for each other) to help each other face issues in their lives. Sometimes the smallest of gestures, words, compassionate recognition of spirit, can change everything…everything.

Being a nurse is a difficult choice and a serious responsibility. Respond in the best way you can to light the way for patients in your care to find and return to wholeness. Redefine healthcare as you do this. It has become a profit-oriented business and not the care-giving, heart work that it could be. Do the best that you can in this difficult work that you have chosen to do. Heal both nurses and other people, who are called patients, as you step up to the plate.

The Gratitude Gig

How do you do this gratitude thing? Is there a five or nine step guide to follow? People seem to like numbered steps these days. We are encouraged to write lists of what we are grateful for, just in case we don’t remember them all. Making the list is supposed to elevate the object of gratitude, make it special and honored.

Gratitude is about eating some humble pie, but not the pie that denigrates or belittles the grateful one. Humble pie reminds you that you are a daily novice in this earth life experiment. Swallowing it with reverence and fearlessness will feed you exactly what you need. Be grateful when you see it on your table.

The motion of gratitude is propelled simply with love.

“Wu Wei” digital mandala (made from one original photograph) © Elsah Cort

The Hidden Cost in Health Care of Nursing Burnout

There never has been a time in my forty-one years as a registered nurse that I was not exposed to some aspects of nursing burnout, either noticing and being affected by it in my nurse colleagues or in myself from time to time. Burnout was not even a concept back in those early days. We had no defining term that described our frustration, fatigue and, often, sheer exhaustion at just doing our daily job. We have been called professionals, with standards we have to exemplify to present a professional image. Yet, most of the time we have been relegated to just getting the job done. And this job has always been a somewhat dirty and difficult one of caring for persons in deep need, complicated crises and overwhelmingly frightening dis-ease situations. A burned out nurse can unintentionally be a big liability in the delivery of optimal health care.

Today the concept of “burnout” itself is trying to undergo a makeover, with new terms coming out for it. People are hesitant to use the word burnout at all. This is especially true for the nurse who is burned out, whether in small, subtle ways of job dissatisfaction or more severely as nurses who would quit the profession all together (if they did not have to meet life’s necessary financial obligations.)

The potential for healing nursing burnout is really within the burned out nurse her/himself. This is a challenging notion, I realize. If you are that burned out nurse, how could you possibly accept that you are the one who can transform it? It already takes all your energy reserves to just show up for work!

There are two kinds of burned out nurses. Both are exhausted and at their wit’s end in their work. One talks about the burnout, often in the form of bitching (don’t you just hate this word?) and lashing out at fellow workers and family or friends. The other one is the burned out nurse who has reached a kind of despairing complacency, but still longs for a solution, a better something.

I have been both, and in recent years found myself immersed in a kind of deep grief that I could no longer stay on the job as a nurse. This decision has taken a personal financial toll, but I still feel that I did the right thing to step aside and get a different perspective. Out of this came the birth of a nursing burnout retreat called “Re-Membering the Healer’s Spirit.” When I teach this retreat I wake up happy and joyful about going to work that day. How many times do nurses really wake up happy and excited about going to work?

The burnout retreat has revealed another aspect to nursing burnout that I had not realized. It seems that the nurses who could benefit the most from the retreat are not able to let themselves do it. Part of it is the huge energy depletion in the burned out nurse, that barely allows them to get done what is already on their list. And with family obligations, the household chores and the daily list of things needed to be done, there leaves very little time for getting away or going on “retreat.” Yet, this can be the most potent time to drop everything, and take a very deep breath!

Underpinning all this, is the level of self-worth that is often diminished in the burned out nurse. We are taught as nurses that we have to be exceptional at our work, be strong and able to multi-task where lives are depending on it. If we aren’t measuring up, as our symptoms of burnout are telling us, then we see ourselves as nurse failures. This devaluing of ourselves is the most profound aspect of nursing burnout, that somehow we just aren’t good enough. The cycle deepens here…if we aren’t a good nurse then we can’t do a good job, and if we are exhausted, drained and on the edge, how can we be a good nurse?

There is a sadness coming over me as I write these words, because I know at this very moment in time, there are nurses out there thinking and feeling this way right now. And there are persons (we call them patients) who are in dire need of a nurse who is present, competent, caring and energized to help them.

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An open invitation is sent out to anyone (not just nurses) to gift yourself with a retreat from The Deeper Well.

There are two dates set this fall, one in October and one in November, and both have open slots. You can schedule a retreat for a different timing, if you have three other persons who also want to come. The retreat does offer 24 hours of Continuing Education for California or Nevada nurses. The retreat does offer 24 hours of Continuing Education for California or Nevada nurses.

Read more about them at “burnout retreat” link in the above menu, but know that the fluid, organic nature of the retreat is not so easy to put in words.

Rocking the boat within Nursing Burnout

Reading an article about nursing burnout this morning in the online nurse’s forum at allnurses.com prompted me to post this reply:

“Don’t rock the boat…is a common thread for many nurses and nursing work environments. Management says they want to have input to make the nursing environment better (what they really want is more productivity for less paid hours on the clock.) And nurses don’t want other fellow nurses stirring up the dust too much by sharing their frustrations. Just get through the day, do your job (perfectly) and don’t tell me about what you think needs to be fixed or changed.

I have been researching burnout for years, both from an experiential perspective (40 years as a nurse) and from a holistic “healing” perspective. To realize the complicity between both nurses and the job situations themselves, is a multi-faceted discussion. How do you talk about burnout with anyone–other nurses, family or friends–without it becoming just a gripe session or getting suggestions like this article’s title says to “just relax”?

There is a fundamental core issue that relates to nursing burnout and to our so-called health care crises….that is that we are not becoming healthier or “getting well.” We need to send ourselves, as nurses, an authentic Get Well card. We can change the nursing profession. And I know for sure that there are nurses who realize this, envision this and long for it to happen.

This author is one of these nurses. She offers her insights and tells us that we can change our mindset about how we approach our difficult and sorely needed jobs as nurses. She has discovered a process for transforming nursing burnout, born out her own personal experiences as a nurse who cares.

I have looked at her offerings and found that we share common views on how to help nurses with burnout. It gives me hope to find such a kindred spirit. And I know there are many more of us out there, and I hope some of you will post your perspectives here. Burnout is becoming a cliche, and we are supposed to couch it in different words like compassion fatigue, almost in a kind of denial that it is still happening. Nurses are not supposed to burn out, they have been trained to be professionals who get the job done. And now, with the economic times so unnerving for many people, nurses are feeling even more stuck in jobs that they fear they cannot leave or “rock the boat” in any way.

If you are a burned out nurse reading this, or know of one, or wonder if you will become one…..I invite you to explore it with me in a mountain retreat in California. You can see the details at thedeeperwell.wordpress.com and yes, this could seem like an advertisement, but it truly is a helping, caring hand reaching out. (The retreat does offer 24 CE’s for California and Nevada nurses.) It is a documented fact that burned out, stressed out and overwhelmed nurses contribute to a less than helpful, and sometimes out right dangerous, health care environment for patients. Nursing burnout affects us all, whether we are immersed in it or not.

We need to welcome all the voices talking about it.”

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Read more about burnout from Lori Daniell, author of the article, at her Nurse Your Spirit website.

A New Wave

The burned out nurse is the pioneer portal for a new wave…washing over the shore of nursing. The burned out nurse finds her(him)self floundering like a lost fish on the sand, thrown up on the beach by weariness and tempest, not knowing it’s only low tide. Surrendering to the now, as it is, and stilling, opens to a deeper, slower, ancient tide. Then the real work begins.

“In your heart is a mysterious portal that interconnects the infinite ocean of Love to the oceanic consciousness in your body. Ground substance, as the inner ocean of the body, is a liquid connective tissue inside and outside every cell that unites the awareness of 50 trillion cells as one consciousness. So body as microcosm reflects macrocosm: our individual consciousness is an expression of the whole. Paradoxically, by descending inward to heart we contact the outer shimmering, pulsing oceanic heart of mother earth. And since the heart of the Mother is one with the infinite heart, we directly realize ourselves as Love – all that is – expressed as body.”

from Charles Ridley, author of
Stillness: Biodynamic Cranial Practice and the Evolution of Consciousness
a free download called “Relax into Your Natural State”
from his biodynamic craniosacral school