SUMMARY

Thursdays, January 23 to March 13, 2025 | 6:30 pm to 9:00 pm PST | Full day session Saturday, March 1, 2025 from 9:00 am to 4:30 pm | Online workshop

Cost: Free

Audience: Healthcare providers (MD, NP, midwives) who live and or practice in rural BC.

Overview: Join us for the 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, part of the Mindfulness in Medicine initiative led by Dr. Rahul Gupta. Through practicing mindfulness, you can restore vitality and agency, recognize implicit bias, better handle uncertainty, and improve decision-making skills. Rahul is a physician, Certified MBSR Teacher. He is also a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and employs trauma-sensitive approaches.

Up to 23.5 Mainpro+ credits.

Learn more and register for the MBSR program

SUMMARY

* As this course is funded by the Joint Standing Committee on Rural Issues, we are currently prioritizing registration for rural health care professionals practicing in regulated clinical professions.

This course supports health professionals in rural British Columbia to meet new provincial expectations and standards around providing culturally safe care, including the College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC’s new Practice Standard — Indigenous Cultural Safety, Cultural Humility and Anti-Racism; recommendations expressed in In Plain Sight: Addressing Indigenous-specific Racism and Discrimination in BC Health Care (2020) and  through reports from the Rural Coordination Centre of BC’s Site Visits with Indigenous communities, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Calls to Action for health.

The curriculum recognizes that health professionals and patients work in relationship, and a trauma-sensitive approach can help to build respectful, trusting relationships and connect with one another in a good way. The learning in this curriculum is directed inwards as well as outwards, inviting participants to learn not only about new approaches to practice, but also about themselves by reflecting on their own experiences of trauma and ways to support their own wellness.
This learning activity is based on a widely accepted understanding that trauma-sensitive practices are the basis for offering culturally-safe and respectful health services for Indigenous relatives. It draws on two-eyed seeing models, weaving together Indigenous ways of knowing with western trauma theory and neuroscience. It blends Dr. Michael Yellowbird’s work around neuro decolonization, Dr. Stephen Porges’ contributions around polyvagal trauma theory, and experiential Indigenous land-based healing practices to highlight the power of ceremony for reclaiming and maintaining wellness in body, mind and spirit.

Waziyatawin, Yellow Bird M. For Indigenous Minds Only: A Decolonization Handbook. Santa Fe: School of American Research; 2012.
Porges S. Polyvagal Theory: A Science of Safety. Frontiers in integrative neuroscience. 2022; 16: 871227-871227.

Skills Gained

• Learn tangible trauma-sensitive practices for offering health care rooted in cultural understanding and safety for Indigenous Peoples
• Strengthen appreciation of ancestral land-based healing modalities that have supported trauma release for millennia
• Understand polyvagal theory and its implications for supporting trauma recovery with Indigenous relatives
• Deepen empathy and co-regulatory skills as a way of dismantling racism in the health care system and contributing to collective healing

Prerequisites
Level 1 session is available to currently practicing medical professionals who serve rural BC. Completion of Level 1 is a prerequisite for enrolling in Level 2 of this curriculum.