The New York Open Center, Art of Dying 3 Conference, NY, NY March 24-27, 2000
Conference Program
See a review of the conference here

Friday, March 24
Plenary Addresses

Ira Byock, MD Dying Well: Reclaiming the End of Life
As we move away from cultural denial of dying and death we can catch inspiring and convincing glimpses of light as we consider new models anc projects in hospice and palliative care.

Robert Dunlop, MD Spiritual Care of the Dying
How does a hospice doctor come to understand the personhood of the dying individual?

Saturday, March 25th

Timothy Quill, MD Death with Dignity
Dr. Quill advocates that incurable patients, at the point when life has lost meaning for them, must be allowed to be active participants in the process of facing death.

Deepak Chopra, MD Embracing the Eternal
It is especially helpful for those who work with death and dying to feel a connection to an infinite, eternal dimension of existence, both for their own equilibrium and for the tranquillity this awareness can communicate to patients.

Ram Dass
Varanasi West— Environments to Die In
In India people aspire to die not in a hospital but in Varanasi, the "City of Death", a setting which focuses them on the spiritual dimensions the experience. How do we create more appropriate environments to die in the West?
:

Therese Schroeder-Sheker I Die Awake: The Luminous Wound
With voice and harp, image and word, Therese Schroeder-Sheker will speak about the possibilities of a blessed death, the palliative medical field of music thanatology, and the work of the Chalice of Repose Project

Workshops

Deepak Chopra, MD
Death, Dying & Transcendental Experience
By understanding the reality of transcendental experience, we can look at space-time events of birth and death in the context of eternity and learn to overcome the fear of death. This experiential workshop will examine the meaning of death through the eyes of Vedic rishis and will draw upon insights from the Katha Upanishads and Buddhist teachings. We will explore higher realms of consciousness and the nature of subtle and causal bodies as we explore the role of karma and how it influences various lifetimes

Kyabje Geiek Rinpoche
Tibetan Buddhism's Understanding of the Death Transition
Death is a part of the continuum of life, and something which we all experience; but often our unconscious fear of death can cause us to shy away from uncomfortable thoughts of our own mortality and from loved ones who need our support. In this workshop, Kyabje Geiek Rinpoche, will draw upon Tibetan Buddhism's deep and technical understanding of the death transition to introduce us to a repertoire of strategies to help us face and even utilize the death process, while increasing our ability to sustain and value our lives.

Richard W. Boerstler, PhD & Hulen Kornfeld, RN, MA
Harmonizing the Transition: Co-meditation for the Ill, the Dying, & Their Caregivers
Co-meditation is an ancient yet timeless holistic technique for giving comfort and clarity to the dying, based on a practice used byTibetan monks, adapted for today's needs. Through simple connections between the recipient's breathing and hearing, the assistant provides a caring, nurturing presence. Adapted for the individual recipient's situation and beliefs, comeditation can be used by anyone wishing to assist, regardless of whether or not either person has meditation experience.
 

Alexandra Kennedy, MA
Losing A Parent
Most people will have to deal with the loss of a parent. Few are prepared to. However, the loss. if grieved fully, can generate profound healing am unprecedented change. This workshop explores the psychological impac of this major life passage and offers participants methods for grieving without feeling overwhelmed, for resolving unfinished business with a parent, and for working with disruptive changes in the family. Note: The workshop is designed for those dealing with the death of a parent and for mental health professionals, lay counselors and hospice workers seeking new perspectives and tools in working with clients.

Gerald F. Karnow, MD
The Dying Journey in an Anthroposophical Community
In this workshop. Dr. Karnow will share with us his experiences working with the dying elderly at Fellowship Community, an intergenerational facility that has spent 30 years providing long-term care for the aged, using Anthroposophy as its spiritual basis. Dr. Karnow will examine how the Community deals with important areas of the dying process: the social context, the moment of passing over, the family and children, the physician, soul/spiritual care and bodily care, the period after death of celebration before cremation or burial, and the ceremony with the ashes.
 

Russell Mdntyre,ThD
Ethical & Legal Issues in Death & Dying
   This workshop will explore many of the ethical and legal issues surrounding the topic of death and dying in contemporary America. Topics to be included: euthanasia, medically assisted dying/suicide;  refusal of life-prolonging medical treatment; the "LivingWill", in "No-code orders"; and care of the dying in hospices. Participants will be encouraged to enter into dialogue and share lessons from personal experience.

Paul Brenner, MA
Responding to the Diverse Experience of Dying
 Many of the assumptions and much of the conceptual  formulation we have about care and grieving for the dying  has come through the dominant American culture in which  we live. This workshop will examine these assumptions, their strengths and weaknesses, and explore the rich diversityof the human experience of dying, loss and grief, especially as this applies to the provision of care.

Leslie Blackhall, MD Palliative Medicine:
Improving End-of-Life Care
Physicians, nurses and other healthcare professionals are often poorly prepared by their training to care for dying patients, and yet most of them will have to spend much time in the care of such patients. If we wish to improve end-of-life care we must expand and improve education in the medical, ethical and spiritual aspects of palliative medicine. What should we be teaching? What are the goals of palliative care education? This interactive workshop, geared to those involved in palliative care education and those wishing to develop programs at their institutions, will explore these questions and more.

Kenneth Kramer, PhD
Dying Before Dying: Eastern Traditions
This workshop focuses on spiritual approaches to dying in Eastern Religious Traditions. We will examine comparative religious perspectives on death and afterlife in sacred texts and as embodied by Hindu, Zen, and Taoist masters. Workshop participants will be invited to develop personal strategies to enter dialogically into the living-dying process.

Therese Schroeder-Sheker
Contemplative Musicianship & the Care of the Dying
Combining data, experience, and inspiration from 26 years of clinical work, this session will center on the spirituality of palliative medical clinical work. This focus will be five-fold: the interior work of conscious death preparation for care givers and those living with life-threatening illnesses, an introduction to the work of music-thanatology, the principles of prescriptive music, the Western Christian practice of monastic medicine, and the notion of contemplative musicianship.Therese will work with voice and harp throughout the session.

Maggie Callanan, RN, CRNH
Addressing Boundary Issues in Hospice Care
Hospice staff can often be of great help to the families they serve because they are not directly emotionally involved in the situations they face. But sometimes they unconsciously try to meet their own needs to be needed, liked and affirmed and this can lead to violations of appropriate boundaries, harmful to all involved. No matter how long one works in the hospice environment, such issues will arise. It is impossible not to be drawn to some families and patients. Join Maggie Callanan, a hospice nurse since 1980 and Hospice Clinician of the Year in 1995, to explore how to maintain healthy boundaries in your professional life and how to address boundary issues in the hospice setting.

Anne McCracken & Mary Semel
A Broken Heart Still Beats: Losing a Child
These days parents do not expect to outlive their children. When they do, it is not comforting to be nudged towards "closure," as if their grief is something to be "gotten over." The workshop leaders, both mothers who have themselves lost children, discovered that comfort does seem to come from recognizing that many others before us have felt this very pain, struggled with the same questions, and given up the lives they too had anticipated. Excerpts from the work of some of these bereaved parents — including Mark Twain, Isabel Allende, Rabindranath Tagore, and Robert Frost — will be read to prompt discussion on such issues as spouses grieving the same loss differently, survivor's guilt, and the legacy of loss.
 

Mark Nepo
The Expressive Journey of Healing: Staying Real & Staying Well
Mark Nepo is a poet and cancer survivor, who has come to understand that the qualities of honesty, compassion, and expression required to face death and to survive illness are the very same qualities required in order to live our ordinary days, and that the act of expression, both written and verbal, can help us stay alive and be the life-blood of our mental, emotional, and spiritual health. In this
workshop, we will focus together on the extraordinary healing power ' writing and authentic self-expression can bring to bear on our inner and outer lives, and on the steps we can take to unleash our creativity. Please bring a journal.
 
Janice Harris Lord, MSSW
No Time for Goodbyes: Coping with Sorrow, Anger & Injustice After a Tragic Loss
Janice Harris Lord, who has worked in the victims' rights movement since 1976, served as National Director of Victim Services for Mothers Against Drunk Driving for 15 years and was awarded the US Presidential Award for Excellence in Victim Services. In this workshop she will describe her approach to counseling trauma survivors who have lost loved ones. She will show how traditional grief counseling can be harmful to those with post-traumatic stress, discuss the spiritual issues that confront survivors and present several examples of effective group therapeutic models, including a homicide survivors support group.

Robert Dunlop, MD
The Nature of Suffering
Robert Dunlop is an experienced hospice doctor who will examine the nature of the intense physical, emotional and spiritual suffering of many dying patients and the optimal stance of the caregiver. If we can avoid a style of caring that makes patients feel dependent, we have a better chance of helping them find a sense of intrinsic worth, of "control" over their own dying process, and of meaning.

Alexandra Kennedy, MA
After Loss
When a loved one dies, many people are filled with regret for all that wasn't said or expressed, but death need not cut us off from those we love. Through discussion, and experiential exercises and stories, this workshop will demonstrate how a relationship with a deceased loved one continues to unfold within, offering mostly untapped opportunities for healing, resolution and even guidance. This workshop will present a method of communication that utilizes the imagination to resolve old hurts and resentments, express love and feel more at peace with deceased loved ones. This workshop will also be helpful for those who are experiencing a breakdown in communication with a living family member or friend.

Leslie Blackhall, MD
Cultural Diversity & the "Good Death"
What is a "good death"? As those of us working in the fields of hospice and palliative medicine work with increasingly diverse patient populations, we encounter people whose answer to this question may be very different from our own. Such people need to be listened to carefully. In this workshop, participants will hear what people from different ethnic backgrounds have to say about care at the end of life and learn something of their values, beliefs and stories. In this way, we will examine the challenges and opportunities that cultural diversity brings to our practices.
 

Kenneth Kramer, PhD Dying Before Dying
Western Religious Traditions
This workshop focuses on spiritual approaches and religious perspectives on death and afterlife in sacred texts and as embodied by Hasidic, Monastic, and Sufi mystics.

Saturday Evening 8pm

Alice Walker
This evening we are honored to present Pulitzer Prize winning author Alice Walker, f, one of America's greatest living writers, as she discusses her exploration of indigenous and ancient cultures' attitudes toward death, dying and the afteflife,and reads from her latest novel,
By the Light of My Father's Smile.

Sunday, March 26 Plenary Addresses

Fred Epstein, MD
The Gift of Time: Lessons from Dying Children
Dr. Epstein shares lessons learned from dying children who, by giving all they can to live life to the fullest against all odds, teach us how to treasure life.
 

John O'Donohue, PhD
Death: The Horizon in the Well
Until we engage with the mystery of our death, we renege on life. Death is the secret companion that accompanies every life. Right beside you now is the shadow of your death. To creatively transfigure your own death is to heal the root of fear and come into a new rhythm of living everything.

John O'Donohue, PhD
The Privilege of Being Present at the Death of Another
Death is the most amazing event in a person's life. It is a time when you desperately need the company of friends. When a friend knows how to be creatively present at a death, it is an incredible gift to the one who is leaving. In post-modern culture too many people die alone. We need to rediscover the sacredness of the act of dying— at this threshold so many worlds meet. It is a huge privilege to be there. It alters the way you feel your life afterwards. It could be the best thing you ever do for someone. In this workshop, we will explore different ways of being present there and sketch an ideal style of being present based on the needs of the departing one.

Roshi Joan Halifax, PhD
Being with Dying Contemplations on Death & Dying
In this workshop we will learn a series of practices drawn from the Buddhist tradition that have been adapted to Western culture and are accessible to people of differing cultural and religious backgrounds. We will seek to explore the meaning of death in the experience of our own lives and to develop an approach to death that is kind, open and dignified. In being with dying, it is possible that we can see death and know life in terms of compassion and awakening. In gently caring for the dying, we can more peacefully and wisely care for the living and for life itself. This workshop is for caregivers, people with life-threatening illness and all those wishing to learn about being with dying.

Sirncha Paull Raphael, PhD
The Afterlife Journey of the Soul in Jewish Mysticism: Implications for Hospice & Bereavement Work
Does Judaism believe in life after death? Unequivocally, the answer is yes! Unfortunately, in the modern world both Jews and non-Jews are alltoo-often unaware of traditional Jewish wisdom on the afterlife journey of the soul. This workshop with Sirncha Raphael, psychotherapist, death awareness educator and author of Jewish Views of the Afterlife .investigates Judaism's teachings on life after death, particularly within the mystical traditions of Kabbalah and Hasidism. By synthesizing the ancient wisdom of Jewish mysticism with contemporary transpersonal psychology we shall present practical guidelines for counseling the dying and bereaved, and their families.                                 2

Norman Davidson
Rudolf Steiner's Modem Investigations into the Death Experience
Austrian philosopher, educator, and spiritual teacher Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) made a distinction between speculation and direct experience in relation to the phenomenon of death. In this workshop, we will examine both Steiner's spiritual and scientific insights on death. Particular attention will be paid to the soul's unveiled confrontation with the inner aspects of the life just lived, its impulse to balance that life with another to follow, and the intermediate journey through the planetary spheres between death and rebirth.

Ira Byock, MD
Beyond Symptom Management: Human Development at the End of Life
How do we move beyond the mere treatment of symptoms at the end of life to a real awareness of the nature of human pain and suffering? Dr. Byock will describe success stories from his work that offer us windows into the potential for much improved end-of-life experiences. He will suggest a model that encompasses opportunity within terminal illness and the positive experience of certain patients. He will also consider the landmarks for family development at times of dying and death.
 

Richard Boerstler, PhD & Hulen Kornfeld, RN, MA
Harmonizing the Transition: Co-meditation for the III, the Dying, & Their Caregivers.
Co-meditation is an ancient yet timeless holistic technique for giving comfort and clarity to the dying, based on a practice used by Tibetan monks, adapted for today's needs. Through simple connections between the recipient's breathing and hearing, the assistant provides a caring, nurturing presence. Adapted for the individual recipient's situation and beliefs, co-meditation can be used by anyone wishing to assist, regardless of whether or not either person has meditation experience.
 

Peter Selwyn, MD, MPH
Surviving the Fall: Lessons from the AIDS Epidemic
The AIDS epidemic in the United States has undergone a profound transformation in a few short years in which a uniformly and rapidly fatal illness has in some ways been changed into a chronic disease. However, the benefits of new therapies are not universal, nor permanent, and there are many people living with HIV who may not be able to access or tolerate the new treatments. As a result, the issues of end-oflife and palliative care for HIV/AIDS have become increasingly complex and challenging. In this workshop, Dr. Seiwyn will lead case-based discussions interspersed with readings from his book on the personal journey of an AIDS doctor.

Janice Harris Lord, MSSW
The Complexities of Suicide  How to Respond
Suicide shares some similarities with other forms of sudden, violent death. A significantly painful aspect, however, is that it was the victim's choice. To surviving family and friends, this realization leads to the question, "What did I do or not do that caused this person to feel that life was so unbearable that suicide was seen as the only way out?" Furthermore, suicide is frequently associated with other self-harming behaviors such as substance abuse, sexual impulsiveness, self-mutilatiol and eating disorders. This workshop will address the uniqueness of suicide, how to assist survivors, and how to screen for depression and suicidality among survivors.

Robert Thurman, PhD
Conquering Fear Through Natural Liberation
More than any other tradition, Tibetan Buddhism has devoted enormous attention to the spiritual journey of the dying process. Robert Thurman will draw from the Tibetan Book of the Dead\.o discuss what our own culture can adapt from the Tibetan approach to dying.

Panel on Palliative Care with Peter Seiwyn, MD, Paul Brenner, MA, Maggie Callanan,RN,CRNH
What are the key issues facing those working in palliative care today? How can we bring about a harmonious interface of hospital and hospice? These three leading professionals in this field will address these questions and dialogue with the group about the critical changes taking place in this world.

Closing Panel 4-5:15pm

The Future of Death & Dying
We live at a time of enormous transition in attitudes to death and in the practice of care for the dying. Where is this leading in the new century? How do we train the next generation of caregivers? Robert Thurman, PhD, moderator Dr. Robert Dunlop Dr. Ira Byock Dr. Leslie Blackhall Roshi Joan Halifax, PhD Therese Schroeder-Sheker
 

Monday, March 27 Post-Conference Institutes

10-5pm

Robert Thurman, PhD & Marianne Williamson
Methods for Living & Dying
In this unique session, Robert Thurman and Marianne Williamson will compare howTibetan Buddhism and the Course in Miracles approach dying. Both the Buddha and the Jesus of the "course" help us to learn to live in a loving and compassionate way. Join us for a presentation and dialogue as we examine the ways in which these methods might work best for practitioners and how they might reinforce each other.
 

Roshi Joan Halifax, PhD
Being with Dying Contemplative Care of Dying People
We are currently facing profoundly challenging questions about the efficacy of our healthcare system and, most particularly, the care of the dying. Death in America still exemplifies a firm denial of the transient nature of life and an aversion to and often morbid fear of pain and decay, and the conviction that death always involves suffering. Exploring how we can help make the experience of dying be more gentle, peaceful, and conscious can have far-reaching consequences on how we live and our fundamental values and world view. This workshop will explore the three interconnected aspects of contemplative care of the dying: contemplative view and practice, community development, and self care. There will be experiential exercises and meditation practices throughout the day.