The Institute’s training programs enable health professionals to gain career-enhancing skills and knowledge that advance an integrated approach to wellness and healing. By engaging today’s medical faculty, students, scholars, and providers in training and dialogue, the Institute is impacting the future of conventional health care and research.
Upcoming Program:
Educating for Enhanced Self-Awareness and Self-Care: An Experiential Faculty Training in Mind-Body Medicine
July 5-8, 2012
Click image for Application and Details
The purpose of this program is to provide faculty at health professional schools with the necessary training, tools, materials and strategic thinking to enable them to implement mind-body medicine skills groups at their institutions. Specifically, the 3-day training program is an immersion experience that will introduce faculty to a variety of mind-body techniques so that they can experience them for themselves, see first-hand the power of this approach, and gain insight into how to lead mind-body groups for students.
Mind-body approaches—including meditation, guided imagery, biofeedback, and breathing techniques to name a few, are skills that can alleviate stress and foster self-awareness and self-care. The training program will be conducted as a retreat, and includes 7 sessions involving group experiences, a number of individual activities, several didactic presentations, as well as daily yoga or tai chi. Participants will be provided with all the course materials as well as ongoing coaching and mentorship after the training program.
Led by Institute Director of Academic Programs Adi Haramati, PhD, and Course Director Nancy Harazduk, MEd, MSW, the training is modeled on the format they have used successfully to train more than 50 faculty at Georgetown University School of Medicine. The intent is to develop mentorship relationships with each of the faculty members who takes part in the training program, so that participants may become change agents in their own institutions.
The next training session will be held July 5-8, 2012 at the Aspen Wye River Marriott Conference Center, in Queenstown, MD. For program details, please click here or email mindbody@tiih.org.
Upcoming Program:
Ayurvedic Medicine for Health Professionals
Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment in Maharishi Ayurveda
Through this course, professionals can expand the scope of their health care practices by learning the principles and practice of Ayurveda, the world’s oldest system of natural health care. Participants will develop practical skills for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease—including Ayurvedic pulse diagnosis—that can be immediately applied in clinical practice.
Participants may receive 24 hours of AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™ for the 4-module online course, or 28 hours of AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™ for the combined online and live course. They’ll receive an extensive printed syllabus, including valuable protocols for addressing many common chronic conditions. The course is taught by medical doctors with over 25 years of experience in integrating Maharishi Ayurveda into modern medical practice.
Course Format and Schedule
This 56-hour course is taught in four modules. Modules 1 and 4 are offered both live and online. Modules 2 and 3 are offered online only.
All four modules may be taken online. However, to qualify for MAAA certification of successful completion of this Level 1 course, the participant must attend at least one live module.
Live modules locations and dates:
University of Maryland Center for Integrative Medicine, held at the Institute for Integrative Health, 1407 Fleet Street, Baltimore, MD
Module 1: June 9-10, 2012 Module 4: November 3-4, 2012
Scripps Center for Integrative Medicine, San Diego, CA
Module 1: June 2-3, 2012 Module 4: October 13-14, 2012
For registration and more information, visit the Ayurvedic Medicine for Health Professionals website.
Email: info@ayurveda-courses.org
Phone: 877-540-6222
Other Programs:
Research Methods in Complementary and Integrative Medicine
Pillars: Integrative Training Retreat for the Health Care Executive
Using Mind-Body Skills to Foster Competence in Emotional Intelligence in Health Education
TIIH Pillars Nurse Leadership Retreat May 2011
Research Methods in Complementary and Integrative Medicine
The Institute held this training in the United States for the first time March 29—April 4, 2012, after presenting in Europe on five occasions. Bringing together more than 40 scholars from around the world, it offered an invaluable networking opportunity while providing participants with the skills to critically appraise clinical research as well as plan and perform their own study projects.
The course is taught by internationally recognized experts in complementary medicine research who have extensive experience teaching research methodology and have been published in leading journals such as Lancet, JAMA, BMJ, Annals of Internal Medicine, and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. Instructors include:
Klaus Linde, MD, Professor of Medicine, Research Methodologist, Technical University Munich
Eric Manheimer, MS Research Associate, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Administrator and Research Methodologist, Cochrane CAM Field
Susan Wieland, MPH, PhD, Research Associate, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Research Methodologist, Cochrane CAM Field
Claudia Witt, MD, MBA, Professor of Medicine, Research Methodologist, Charite, University Medical Center Berlin; Visiting Professor University of Maryland School of Medicine; President International Society for Complementary Medicine Research
Using Mind-Body Skills to Foster Competence in Emotional Intelligence in Health Education
This project aims to advance the education of medical students and other healthcare providers by incorporating mind-body medicine skills, an important component of integrative health, into professional curricula as a way to foster elements of emotional intelligence. Detection of patients’ emotional cues, the skilled use of empathic communication, and other relationship-centered interviewing techniques have shown promise in improving patient-provider interactions. To that end, many medical schools list the competency of self-awareness as a desired outcome for their students. Few well designed studies have evaluated emotion skills curricula, however.
Since 2003, Institute director of academic programs Aviad Haramati, PhD, and colleague Nancy Harazduk, MEd, MSW, have conducted mind-body medicine skills groups for medical students and faculty at Georgetown University School of Medicine. The intent is to expose participants to these powerful techniques to provide them with stress management skills, but more importantly to foster self-awareness, self-care and personal growth. Mind-body practices, key components of integrative health, may foster the development of emotional intelligence, especially with regard to interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence, by enhancing the awareness an individual has of his/her internal state and consequently the ability to manage emotions more effectively.
The goal of this current project is to consider aspects of emotional intelligence and use scientifically validated tests to rigorously assess whether components of mind-body medicine skills can be used to foster elements of emotional intelligence. Over 120 students at Georgetown University experience the mind-body medicine program annually and will be invited to take part in this study. Other interested schools may participate as well, including those represented in the Institute’s new program, Educating for Enhanced Self-Awareness and Self-Care: An Experiential Faculty Training in Mind-Body Medicine. described at the top of this page. Based on outcomes, the intent is to develop this research into a long-term educational initiative of the Institute.
TIIH Pillars Nurse Leadership Retreat May 2011
With the current state of upheaval in healthcare, leaders of medical institutions face significant challenges but also unique opportunities for positive change. Recognizing that transformation can begin to emerge when we have time to step back and reconnect with our own inner lives and goals, the Institute brought together a small group of health care executives for a mutually supportive and reflective experience. Between May 21st and May 23rd, 2011 eight nurse leaders from Maryland and Virginia gathered for an Institute-sponsored three day retreat designed to create a trustworthy space for individual and collective reflection, exploration, and renewal. Creative movement, yoga, meditation and group activities provided opportunities for individuals to step back from the daily distraction and challenges of their leadership positions and reflect on what is possible, realign values and actions, passion and purpose, and rediscover the strength to better hold the paradoxes of future possibility and current reality.
The Middle East Cancer Consortium: Bringing Integrative Medicine to Improve the Well-Being of Cancer Caregivers
One of the missions of The Institute is to improve the lives of patients and professionals alike through the incorporation of integrative health practices. To that end, The Institute has been supporting the work of the Middle East Cancer Consortium (MECC) over the past several years, facilitating mind-body medicine skills training as an integral part of the annual MECC conferences. Click here for a description of the 2010 program.
Each year approximately 60 oncology nurses, physicians and social workers attend from Cyprus, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority and Turkey. Not only do these professionals work daily with challenging illness in their patients, but they also come together from countries with long histories of tension and strife. MECC executive director Michael Silbermann, MD, has observed that the mind-body skills training has proven to be “the most efficient and successful glue“ to bring together people from these disparate and strained backgrounds, facilitating safety and collaboration. The Institute is proud to support such an important and meaningful project, serving to remind us of why we do what we do.