Connections to others important to maintaining health -- speaker

When people become ill, their thoughts often turn to healing damaged relationships with family, friends and God while they still have time.

According to Dr. Margaret Burkhardt, however, working on those relationships should be an ongoing process, because they're all important to maintaining good health.

On March 27, she will lead a day-long conference in Albany titled, "Spirituality in Health and Healing: Living Our Connectedness with Self, Others, the Divine." The conference is sponsored by the Center for Complementary Therapies at St. Mary's Hospital in Amsterdam and the hospital's auxiliary.

Relationships

Spirituality, Dr. Burkhardt told The Evangelist, means "how we are in relationship with the world: with ourselves, with others, with the God of our understanding, and with the Earth or nature."

While many Catholics equate spirituality with prayer, she believes that even an atheist can be a spiritual person, because "spirituality is that which provides a sense of meaning and purpose in life," and people find meaning and purpose from a variety of sources.

That connects to health, she said, because spirituality sustains people in times of need, including health problems.

"If someone is sick physically, they are also out of balance emotionally and spiritually," she explained. "A good deal of research emphasizes the [positive] effect of prayer on healing."

In addition, "patients oftentimes start talking to us not about God and prayer, but about relationships that are important: 'My grandkids are coming to visit me;' 'I haven't talked to my brother in 25 years, and this [illness] is going on now, and I'm thinking about him.'"

Caring for self

Dr. Burkhardt teaches that it's good to start working on one's relationship with oneself, others and God before a health problem or other concern arises.

"One might start with caring for oneself," she added. "Jesus says, 'Love your neighbor as yourself,' but the 'as yourself' piece is the one we're often missing. This body is our way of being in the world; how do we take care of [it]?"

At the conference, she plans to guide participants in "experiential" exercises on becoming aware of their bodies, as well as exercises that emphasize personal reflection and awareness of nature.

All of this, she said, connects with God: Often, people think of their relationship with God as separate from their interactions with other people, but "it's all one diamond with different facets."

Dr. Burkhardt hopes that participants will leave the conference with "a greater awareness of their own sense of being a spiritual being in the world," and "a way of being in the world that recognizes the interconnectedness" of self, others, God and nature.

(Dr. Burkhardt teaches nursing at West Virginia University and does consulting in the field of spirituality's connection to health care. She is co-author of "Spirituality: Living Our Connectedness." The Complementary Therapies Conference will be held March 27, 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m., at the Holiday Inn Turf in Albany. Cost is $100 for the general public or $50 for St. Mary's Hospital employees, volunteers and auxilians. Call Sister Rita Jean DuBrey, CSJ, at 841-7146.)

(3/16/06) [[In-content Ad]]