Roy Remer: Zen Caregiving

From the executive director of Zen Caregiving Project and creator of the Mindful Caregiving Education course comes a much-needed guide offering practical advice, emotional support, and a path to spiritual solace for the millions of undersupported caregivers in the USRosalynn Carter said, “There are only four kinds of people in the world: those who have been caregivers, those who are currently caregivers, those who will be caregivers, and those who will need caregivers.” The past ten years have supported this observation, as the number of caregivers in the US has grown from 42 million to more than 53 million. With one in five American adults now in this role, many have found that they are emotionally and spiritually unprepared for the difficult and emotionally taxing task of caring for a seriously ill family member or patient.As a caregiver himself, and executive director of Zen Caregiving Project, Roy Remer was inspired to write Zen Caregiving to help support the emotional burden many caregivers experience and to augment this essential component of our healthcare system. After developing the Mindful Caregiving Education (MCE) curriculum and teaching MCE courses for many years, Remer was motivated to share what he had learned and taught about mindfulness-based approaches to care.Designed to be motivational, therapeutic, and practical, Zen Caregiving covers:the four components of the Zen approach to caregiving—mindfulness, compassion, loss literacy, and self-carehow to quiet the “thinking mind” to find solace and stay groundedmethods and approaches for expanding compassion and avoiding burnoutthe value of grief and processing losspractical advice for preparing medical directives and end-of-life arrangementshow to create intimacy with oneself to prioritize self-care one breath at a timeZen Caregiving is an essential resource for those in need of spiritual guidance and emotional support as they navigate the often turbulent and uncharted waters of caring for a loved one.

Roy Remer is the Executive Director of Zen Caregiving Project (formerly known as Zen Hospice Project). He has been an end-of-life caregiver and educator since 1997 when he trained with Zen Hospice Project (ZHP) to become a volunteer. He served at the bedside for six years at the Guest House facility before serving for seven years on San Francisco’s Laguna Honda Hospital’s Palliative Care Ward. In 2008, Roy completed a yearlong end-of-life caregiver training at the Metta Institute in Sausalito, CA. A dedicated practitioner in Soto Zen tradition, Roy is a student at the San Francisco Zen Center. He is certified by the Stanford University Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE), and the Compassion Institute as an instructor of Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT©). Roy also guides wilderness-based rites of passage programs in partnership with EarthWaysLLC of Sebastopol, CA.

https://www.sfzc.org/teachers/roy-remer

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