What we do on our retreats?

Have you been wondering what exactly we do on our self care and well-being retreats for doctors?

If you’ve never been on a retreat before, you might not know what to expect. At Whole Hearted Medicine we understand that in your busy life it can be difficult to find the time to get away and nurture yourself. So, during these retreats our aim is to take complete care of you. Beautiful meals, morning meditations to help you to ease into your day and stimulating educational talks that we have worked really hard to ensure you are rewarded with CPD hours for.

Drawing on principles from Mindfulness, Positive Psychology, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy as well as practices such as yogic breath work, meditation and emerging evidence in self compassion and empathy- our CPD accredited educational program identifies that as doctors we rarely receive training or support in the so called ‘soft skills’ that make our day-to-day work sustainable in the long term.

These retreats are about intentionally carving out some time and space in your life to

• Reset your body clock and allow your body to gently come to rest.
• Be nurtured- fed beautiful, nourishing food, mindful movement and meditations, connecting with like-minded doctors who understand the demands of our work and enjoying amazing natural environments.
• To be supported and cared for in the way that you deserve when you invest so much time and energy caring for everyone else in your life.
• Introduce you very gently to the practice of meditation. Mindfulness meditation is secular and simple to understand when you have a skilled teacher. So we invest a lot of time and energy into very slowly introducing you to the concept of allowing your body and mind to come to rest with mindfulness.
• Support you to prioritise the important self care elements that make up your baseline level of functioning. These form the set point for your body’s sense of homeostasis- they are important.

Our CPD accredited educational program focusses heavily on

1. How to sit with the discomfort that arises through our work.
2. How to be kind to ourselves and reflect compassionately on our practice and
3. How to compassionately create and hold boundaries as part of our own self care.

We know how hard it can be to prioritise ourselves when we work so hard to prioritise our patients. But as doctors ourselves, we also know how to better strike that balance. Of course it’s an individual thing- we all have a different point of balance. Our job isn’t to prescriptively tell you where yours is… it’s to support you, coach you and guide you to find your own point of balance.

That’s what we do on our retreats.