Annette Tersigni was on my radio show 4/4/2012 and the replay is here, today. She has an important message for nurses and she has turned it into a certification program, at Kripalu JUNE 17 -21, 2012.

In her words: Nurses, I’m talking to you. You devote your daily life to taking care of your patients, supporting doctors, other staff, and giving everyone excellent care. But what about YOU and YOUR self-care, your self-service? Hmmm. I know, I know. I’ve been there.

Traditional nursing broke my heart and my body because of the impossible workload not to mention all the bureaucratic challenges and limitations that I could not change…but I DID change myself. I adored the patient care but working short most of the time tore up my body, exhausted my mind and sucked the soul out of my life force. By grace, truly amazing grace, I found a new path. Through Divine inspiration, I had a vision of combining my yoga practice with nursing and how that could truly serve nurses and their patients. I became an RN wellness educator, stress relief and back safety expert, and a medical yoga therapist. And so can YOU!

My journey “got me off the floor,” and ultimately got me here to this page that you are looking at. My passion and mission is to share the fruits of what I learned with you, (without you having to spend years figuring it out like I did) and show you HOW I did it and how you can too. Quickly!

Can you relate to the following? If you can, then consider coming to my accredited training. Move from an island of SELF-CARE DEFICIT to your PLEASURE ISLAND of Bliss, energy and exciting possibilites!

Here is the link to sign up for her program, a Yoga Nurse Certification! WooHoo!!

Get to know Annette by listening to this show!

Thank you!!

Listen to internet radio with Kate Loving Shenk on Blog Talk Radio

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Dear Goddess, I just finished reading the book,  Goodbye, Friend: Healing Wisdom For Anyone Who Has Ever Lost a Pet. The author, Gary Kowalski, is a Unitarian Universalist minister. The two dogs on the cover of the book look just like Ulysses. Gary wrote the book as a way to help him face the inevitable: the death of of his old dogs. Gary will be my radio show,  “Kate Loving and the Collective Wisdom” tonight.

That’s  synchronistic: the reason I wrote Prayer Prescriptions  was because I knew I was about to lose my two old dogs, and I needed strength to face it.

He tells one traumatic rabbit story in the book about Elizabeth Kubler Ross. I wonder if we will be discussing traumatic animal stories on the show tonight.

Part of me wants to talk about the loss of our dogs back in the hippy days. A neighboring farmer hated hippies and shot 8 to 10 of our dogs.

I believe many of us  have a traumatic animal story. These stories most often revolve around people who have no compassion or love for animals. I will always remember the time when one of my dogs had a litter of puppies and my boyfriend at the time put them in a bag with rocks and drowned them in the river.

Suffice to say, it was not too long after that when we parted ways.

I don’t think I’m going to bring any of this up tonight on the radio show. Just thinking about it makes me want to cry. It is best to remain composed when I am interviewing authors who expect me to be professional.

These experiences happened over 40 years ago. I remember them like they happened last week.

When we first got Pearl, she was totally white except for the brown mask that goes over both of her eyes. Now she is developing brown spots all over her body, the same color as the mask across her eyes. Note the brown spots on her ear on today’s post.

I believe she is an Australian Cattle Dog. Their distinguishing characteristics are that they are born white, and turn a variety of different colors later on.

And so, we stay in the present moment with the dog that we have. Becoming obsessed with a past memory that happened over 40 years ago is counterproductive.

Love the dog you’re with. The love that she returns, is the greatest healing of all.

Om Peace Amen

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Dear Goddess, After reading “My Stroke of Insight,” by Jane Bolte Taylor, Ph.D., and watching Oprah interview Jane on the Oprah Soul Series, I began to think of my mother’s stroke on June 19, 1987.

I just completed an intense dyadic four month period completing phase one of my Nurse Practitioner training.

Now phase two would begin in a week, and I was relaxing with my parents after not having a chance to visit with them for several months.

Something was wrong with my mother. All she would say was, ” I am not feeling very well,” and she looked quite serious, unsmiling and preoccupied.

My dad almost died from pneumonia  about a month before, so he was in a great mood, still gaining back his strength and grateful about Life and a renewed sense of gratitude regarding the fact that he was still alive.

The near death of my dad was stressful for my mom. My parents were married almost
fifty years, and they loved one another. They were involved in the same activities over the years
such as the Civil Rights Movement, Anti-Vietnam War activities, environmental issues,
First Amendment preservation, as well as a deep interest in metaphysical pursuits.

My mom loved the study of Astrology as well as all things psychic and enjoyed an intellectual
curiosity about life. She was a free thinker, dissected ideas, and had a library of the Classics, lining the entire wall of her living room, more than 1,000 in number.

Over the next few days, my mom took to her bed and seemed to lose her ability to articulate words.

What she did instead was laugh at everything like she was having a great joke with herself. No matter
what my dad or I said, she laughed hysterically.

Dad and I got into the spirit of her mood. When she laughed, we laughed with her, and I marveled at her strange transformation, although over the years,  when ever my mom thought something was funny, or crazy such as, say, the election of Ronald Reagon, she laughed in this exact way.

When she said to me, “Oh, Kate, do you think I am trying to die??” and laughed for 10 minutes more, I called the doctor.

She was having a stroke. During the CT scan of the brain, the professionals gave her too much anesthesia, and she went into a coma, never to return.

Although when the doctors at the teaching hospital kept asking her questions during the neurological exam, I noticed she refused to cooperate because when the people she loved showed up, she responded silently, wordlessly and lovingly.

Mom always called Ronald Reagon “that fertilizer head!!”

Once the doctors brought in a picture of Ronald Reagon and showed it to her.

“Who is this?” they asked.

“Shit head,” she responded.

I surmised my dear mom did not want to be patronized, by anyone.

And that she wanted to die in peace.

Jane Bolte Taylor describes her stroke as feeling at one with the universe, as her body having no boundaries, and feeling as if she had reached the state of nirvana, heaven on earth, great peace and happiness.

When mom laughed and laughed, as her stroke was taking hold of her brain, I could tell she, too, was at peace and had obtained a childlike state to her consciousness.

I am happy to say that I was able to meet her there, to be with her, to allow her to be who she wanted to be,and who she was becoming.This served me well as I learned to meet my patients exactly where they are, without judgment.

As I read and listened to Jane Bolte Taylor tell of her spiritual experience during her stroke experience, I realized without doubt, that my mom was having a spiritual experience. She gave my dad and I a contact high.

She was ecstatic and so were we.

She connected us to our right brain, expansive and transcendent selves.

I remember coming back to my left brain with great effort when I realized it was my responsibility to get her help even though we were having the time of our lives.

Yet putting her in the hands of the doctors didn’t save her life. But it did give all of us who loved her a chance to say our goodbyes.

For now.

Om Peace Amen

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Dear Goddess, Where I work and I imagine where all nurses work, and any other place I have ever worked, it’s like tip toeing through a land mine where people’s emotions erupt and detonate at strange and unpredictable times.

Women aren’t easy to work with and women who lack introspection are even worse.

I’ve been thinking about this! It seems that each department of the hospital has their pet obsession.

One unit of the hospital is obsessed with bladder emptying.

In another, the nurses are obsessed by paper work, and the Kardex in particular, a sheet of paper which itemizes a patient’s orders and tests. If the Kardex is not filled out, these nurses believe the patient did not receive good patient care, when in reality, I may be choosing to actually talk with the patient and her family, or give her a massage or hold her hand in lieu of filling out a worthless piece of paper.

Some nurses on my unit are obsessed by the number of visitors permitted in a patient’s room.

One nurse went so far as to come in my patient’s room just as she was about to deliver a baby. She admonished the family for having too many people in the room, who were extra support for her as she actually went through natural childbirth on up to 20 units of Pitocin.

This woman deserved a metal of honor, not a tongue lashing as she was embarking on such a profound experience!

One woman nurse mid-wife says that every pregnant patient’s baby is a stargazer, meaning the baby is facing up instead of facing down, the preferred position for delivering a baby.

When these women deliver, she always says, “Ah, the baby turned!”

This same mid-wife is obsessed by the amount of stool in a patient’s rectum.

One of my patients was recently admitted to the hospital for acute constipation.

She received so many enemas and laxatives that I am amazed she didn’t poop a canon ball into the next county!

Are Gastroenterologists obsessed by Bowel Movements?

Are Urologists obsessed by the color and amount of urine?

Are Hematologists obsessed by the color of blood?

In any event, one mid-wife is particularly quirky about straight cathing a patient after she delivers her baby and before we transfer her to the Post Partum unit because if we don’t, then the nurses on that unit get quirky about the amount of urine in that patient’s bladder, which is their pet eccentricity.

Another mid-wife is downright strange about giving Ephedrine after every epidural placement.

Another uses so many pillows to support a patient in a side lying position that there is a virtual pillow shortage at the end of her twelve hour shift.

Recently we did a Customer Service presentation for the entire staff of Labor and Delivery.

Our purpose in doing this presentation was to lift the morale of the staff and to give them Customer Service hours in the process.

Seems logical to me to teach administrative staff Emotional Intelligence Skills so we don’t have to work so hard in making everyone feel good!

A real control freak across the hallway from where we were giving the presentation gave us attitude during our Customer Service rehearsals.

She came in where we were rehearsing and told us to turn down our music.

She’d abruptly shut the door where we were working out our skits.

This woman has a way of plummeting vibrational energy fields to the lowest possible ebb.

The night we gave our performance to thirty employees, we were dancing and singing. Suddenly I saw this woman come bursting through the back door and walk straight towards me.

She got right in my face and for the first time, I really saw her, line for line complete with downturned mouth and furrowed brow.

“Turn down the music,” she hissed.

“No,” I said.

She grabbed my name badge which is supported by one of those movable threads. She glared at it, let it snap back to my chest, turned around and stomped out.

We continued with our performance, but I felt kind of shaken up by her bad vibes!

The audience thought she was part of the skit to demonstrate how not to act with your customers!

The land mine extends to doctors and all of their pet idiosyncrasies.

Suffice to say, learning how to navigate gently through these explosive personalities takes much effort!

This is the #1 leading cause of burnout in my profession, not patient care.

I chalk up all of these obsessive compulsive behaviors to a provincial mindset.

Nothing exists outside of the hospital or the town where we all live for most of these people.

So I wish them well.

They teach me how to free my mind for more enlightened pursuits and aspirations.

Real Customer Service begins with change from within mind, body and spirit.

Several months after our Customer Service presentation, staff morale is back to ground zero.

Now we are preparing another presentation to make everyone feel good,

Maybe Ms. Storm Trooper will make another appearance! This time we can present her with a Customer Service plaque with her name engraved on it!

And give her a front row seat!

Because if it wasn’t for her, I never would have written this article!!

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Dear Goddess, Today I want to write about my father’s watch, pictured here. I have been wearing it. I find that it has a mesmerizing quality. I am not sure whether tuning into a watch slows or quickens the concept of time.Time is, after all, only a concept. It is exactly what you make it, no more, no less. I suppose you could say that about everything, but time lends itself to a perceptual model for everything that happens to you in this lifetime.

First of all, there is your time,  my time, the world’s time, and intergalactic time, and all the time in between.

And then there is no time. That is where we dwell  when we are creating art, writing or dancing prayers, or listening to or singing opera. I called the pharmacist last night at the hospital, and she was listening to opera as she was filling medicine orders. The experience of listening to opera while talking about a drug order, had a time stretching effect.

My father used to meditate on jazz music. The watch that you see here today was on his arm as he contemplated the music. When Dad disappeared, we knew he was sitting in front of his stereo system, listening to one of the Jazz greats. Duke Ellington was his number all favorite.

Last week, my dad’s 102-year-old sister passed on. I received the watch two days before her death. The first day the watch stopped at exactly 510 in the afternoon. The watch stopped at exactly 510 the following day.

That was the day and the time of death of our aunt’s passing. The watch has been functioning flawlessly ever since.

There is no rational explanation for the story. But it does offer insight into the subtle communication that exists between all worlds. Be open to these. Time warps exists everywhere.

Can a simple watch unlock the secret meaning of time?

Om Peace Amen

Dear Goddess, Today marks the end of a very successful week of my Prayer Prescriptions virtual book tour. Now I have to figure out a launch date, and propel it to best selling status.

I’ll figure out how to do that this weekend. I have to write a May Day speech this weekend, too. The speech is about single-payer healthcare delivery.

I just heard that Connecticut abolished the death penalty and legalized medical marijuana. Perhaps they will be the next state to enact single-payer healthcare delivery.

Abolishing the death penalty is quite the statement reinforcing the need to live in a civil society.

The death penalty poses an ethical dilemma which needs to be remedied immediately. How can a so-called Christian nation allow the death penalty to continue?

Sometimes I think that the death penalty needs to be abolished before single-payer can be enacted.

As long as the death penalty is in place, trying to enact humanitarian programs is a joke because it underscores the meaning of the word hypocrisy.

My prayer prescription today is to abolish the death penalty. I will ask the angels, all of the unseen helpers, goddess, god and all the holy saints and apostles.

What is your Prayer Prescription, today?

Om Peace Amen

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Dear Goddess, Tomorrow night on my radio show Samantha West will be telling us about dreams. Hers have mostly been waking dreams. But she can crack those hard to fathom sleeping dreams as well.

Samantha told me that when a person needs healing, she is able to conjure up colorful images and archetypal, heroic solutions to those frustrating life challenges that deal with illness or  dis-ease.

Her dog Gandalf is her healing partner. We need to take a video of the two of them at work, with his massive paws on top of her hands, both of them with eyes closed, seeing into the souls of their subjects.

I wonder if Pearl will be a healer dog? Right now she is fully into her puppy-ness. She reminds me of Mukunda when he was a puppy. Mukie did not like it when I was on the telephone. He would bark incessantly until I would get off the phone. Pearl is doing the same thing these days, and the good news is, I know she will outgrow it.

The life of the puppy has a certain charm. You know they will settle down in time. So why not just enjoy the full tilt  puppy acrobatics, live in the present moment with it, knowing that all will be well. Pearl likes to stay pretty close to home, which is more than Mukunda used to do.

Ulysses was always a laid back dog, except when it came to other dogs. That alone caused so much stress. Pearl just loves other dogs. What a tremendous gift, perhaps from Ulysses himself?

Does that mean that we have to get another dog for Pearl?

Om Peace Amen

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Dear Goddess, The beauty of Spring is all around us today. I took a few pictures of the beautiful green, and I will put these up on today’s post. Pearl was gallivanting along the rivers edge, looking exactly like the puppy that she is.

New beginnings are everywhere around us. Just when you think  everything has settled down, another opportunity arises. That’s what happened to me today. I made my mind up about one thing, and the next moment I was offered something I could not resist.

Why is it that the stream of life takes you contentedly along, and suddenly great change erupts right under your feet?

Last night on my radio show, Stan Goldberg and I discussed the world of care giving, and whether we want to face this or not, all of us one day will be on the giving or receiving end of taking or giving care to a loved one. One day that loved one may very well be you and me.

Taking care of a beloved dying person can be a gift as hard lessons are learned about yourself. I know I learned some hard lessons as I watched my father go downhill year after year right before my eyes. He did not want to die, and I refused to believe that he would ever die.

That is because he’s is with me still: Not just in memory, not just in spirit, not just in heart, but he is here, now.

Soon I will be getting my fathers watch. I may have to  write a book about this. It is that momentous of an occasion.

Dad died with that watch on. From that moment on, the watch stopped working.

The watch still holds my father’s vibrations. There is no mistaking it. He loved that watch.

Obviously, he still does, on some level of Reality.

Om Peace Amen

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