Compassionate Caregiving: The Transformative Power of Love
How can we find healing, transformation and spiritual growth through compassionate caregiving? John Baugher, PhD. is a teacher, author and end-of-life caregiver. He offers tools and practices that can support caregivers through difficult times.
John Eric Baugher, PhD, has been a contemplative educator, social science researcher, and end-of-life caregiver for more than two decades. Dr. Baugher consults and offers workshops internationally on spiritual care, grief and transformation. He is the author of the book being discussed on this program, Contemplative Caregiving: Finding Healing, Compassion and Spiritual Growth Through End-of-Life Care.
WEBSITE: JohnEricBaugher.com
THE YOGA HOUR TEAM COMMENTS: This conversation with John Baugher on compassionate caregiving speaks brilliantly to caregiving as a spiritual practice. He shares profound experiences illustrating how there is an outer reason, an inner reason and a secret reason for doing what we do. I particularly resonated with the concept of “Loving our imperfect care”. Since we can be our own harshest critic, that moment can be used as an invitation to be a compasionate witness for ourselves as well as those to whom we are giving care. A moment of imperfection can be used for self-inquiry and compassion. John conveyed the profound understanding that through caregiving, we can discover joys we never thought possible. What a wonderful uplifting interview on an often difficult subject.
DR. TRUJILLO’S COMMENTS: I am grateful to John Baugher for joining me today on The Yoga Hour to discuss his book Contemplative Caregiving. I appreciated his perspective that being a contemplative caregiver gives abundant opportunities for personal growth and transformation, in the setting of end-of-life care as well as care for children, friends, and parents or other loved ones. We discussed how caregiving can be a spiritual practice, and how the act of caring itself is central to what it means to be human. Since we are human, there will always be some ways that our care doesn’t match our intention, perhaps when we are stressed or overwhelmed ourselves. In these situations, loving our imperfect care by seeing it in the wider context of our lives allows us to use self-compassion.