Washington National Cathedral

• Tickets: $20; scholarships available.
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• Cathedral Library

Learn to integrate Benedictine concepts of wellness into your world through spiritual wisdom and evidence-based mind/body practices that honor the foundations and rhythms of the way of Benedict. Two autumn workshops inaugurate this pilot project as we explore how Benedictine practice can inform spiritual life and physical wellness. The afternoon concludes with a time for personal reflection and Evening Prayer in the Cathedral.

About Dr. Greg Finch

Gregory L. Finch, DMin, MDiv, MTS, BEd, is executive director of the Community of Reconciliation at Washington National Cathedral and founder of the consulting firm Wild Geese Among Us in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Finch serves as adjunct assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the George Washington University School of Medicine as well as adjunct faculty at Wesley Theological Seminary and the Princeton Theological Seminary Center for Continuing Education. He is also a Society for the Arts in Healthcare consultant and serves on the editorial review board of the Society’s journal, Arts & Health: An International Journal of Research, Policy, and Practice.

Dr. Finch holds a doctorate in medicine, spirituality, and aesthetics along with graduate degrees with honors in divinity, spirituality and the arts, spirituality and medicine, arts management, and architecture from Princeton Theological Seminary, Wesley Theological Seminary, the American University, and Texas A&M University and was an associate fellow with Dr. Christina Puchalski at the George Washington Institute for Spirituality and Health. He is a speaker, retreat leader, and conference facilitator in the domains of aesthetics, the Community of Reconciliation and the way of Benedict, spiritual life, wisdom leadership, and wellness.

About Dr. Siddharth Ashvin Shah

Siddharth Ashvin Shah, MD, MPH, is the founder and medical director of Greenleaf Integrative Strategies, a consulting firm dedicated to psychosocial problem-solving and wellness for people working in traumatic environments. He is a speaker, educator, and author on the subjects of psychosocial first aid, disaster mental health, mind-body techniques for anxiety, cross-cultural adaptation, ethnomedical competence, vicarious (secondary) trauma, international and national staff self-care. As a physician and public health scientist, he blends knowledge of humanitarian aid work, integrative medicine, East-West health systems, group psychology, trauma recovery, and stress management research.

Dr. Shah is interested in strategies by which people can meet trauma and related psychosocial difficulties with resiliency and positive strategies. Accordingly, his firm contracts with USAID’s Office of Civilian Response to deliver “Operational Stress Control for Demanding Environments,” a longitudinal program of trauma prevention education. His work has spanned governmental and non-governmental groups in Brazil, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, USA, and Ethiopia.

Dr. Shah holds a B.A. in Religious Studies, a Masters of Public Health from Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, an M.D. from Baylor College of Medicine and Board Certification in Preventive and Behavioral Medicine

About Lynne Shaner

Lynne Shaner, MA, CHT, EFT Practitioner, is a mind/body specialist, hypnotherapist, and founder and director of Praxis: Wellness in Life. Lynne works with a number of healing practices including hypnotherapy, Reiki, and EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques). She teaches, speaks, and writes on the subject, and is coauthor of The EFTFree Manual and cofounder of EFTFree.net, a public website devoted to EFT and mind/body education.

Lynne is devoted to helping individuals, institutions, and corporations achieve deep wellness through mind/body approaches including EFT and hypnotherapy. She is particularly focused on trauma, early childhood trauma, pain work, stress relief/management, and work/life balance.

Lynne has taught introductory EFT to staff at Georgetown University Hospital and is an ongoing mind/body practitioner/facilitator at the Wellness Community, a national cancer-care outreach organization located in Bethesda, Md. She has been an annual speaker on healing and wellness at Cathedral Crossroads. Lynne has a private practice in Georgetown, where she works with groups and individuals locally and internationally both in person and by phone/skype.

Lynne has a background in executive management in publications and the arts, holds a BA from the University of Illinois, and an MA from the Johns Hopkins University. She went on to study and become certified in mind/body practices including EFT and hypnotherapy.