Sara Lazar PhD Joins The American Meditation Institute Faculty for the 8th Annual CME Conference on Relieving Physician Burnout with Meditation and Yoga
AVERILL PARK, NY (PRWEB) March 01, 2016 -- Noted neuroscientist and meditator Sara Lazar, PhD will join the faculty of The American Meditation Institute (AMI) for a 30 credit hour mind/body medicine CME conference on meditation, gentle yoga and diaphragmatic breathing for physicians and other health care professionals, October 25-29, 2015 at the Cranwell Resort and Spa in Lenox, Massachusetts. Entitled The Heart and Science of Yoga, this comprehensive training, accredited through the Albany Medical College Office of Continuing Medical Education, is designed to help relieve physician stress and burnout.
Noted neuroscientist and meditator Sara Lazar, PhD will join the faculty of The American Meditation Institute (AMI) for a 30 credit hour mind/body medicine CME conference on meditation, gentle yoga and diaphragmatic breathing for physicians and other health care professionals, October 25-29, 2016 at the Cranwell Resort and Spa in Lenox, Massachusetts. Entitled "The Heart and Science of Yoga,” this comprehensive training, accredited through the Albany Medical College Office of Continuing Medical Education, is designed to help relieve physician stress and burnout.
Now in its eighth year of providing physicians continuing medical education credits, this unique curriculum of Yoga Science as holistic mind/body medicine will present an in-depth study of practical meditation and yogic skills designed to help relieve physician and patient burnout by reducing their allostatic load––the physiological consequences of chronic exposure to fluctuating or heightened neural or neuroendocrine responses resulting from chronic stress.
Presenter Sara Lazar PhD, is an Associate Researcher in the Psychiatry Department at Massachusetts General Hospital and an Psychology Instructor at Harvard Medical School. She also serves as a scientist at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center’s Mind/Body Medical Institute. Sara Lazar is a Board member of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy and is a contributing author to "Meditation and Psychotherapy."
Dr. Lazar has been practicing yoga and meditation since 1994. The focus of her scientific research is to elucidate the neural mechanisms underlying the beneficial effects of meditation and yoga, both in clinical settings and in healthy individuals. One main focus of her work has been to determine how meditation and yoga influence brain structure, and how these changes influence behavior.
In 2005, as a leading researcher in the field, her team was the first to show how long-term meditation practice correlates with cortical thickening in brain areas associated with attention, sensory processing, and interoception (the awareness someone has about the physiological state of their body). In a 2011 paper, she found that people who learned meditation for the first time in an eight-week course had increases in gray matter concentration in areas of the brain associated with "learning and memory processes, emotion regulation, self-referential processing, and perspective taking."
Dr. Lazar’s participation at this year’s “Heart and Science of Yoga” conference will include a lecture entitled ”Meditation and Neuroplasticity." In describing her research, Dr. Lazar explains that, “We use neuroimaging techniques to study neurological, cognitive and emotional changes associated with the practice of meditation and yoga. We also incorporate measures of peripheral physiology, such as breathing and heart beat, in order to understand how meditation practice influences the brain-body interaction.”
The entire curriculum of this CME conference is dedicated to providing quality, comprehensive and evidence-based education to physicians and other health care providers on Yoga Science as mind/body medicine. In addition to neuroplasticity, topics this year will include mantra meditation, diaphragmatic breathing, Yoga Psychology, the chakra system as a diagnostic tool, mind function optimization, trauma, PTSD, relieving physician burnout, resilience, Functional Medicine, Epigenomics, Ayurveda, easy-gentle yoga and lymph system detoxification.
Complementing Dr. Sara Lazar’s presentation, the dedication, enthusiasm, and teaching methodology of the entire AMI faculty will combine to create a dynamic and interactive conference for all attending medical professionals. This year’s additional presenters will include Leonard Perlmutter, AMI founder, meditational therapist and award-winning author; Mark Pettus MD, Director of Medical Education and Population Health at Berkshire Health Systems; Anthony Santilli MD, board-certified in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine; Prashant Kaushik MD, board-certified Rheumatologist; Susan Lord MD, a private practice holistic physician focusing on prevention and treatment, and former course director for the The Center for Mind-Body Medicine’s “Food As Medicine” program in Washington, DC; Jesse Ritvo MD, Assistant Medical Director, Inpatient Psychiatry, University of Vermont Health Center; Beth Netter MD MT, holistic physician and acupuncturist, Albany, NY; Jyothi Bhatt BAMS, Ayurvedic practitioner and faculty member of Kripalu School of Ayurveda and Physician’s Assistant at New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center; and Jenness Cortez Perlmutter, faculty member of The American Meditation Institute.
According to last year’s attendee, Jay Newman MD, of Towson, Maryland, “This conference was absolutely excellent. It was the best CME conference I have ever attended. It was a superb presentation of Yoga Science by presenters who are very passionate in sharing their knowledge. I wish I took this course years ago! I will take it again in the future.”
Recent graduate, Joel M. Kremer, MD, Board Certified in Internal Medicine and Rheumatology and practicing in Albany, New York, described his experience with the conference as follows: “This teaching has been an enormous benefit in my personal and professional life. I have less stress, more focus, and am able to serve my patients with greater clarity. It becomes surprisingly easy now to recognize the many clinical situations in which patients with somatic manifestations of 'dis-ease' could greatly benefit from Yoga Science.”
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About the American Meditation Institute
The American Meditation Institute is a 501(c)3 non-profit educational organization devoted to the teaching and practice of Yoga Science, meditation and its allied disciplines as mind/body medicine. In its holistic approach to wellness, AMI combines the healing arts of the East with the practicality of modern Western science. The American Meditation Institute offers a wide variety of classes, retreats, and teacher training programs. AMI also publishes “Transformation” a bi-monthly journal of meditation as holistic mind/body medicine. Call 518.674.8714 for a mail or email subscription.
Media Contact:
Robert Washington
60 Garner Road, Averill Park, NY 12018
Tel: 518.674.8714
Fax: 518.674.8714
Robert Washington, American Meditation Institute, http://www.americanmeditation.org, +1 (518) 674-8714, [email protected]
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