Preparing for The Final Asana
Week of October 26, 2019
Preparing for the Final Asana: End of Life Law, Medicine, Policy and What Yoga Offers
The right of patients approaching end of life to make choices to ensure a dying process consistent with their preferences has been rapidly evolving in the U.S. A veteran of nearly every effort to protect and expand end of life choice in the U.S. for more than two decades, Professor Tucker will share insight on advocacy strategies, progress, challenges and predictions. Advocacy in the courthouse, the statehouse, and in various policy forums will be discussed, as well as what this means for patients and families dealing with a terminal illness. Also a respected yoga teacher, Kathryn will lead participants in some yoga, breathing and meditation, to create a contemplative frame of mind from which we will explore our hopes for the final bit of our own journey and understand how to plan to make that hope a reality.
Workshop sessions
Each workshop session will encourage entry into a contemplative, mindful space with yoga and meditation. Participants will then explore what each hopes for their own final leg of the journey through this lifetime and how that can be planned for so it will manifest. Each participant will be encouraged to write their thoughts about this in a journal during the workshop.
Understanding the Range of Options Available
The following will be discussed: pain and symptom management, hospice, palliative care, palliative sedation, forgoing food and fluid, forgoing treatment, psychotherapy facilitated with psychedelic medicine, aid in dying.
Being an Advocate for Yourself or a Loved One
Learn how to interface with the medical care team to ensure your or your loved one’s wishes are known and respected. What documents can be helpful, who should you appoint to speak for you if you lose the ability? What conversations should be had with the person who you choose to speak for you?
Can the final bit of the journey be coherent with the life that has gone before?
Is this important? What would that look like for you? Bring a creative component into this visioning through poetry, song, and art.
Kathryn Tucker, JD is Executive Director of the End of Life Liberty Project. Prior to that, Tucker served two decades as Director of Advocacy and Legal Affairs for the nation’s oldest and largest organization dedicated to protecting and expanding the rights of the terminally ill. She is also Professor of Law, Medicine & Ethics at the End of Life at leading law schools; guest lecturer at distinguished universities including Stanford, Harvard, and Yale; Fulbright Scholar. Tucker has published dozens of articles about end of life law and policy. She is also a White Lotus trained yoga instructor, and teaches vinyasa flow yoga in Ojai, California.