As a part of our training most of us learned to use poems when leading mindfulness practices. It is hard to read about mindfulness without being offered Rumi’s: The Guesthouse and a little later Mary Oliver’s: The Summer Day. This month we have the opportunity to ponder why Jon Kabat-Zinn led us down that path. And what does this all mean for you? What is your relationship with poetry and mindfulness? Do you use it as a part of leading practice or does it feel more like it gets in the way of the process? If you do integrate poetry into your practice, I would like to invite you to bring one of the poems that really speaks to you. And if you don’t you are invited to share your thinking about that, as well. And, as always, it is an invitation to share, not an obligation.
Kate Kitchen, M.S.W., R.S.W. is a registered social worker, with the Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers. She has been providing individual, couple, family and group psychotherapy since receiving her M.S.W. from The Ohio State University in 1980. Kate worked at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) from 1997 to 2010. She was a Clinical Social Worker in the Mood and Anxiety Program, providing psychotherapy, and later an Advanced Practice Clinician. She now provides psychotherapy in private practice and is part of the multi-disciplinary team at the Frederick W. Thompson Anxiety Disorders Centre. Kate began leading Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) groups at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in 2000 and has been leading mindfulness professional trainings for over ten years. Along with Dr. Steven Selchen and Kirstin Bindseil, MSW, RSW, she teaches Mindfulness-Based Group Practice professional education through the Sunnybrook Psychiatry Institute for Continuing Education, and works part-time at Sunnybrook. Kate is a co-author of an upcoming article in the Journal of Psychology & Psychotherapy (Vol 7,Issue 3) entitled “Effects of Group Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy on Depression and Role Impairment in a Comorbid Psychiatric Population” (with research based on her MBCT groups at CAMH). She is also co-author with Kirstin Bindseil of a chapter on “Mindfulness and Social Work” in the new social work textbook entitled Social Work Treatment: Interlocking Therapeutic Approaches, Francis J. Turner, Ed., 6th Edition 2017.