I just got confirmation that my application to participate in the 9-day Intensive Practicum in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) has been accepted! Last summer, I completed the Mind-Body Medicine Training/Retreat with Jon Kabat-Zinn and Saki Santorelli, and it was a fantastic experience. I am really looking forward to this advanced training. [For those who want more information about this training, here's a link to the University of Massachusetts web site about Becoming an MBSR Teacher.]
Teaching mindfulness/meditation, in various settings, has been the most satisfying of all my varied professional experiences; I am hoping that I will be able to shape the rest of my working life in such a way that teaching meditation/MBSR remains a very central part of my professional life. And there is no reason I cannot do that... oddly (or not), what concerns me the most about the question of how to make that happen is the whole issue/problem of health insurance. Along with many of my contemporaries, I am becoming painfully aware of the incredibly high cost of health insurance.
This issue has been creeping up on me as I changed professions (from law to psychology), and moved into the world of being self-employed. After finishing my doctoral and post-doctoral training in psychology, in 1996, I started a solo private practice in forensic psychology and psychotherapy. And being in private practice means that you have to find a way to get your own health insurance (unless you also have a job that provides these benefits, or unless you are willing to risk financial ruin). For years, I purchased what I called "catastrophic coverage": relatively affordable insurance, with very high deductibles. This meant that I not only paid my monthly premiums, but I also paid all of my medical expenses out of pocket, because I never reached my deductibles. Not only that, but my federal tax bills were huge, because I had no employer making part of the contributions into social security, etc. Then, for a while, I worked full-time at a university, which permitted me to give up the self-pay insurance policy. Unfortunately, that situation changed unexpectedly... and now that I am looking into the question of whether or not I will need to buy my own insurance again, I find that I may not even be ABLE to buy my own insurance! What happened? Two things: I got older, and the price of health insurance has skyrocketed. Here's a recent article in the NYT about the major obstacles facing people in their 50's and 60's. It confirms what I have been hearing from my friends, people who are my age, and who have been in private practice as psychologists and psychotherapists, for years. They are finding it either impossible or prohibitively expensive to get any kind of coverage, even if they are healthy, and have had only very minor health problems throughout their entire lives.
Bottom line? I'm looking for a job! Let me know if you hear of anything, OK?
I'm horrified at the healthcare situation in the USA (writing from the UK). Very best of luck finding employment.
ReplyDeleteI'm very grateful for your insightful and informative posts about MBSR. I am considering the possibility of teaching it myself although I'm coming to realise that I need to experience a great deal more teaching and practice myself before feeling ready to have anything useful to pass on to others. Like all things it can't be hurried.
Thanks for your comments and encouragment, rr! And best wishes to you as you (perhaps) prepare for teaching MBSR... yes, true, it can't really be hurried. You have to do proper preparation... at the same time, it's important to remember that we should not necessarily wait until we feel ENTIRELY ready to teach... one of my own teachers once said to me that "all of us are teaching over our heads." There's some truth in there, somewhere!
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