SOUL + BODY: Three Graduate Programs in Spirituality and Health

SPIRITUALITY AND HEALTH CARE GRADUATE CERTIFICATE PROGRAM The George Washington Institute for Spirituality and Health (GWish) now has an online graduate certificate program that provides health-care professionals with the theoretical, ethical, empirical, and practical tools necessary to integrate spirituality into their clinical practices, foster leadership in spirituality and health, create lifelong support systems among colleagues, and affect the health-care environment to create more compassionate systems of care.
Online students share profound experiences and insights. One of the students, a chaplain, said that the program teaches the students how to be virtuous spiritual-care providers. For more information, see gwish.org or contact Christina Puchalski, M.D., at hcscmp@gwumc.edu.

HEALTH COACHING CERTIFICATE IN COMPLEMENTARY THERAPIES & HEALING PRACTICES For health-care professionals who want accredited training in the field of “health coaching” — educating clients about better choices and alternative treatments — the University of Minnesota’s Center for Spirituality & Healing has launched a four-semester program. Students attend class for two four-day weekends each semester, plus a one-time, one-week intensive. Upon completion of this track, they receive a certificate in Complementary Therapies & Healing Practices: Health Coaching from the University of Minnesota.
“Nurses, physicians, psychologists, and counselors are incorporating health coaching into their practices, and we can help," says director Mary Jo Kreitzer, R.N., Ph.D. To learn more, go to csh.umn.edu, or call the Center for Spirituality & Healing at 612-624-5166.

CERTIFICATE & ADVANCED DEGREE IN INTERSPIRITUAL WISDOM On September 14–19 at La Casa de Maria (lcdm.org) in Santa Barbara, California, the Spiritual Paths Institute will launch a two-year program developed by a team of exceptional teachers, including S&H contributors Rabbi Rami Shapiro and Shaikh Kabir Helminski. The program is based on a rigorous academic inquiry into the teachings of the world’s sacred traditions, combined with guided spiritual practice.
The program will help professionals to apply interspiritual knowledge, principles, and practices to fields including education, health care, environmentalism, social work, psychology, consciousness studies, physics, cosmology, chaplaincy, media, the arts, and interspiritual counseling, mentoring, and ministry. For more information, see spiritualpaths.net, or call 805-695-0104.