Improvisatory Play as a Mindful Practice

By Fred Marshall, MD

I never met my grandfather, who died a year or so before I was born, but somehow I felt that he was a dear friend of mine and an excellent confidant. As I write this, I am sitting at his roll-top desk, which I inherited on the death of my own parents.  He had been a young officer in World War I, and my grandmother had joined him in Europe after the Armistice.  Upon returning and being decommissioned, they settled into a quiet domestic life in a tidy brick house in Denver, walking distance to Elitch Gardens, at that time the home of the tallest wooden roller-coaster in the United States. 

Landscapes, Inner and Outer

Mick Krasner, MD

I recently attended the screening of a German documentary film titled Grenzland, which translates to Borderland. In it, the filmmaker Andreas Voigt presents a series of miniature portraits of ordinary people on both sides of the river Oder, which forms part of the border between Poland and Germany.  The lives of the protagonists in this film have been shaped by the ever-changing nature of this and many other borders around the world.

Slow medicine: Gardening, Clinical Care and Ourselves

In her book, God’s Hotel, physician-author Victoria Sweet contrasts “fast medicine,” with its emphasis on reversing pathology through medication and surgery, and “slow medicine,” with its emphasis on close attention to individuals’ unique illness trajectories and optimizing the conditions that help the body heal. According to Sweet, practicing fast medicine is more like being a mechanic whereas practicing slow medicine is more like being a gardener.

Equanimity

The other morning, as I was listening to the radio on my drive to work, the music was interrupted by an announcer with a stentorian tone: “Severe Storm Warning for Monroe and the Surrounding Counties.” In a matter of just a few more blocks, the weather transformed from docile to frantic. Trees were losing their branches, the wind was howling, leaves were swirling, and the rain was horizontal.

Mindful Practice: Community, Healing and the Long Journey of Medicine

If you want to go fast, go alone
If you want to go far, go together

~African Proverb

Our work in Medicine is not a sprint. It is more like a marathon. We know it requires discipline, commitment, intention, hard work, and stamina. But unlike running a marathon for individual reasons, it is a community activity. And in this time of the Olympics, as nations identify with their teams, our professional communities are similarly teams that provide opportunities for growth and fortitude, as well as for the transformation that is possible as we work through the crises that inevitably arise along the journey, the occasional or not so uncommon dark nights of the soul to borrow from a mystical source.