Conference on Spirituality, Healing and Health

NEWS RELEASE: UA CONFERENCE ON SPIRITUALITY, HEALING AND HEALTH SCHEDULED FOR APRIL

Contacts: Paul Skinner, professor, family & community medicine, 520-621-5075, [email protected]
Beverly Lanzetta, research associate, women's studies, and president of the Interfaith Theology Seminary, 520-319-2065, [email protected]

From the general public to health and medical professionals, to the academic community, people have expressed a need to explore how spiritual journeys affect their lives and the lives of others. Sponsored by The University of Arizona, in Tucson. "Spirituality, Healing, and Health: A Transformative Vision" is an international conference that will focus on healing as a transformative experience of one's interior life that leads to a state of spiritual well being and health. Conference dates are April 11-13 at the Holiday Inn City Center in downtown Tucson. Cost of the conference is $225. Organizers expect more than 250 people will be in attendance. It is open to the members of the academic community, health professionals and to the general public.

Confirmed speakers include, among others, Jeanne Achterberg, scientist at the Saybrook Institute and senior editor of "Alternative Therapies;" Joan Borysenko, of the Mind/Body Health Sciences Center, in Boulder, Colo., and author of "Minding the Body, Mending the Mind," Kurt Kaltreiter, lecturer and author of "American Indian Prophecy;" and Lewis Mehl-Madronna, Native American psychiatrist, director of Integrative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh and author of "Coyote Medicine."

The purpose of the conference is to explore interdisciplinary and multi-cultural traditions and practices of spirituality and healing and to increase understanding of the relationship of spirituality and healing to health and well being. Organizers hope to develop models of dialog for future collaboration between spirituality and fields of health.

The concept for this first international conference grew out of the emerging international interest among the general public and researchers in the area of the relationship between spirituality and healing, and by three past UA conferences on the parallel field of consciousness studies.

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