ABoUT SHCN
The Spirituality in Health Care Network is a group of health care professionals, healers, spiritual leaders, artists, and community members dedicated to integrating spirituality in health care.
We are a bridging network that offers a place where everyone is welcome, regardless of beliefs. We provide a forum to share and learn from each other as we explore how spirituality and health care can and does work together.
We are a volunteer organization that meets in person, five times a year in Toronto. We invite local and visiting leaders to share their perspectives and engage the wisdom and experience of our community.
SHCN was founded in 2000 by Yvonne Kason MD and John Thornton MD in Toronto. Larry Nusbaum MD is our current chair.
Our Goals
- To promote supportive dialogue and networking between health care professionals, therapists, academics, researchers, spiritual leaders of all affiliations, healers, artists, and community members interested in integrating Spirituality with Health Care.
- To provide educational opportunities via informal evening network meetings with speakers from within the network and beyond.
- To honour the network's broad-based spiritual focus by opening and closing meetings with sacred rituals from diverse spiritual perspectives.
leadership
SHCN CHAIR: LARRY NUSBAUM MD
Larry Nusbaum MD, is a physician, psychotherapist, storyteller, and musician whose music helps bring people together. His songs are about healing, peacemaking, love and loss, and our shared humanity.
He is known for his Inner Guidance Method that mobilizes people's natural ability to heal and thrive. His inner guidance tools engage the powers of intuition, imagination, love, and hope, as ways to live well and heal. These tools have enabled remarkable healing at emotional, physical, interpersonal, and community levels.
In 2008 he created Imagine Hope Middle East Peace Circles that combine his music and inner guidance process to help find hope in the face of conflict. He has offered these circles in the Middle East, North America, and online.
Dr. Nusbaum believes there is a link between healing within ourselves, our communities, and the world. He also believes in The Power of Self Care in Health Care, and that caring for ourselves is the foundation for the care of others. Helping practitioners, students, and all people learn how to better care for themselves is at the core of his mission.
Dr. Nusbaum has served as Chair of the Spirituality in Health Care Network since 2016, and been a member since 2001.
SHCN STEERING COMMITTEE:
JOHN THORNTON, MD
HELOISA PORTO, PSYCHOTHERAPIST
BRANDON KLAYMAN, CONSULTANT