Catholic Religious Australia's Health and Well-Being Committee held the first of its national seminar days recently at Mercy Place, Bardon in Queensland, focusing on 'Motivating Health and Well-Being in Religious', with presenters Katrina Anderson and Diane Adamson.
Katrina is an Associate Professor at ANU and brought 25 years of medical experience and ten years of running retreats and workshops for religious congregations around health, wellbeing and resilience to the day. Katrina’s morning sessions on Healthy ageing!! What does that really mean in the context of religious life? and Living a healthy life in community! Protective and harmful factors and their impact were informative, engaging, interactive, funny and challenging. The three messages from Katrina’s sessions were definitely that exercise, meaningful activity and meaningful connection are the hallmarks of healthy living as we grow older.
The afternoon session was concurrent, with Katrina leading a session for leaders and members of religious institutes and Dianne Adamson of Adamson and Associates, working with the carers and care coordinators employed by religious institutes.
Dianne has been a Director of Nursing and is an Associate Fellow at the Institute of Management. Having presented nationally and internationally, she shared real life experiences and practical strategies with the participants.
Both Katrina and Di presented hands on sessions about caring for self, employing self-assessment quizzes, role playing, action improvement plans and lots of laughter along the way.
The evaluation responses indicate that they day was greatly appreciated by the participants: brilliant informative day; excellent and really challenged my thinking and values; thank you CRA for organising such a life-giving encounter. As always a very important aspect of the day was the networking over morning coffee, morning tea and lunch!
The Health and Well-Being Committee is very grateful to leaders for enabling the religious and lay colleagues who provide care for our older religious to attend the seminar. We believe it was a very valuable day for all who participated.
Sharon Price rsm
Project Officer