Keynote: The Aikido of Death - Reflections on a journey into compassion and suffering in South Africa through the lens of mindfulness
Speaker: Patricia Lück
Format: Video & Slides

This keynote shares personal reflections on the journey that Dr Luck's work has taken her within Palliative Medicine and Mindfulness in South Africa, with particular emphasis on her time with children and families. It explores this journey as an inquiry into justice and truth that arise in moments of meeting suffering with clarity, compassion and presence. These reflections will look deeply into the necessary components of being exquisitely intimate with suffering and death, of moving in very close to the difficult and allowing the movements and flows of this moment to dictate the blending into what arises in these challenging encounters. Dr Luck also shares her personal and professional perspectives on how complex transitional spaces, indeed those involving life and death, can be negotiated through the lens of presence, communication, kindness and compassion. She addresses the challenges of transition and diversity that are encountered on every level of the personal, professional, cultural, spiritual, language, political, economic and education, as expressed on local, regional, national, and international levels. Woven into this keynote Dr Lück shares how the practice of mindfulness has informed this work and her life direction.