21. Recapping Lessons And Spiritual Insights From Heal The Healers Retreat

In today's episode of Heal the Healers podcast, host  Inga Hofmann, MD recaps the recent Heal the Healers retreat in Madison, Wisconsin. Inga shares key takeaways and experiences from the event, including powerful talks on various types of healing, personal reflections, and the impact of spiritual and inner healing on physicians. She also discusses the importance of addressing love deficiencies, both within ourselves and in our professional lives, and highlights personal stories and feedback from attendees. The episode emphasizes the healing power of faith, the significance of community, and the transformational experience of the retreat. Tune in for a full recap especially if you couldn’t make it this time and stay tuned, for future retreats and mentorship opportunities offered by Inga through the Heal The Healers Ministry.

00:00 Introduction and Episode Overview

01:04 Welcome Back and Retreat Recap

02:58 Key Takeaways from the Retreat

10:00 Personal Reflections and Experiences

12:22 Healing Service Highlights

18:34 Generational Healing Session

23:49 Future Plans and Mentorship Program

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Transcript

Restream recording Nov 18, 2024 • 08:58:41 PM: 0:00

Hello there and welcome to another episode of the Heal the Healers podcast. And I'm excited to be with you today. And this episode is all going to be about recapping the recent Heal the Healers retreat. And this will be really valuable to you and not only to learn what happened at the retreat, if you couldn't make it, but there will be some powerful lessons in here as well. Stay tuned for after the music and we will be right back. Welcome to the Heal the Healers podcast, where we explore the intersection of faith and medicine, discover your God given potential and experience Christ's healing in the midst of medical burnout. I'm your host Inge Hoffmann, a pediatric hematologist, physician coach and follower of Jesus. Together we will navigate the challenges of medicine, integrate faith into our personal and professional lives. Experience spiritual renewal and find restoration in Christ. Welcome to the Heal the Healers, where Christ heals one physician and one patient at a time. Well, hello there and welcome back. I'm so happy to see you and excited to be with you today. It's been a couple weeks since I have recorded a new episode, I've taken some time to of rest and reflect on the recent Heal the Healers retreat, which was And I want to share a little bit of the key takeaways today. So therefore today's episode is really simply entitled just a recap of the Heal the Healers Physician Retreat. For those of you were there, first of all, thank you so much for trusting me and the ministry team to come to Madison, Wisconsin, to let us minister to Trust us with your time, with your investment to just show up and get refreshed and I pray that it was a blessing to you and it was such a pleasure to meet so many of you in person. It was just amazing. And for those of you who couldn't make it, I hope that this will be a nice little summary for you just teasing you. If we do this again to gain some interest what happened at the retreat and for you to consider coming. If we do this again and more on that later, but first of all, if you have not subscribed to our show yet. I encourage you to subscribe either on YouTube or on the podcast channel, wherever you're watching from, just so that the show comes to you and that, you know, when new episodes drop, it also helps us a lot for more people to see the show. And also thank you for just following us on Facebook, on YouTube. And sharing the show with other people. So if you have physician friends or colleagues or other people in medicine please share that with them. Because I want as many people to be encouraged by this content. So thank you so much for doing that. But let's dive right in sharing a little bit about the debrief. We about a couple of weeks out from the healer healers retreat. And as I mentioned, I. personally spent some time to just debrief and reflect. Honestly, when you're preparing for this type of event, and this was the first time doing such a thing for me to plan an event like a retreat like this, there's a lot of preparation that goes into it, not just logistically in terms of organizing everything. It's a little bit like Being your own wedding planner. And I've been married for many, many, many years. So it was a little bit of a flashback to those times when I planned our wedding and that was way before the days where having a wedding planner was a common thing. In any case, I felt a little bit like that. But also they are spiritual preparations that go into an event like this. And when ministering to people and sharing your passion and sharing faith and stories in testimonies and preparing talks, it's good to, in the end, kind of reflect and rest a little bit. And that's good. what I have been doing. So thank you for being patient with me and bearing with me. But let me just share a little bit of what we experienced at the Heal the Healers Retreat. So I want to perhaps separate the kind of the covering of this today and kind of sections number one, sort of what was the general observation and then also having some personal reflections. Overall, I would say we had a remarkable positive feedback from the people that are tended. And I think the experience for everybody Was overwhelmingly very positive. And thank you so much again for coming, for sharing your feedback with me for allowing us myself as well as Judith McNutt and Ken Polsey and the team from Christian Healing Ministries to minister to you and trusting us with your time and being in this gathering with other physicians. So I think overwhelmingly people really loved it. I think everybody really enjoyed the talks. People said it was a bit of drinking from a fire hose. Because we had a number of talks at the retreat to cover topics like. The Ministry of Healing, the four types of healing that we can see from Jesus's ministry. We talked about some difficult topics, such as spiritual healing. trauma mental health how to overcome those and how the Lord wants to repair those things. So we talked about inner healing and forgiveness, and these can be kind of heavy topics depending on what we have faced in our personal lives. Maybe what we have seen in our patients that are not easy to digest sometimes. And it was beautiful to see though the gentleness and just the loving environment that I sensed, and that's the feedback I've gotten so far, that people felt very safe in this very, really wonderful group of people, an amazing group of people in this environment to just sit and listen and learn, but also have personal reflection on their lives. on the topics that we covered. So that was really wonderful to learn about how do I walk out forgiveness? How do I walk out inner healing of things that have really been difficult in my life? maybe even have to forgive myself, for things that as physicians, we sometimes feel guilty about. So it was really beautiful to see how people leaned into that. We talked, one of the things that I really loved in one of the topics Judith covered I think on the topic of inner healing was talking about the sense that we all have a. degree of love deficiency. And we don't think about this very often as physicians, but I thought it was very pertinent and timely, especially as physicians. We tend to pour out our heart to In our physical energy and give our time and everything to other people and sometimes what we are giving out is not reciprocated in the same way. And even for me in pediatric oncology over the years, I would say, while the work has been incredibly rewarding, you pour out a lot and sometimes you face difficult situations. Patients tend to be in my profession, extremely appreciative. And they really express that in many ways, but I know that. That isn't always true. And sometimes we can have a deficiency off appreciation, whether that's inpatient interactions, whether that is in a hospital environment that is very challenging these days. And certainly I think the number one thing that we all can say as physicians that most of us work very hard and feel underappreciated. across the board, across specialties. And that is actually a very prominent problem. So there is a deficiency of love and appreciation for sure. But we might also have had some personal deficiencies in just getting the love we need. And Judith was talking about That all of us in one way or another through our life have probably not gotten all the love that we needed, whether it is from childhood on until now, and that is part off human nature. We all experience that to some degree, some of us more than others. And the point was, that is where Jesus steps in because we cannot experience all the love that we need. in earthly human connections. Some of them can be great. Others can be very deficient or perhaps even harmful. But that Jesus, the Lord steps in and he is filling that void of that love deficiency. And That is such an important point. And I think something we have to remember and embrace in our identity as physicians, as believers how much the Lord really loves us. So that was a wonderful topic. The other part that I want to mention as sort of some personal reflections. I think for me, it was a really interesting experience being on the ministry end versus the receiving end of ministry at a conference. That is honestly something I had to digest. Now, of course, I've given talks before at medical conferences, scientific talks. I've chaired meetings at conferences. Big national conferences before. So I'm used to that. And that wasn't anything particularly new to me. But it is quite one thing to talk about medicine or science and quite another to talk about the Bible faith and encouraging people in their faith now. Having done the Heal the Healers mentorship program for physicians for almost a year, I'm used to teaching and facilitating and I do that as a coach all the time, but it's quite a different story when you do that in smaller conversations or in group settings versus at a conference. That was a new experience, but I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed it. And the part that was so joyful to me about this was just the wonderful group of people. The group of physicians we had in the room. Was just second to none. It was amazing. talked about this over and over again as a ministry team what a very unique and wonderful group of people this was. we said, A number of times this was a very special group of doctors and I really mean that. We really mean that. We don't just say that as a lip service. There was something special in the group of people in the cohesiveness of how they kind of connected over the course off this weekend, and that was really beautiful to see. And it was such an honor for me to be able to just be part of that in ministering to people and share stories and testimonies and some teaching that I hope was encouraging to everyone. So that was a unique experience. Now, that was the speaking part we later in the service had on Saturday night, a healing service, and I will share a little bit more about that. But that is where we prayed over people individually. The group was small enough that we could do that. It wasn't so small that it was tiny, but it was small enough that we had that intimate interaction. And also, I think we're able to build the trust over time to actually have people come and get prayer. From us for whether they have physical mental challenges, challenges with family, whether they just want to have an infilling of the Holy Spirit and be strengthened in the Lord, whatever it was. And to my knowledge and observation, there wasn't a single person who wasn't coming up for prayer, and it was quite a special moment. That was probably the highlight off the conference off the retreat for me was that healing service just to see how people got touched by the Lord, how God moved in their lives, and I cannot wait to hear testimonies in the future of what God is doing in their lives moving forward. And I'm trusting and praying. That God is continuing to move in everybody's life because that's just the nature of who he is. He isn't just starting something and then say, okay, that was it. It is a starting point of something. The next thing I want to just share a couple other highlights besides the healing service in the end. Sort of what were my favorite highlights? Maybe I share three more. The first one was on Friday night, I shared a little bit of my personal testimony, how I got even from being an academic physician, running hard and quite successful by many standards in the academic environment and loving my job as being Pediatric oncologist that was the director of the bone marrow transplant program, but now shifting to more of a ministry service and what really changed in my life. And I've shared those testimonies before, so I won't belabor the point. point and repeat them. But many of you have heard my testimony of praying for a patient in interceding for one of my patients and how that really shifted my perspective on prayer. So I was able to share that testimony in more detail at that retreat to really make a case for the Lord can transform us. Even when we're busy physicians, he is working in us and particularly focused on interceding and praying for our patients and how the Holy Spirit guides us. How I have learned to listen to the Holy Spirit and get guidance from him and how to specifically pray for a patient. Versus sort of more general prayers for our patients, such as, well, give me wisdom and discernment and those kind of things. You can go back to my 1st or 2nd episode where I share that testimony, if you have not heard it. But now the beautiful part was I was able to bring that family in, and they were so gracious to come my pediatric patient, that little boy, his sibling, and his mom and dad, and it was such a wonderful, beautiful thing to just see them there seeing them encouraged and that we were able to pray over them and bless them as a ministry team. Obviously, they are my patient. They were my primary patients in my professional role. I deeply care about that family. And so therefore That was a personal highlight for me. And I do believe it touched many people in the room. Just seeing that that witness that testimony. No, the Lord heals. He still performs miracles today, and he is a wonderful and great Lord and physician. So that was one of my favorites and my personal favorite probably in that regard. The second part I think that I really enjoyed was when we talked about physical healing. Reverend Ken Polsey from Christian Healing Ministry covered that topic really well, and he shared a lot about his personal journey, having been a minister and a pastor of a church before and having not really embraced or believed in the gifts of healing or even praying for the sick, for their healing. And he shared his journey of how he learned to really embrace. And step into that part of praying for people when they were sick. And it was great to hear it from a pastoral perspective to say, I didn't believe in this stuff, even though I kind of know it's in the Bible to now. I had people encouraging me to step into this. And the short story was that he had some people from Africa in his congregation as, I believe, exchange students or people that were at the university. And he learned praying for people really from them because that was very normal and natural in their culture, which is in our Western Christian culture. Not always that prevalent, depending on what denomination you're in. So that was really wonderful to hear that testimony and hearing his stories for praying with people in the hospital when he was at the University of Iowa and how he even brought in physicians that were curious to pray for people in the morning before rounds. So that was amazing to hear. Then the last part I want to mention is we had a wonderful, powerful session on generational healing on looking at spiritual pedigrees. We are very used to looking at our genetic pedigrees from a medical perspective if you study genetic diseases. But what we did in this session to say, okay, let's look at our family pedigrees and learn that they are. physical and mental diseases that might travel in our family. That's a medical piece. But also that there might be perhaps propensities or tendencies of certain challenges running in families. This is well known probably in the mental health field and should have talked about this a little bit as well, you know There's families where there was abuse running in families Alcoholism or drug abuse or depression and some of those things and in this session We really talked about that in our families. We experience blessings there's in every family a strength of some sort, even sometimes we have to look a little bit for them if we had a lot of challenges too. And then we talked about, there might be also challenges that run in the family. Sometimes people talk about curses running in families. So we looked at the blessings and the curses in family lines, in our family trees, and looked at what are the propensities we see, The good ones which are the blessings and they're not so good ones, which can be harmful. It was a beautiful time where each of us drew out our pedigrees and wrote down the things that were difficult. In just confidential ways. It was just for the participants themselves. And in the end, we did a generational prayer where we prayed very systematically about things that could come through generational lines or that's diseases or mental illness or whatever it might be. And perhaps vows that people made or cult practices people were involved in, in our families that might have somehow have an effect on us. And the Bible talks more about that. But the beautiful thing was just to say, I'm going to lay this all out and I'm praying against any agreement. I'm coming out of any agreement that myself or past generations or relative have made with anything that is not Godly and just pray a Sometimes we call it a just in case prayer, even if we're not aware that there was anything obvious going on. I have to say that when we did this and after the prayer that was a very emotional moment for some people, we then tore up the pieces. I later burned them and that was an activation step to their faith to say, I'm no longer Agreeing with my past history we all in our family are messy or we all we all get heart disease. I've heard patients even said we joke in my family. There are so many people with cancer that we probably get one too. I literally heard people say this. So At that time, when we did this activation, we came out of agreement with these things we might say that we take for granted in our family line, but that isn't the will of God, but we also acknowledge the good. And I really liked that part to not just focus on the curses on the negative, on the disease, on even the harmful behavior, but also say, where are the good things I can find? Or they, my family had a lot of courage, or they were very organized or whatever it might be. So that was a powerful observation. And my observation I didn't speak to everybody afterwards, but my sense from reading the room afterwards was that was really touching to a lot of people. I was very new for most of them. And it moved something. There was a lot more vulnerability and recognizing. My family isn't perfect, but I'm asking for forgiveness on behalf of my family. I'm repenting and asking for forgiveness. And also in that sense, we are able to ask for forgiveness to ourselves even. Especially as parents, where we then step into roles that are not often encouraging where we feel like maybe that's just how I picked it up for my parents. So, that to say is, I think that one simple activation moved a lot of things for a lot of people. And that was very, very powerful. Just to wrap it up, and I probably will do another episode on the overall trajectory of the retreat and what I felt is happening on a larger spiritual scale as a result of this retreat, I will probably do a separate episode because I think there was something important to dissect here. There are a few prophetic words I had been given. in anticipation and prayers that independent people prayed for me for this retreat. And so I want to share that in a separate episode, because I think that deserves a little bit more time and reflection. But overall, again, I'm just grateful for the Opportunity to minister to people. I'm so grateful for everybody that came. I believe that God did a wonderful thing that people received healing and restoration, that they certainly got a lot of equipping to think about healing in a little bit of a different way beyond our medical knowledge and that there will be able to apply that knowledge not only to themselves, The Christian community, but most importantly, to their medical community, wherever that you practice that people can apply it as they interact with patients, even just knowing they are more things that meet the eye, and there might be things that are So, that's my story. Bye now. Not spoken or over it, but I have now a spiritual understanding and how I look at the patient and how I approach each and every patient in a more holistic way, and I think that is amazing. Almost don't want to speak about anything else that was also fun, which was it was just a wonderful community. I think what was really nice. We left a lot of room for people to connect over meals. So everything was provided. We have meals and snacks and everything right there. People didn't have to break away and find their own ways and then maybe separate. But they were able to stay together and have conversations over mealtime. So that was really good. I think what I'm hoping to do if we do this again, and lots more reflection to be happening to have some more extended coverage. practical breakout sessions where people start to practice and pray for each other. It's a bit hard to do this in the beginning when you do not get a good sense where people are at. But I think if we do this again, we have something to build up on. And that is definitely something that I think would be wonderful to increase prayer and activation exercises like the one we did on the general rational prayer. So with that. I welcome you to stay tuned. we'll take it into prayer how a future event will look like. We have to check on the venue and speakers, all those things. Can I foresee that we do this again? And I sure hope in many ways. Absolutely. Yes. I think this was a success but there are also a lot of things to sort out and that I really want to pray over to kind of make a version 2. 0 that is even better than this one. So stay tuned for that. If you are. And you're saying, wow, all that you're talking here on this podcast is being incredible, helpful, and it's a blessing. Number one, share this podcast or this YouTube channel with somebody else, share it with your friends and colleagues. And the other thing is that I do have a mentorship program for Christian physicians where I teach every Monday night. It's a wonderful time. Basically, I provide some teaching on Usually series of topics. For example, we're currently talking about physician identity. That's a huge topic, and we're looking at biblical examples off where we might have shifts in our identity or how we can think about our identity as physicians. So number one, that is a thing that you can join. I haven't formally advertised this too much. I will. Launch it to the general public in a more formal way in January. But there is time to join now at a founding member rate that I still have up. So if you're interested in doing weekly teachings accountability, prayer, discussion with other physicians, how to integrate your faith into medicine, finding a community that's really supporting you, and then we also have monthly coaching and mentorship lessons every week. 3rd Thursday at 7 p. m. central time. We are just having a chat and talk about things that are on people's minds or people have obstacles or having any questions and how to share their faith or whatever might be standing in their way to move forward and accelerate in their faith or in their personal life. Even we have a coaching call for that. And then every Monday night, so weekly. mentorship and teaching monthly coaching. That's all part of the program. It's a wonderful community. I would love for you to join us. I think you will really enjoy it. It's it's a program for physicians. And I would be excited to welcome you there. If you have questions, you can certainly message me, but you can scan this code to join. And with that, I will say goodbye. I will see you next week for a follow up on what this retreat means for the future of medicine. Prayer is that you were encouraged, strengthened, and perhaps even convicted with this episode today. If this podcast has blessed you, would you help share it with your friends and colleagues, and even share it on social media? Also, leave us a review on the podcast platform where you are listening to this content. It would help us a lot. Together, we can share the good news of Jesus and transform medicine, one physician and one patient at a time. Have a great day. God bless.