Joyce Perkins, PhD, MS, MA, RN, AHN-BC, CHTP, RMP-T
Associate Professor Department of Nursing, St. Catherine University, St Paul, MN
Group Fitness Instructor (ACE Certified) Rochester Athletic Club, Rochester, MN
Dr. Perkins teaches in the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) program at St. Catherine University, St Paul, Minnesota, and is currently doing curriculum design for the new holistic, multicultural baccalaureate in nursing (HBSN) at St Kate’s. This new program will focus on the development of expanding consciousness in the nurse via a “Unitary Caring Science” based on the grand nursing theories of Watson, Newman, Rogers, Parse, Leininger, multi-cultural influences, and the interface of western medicine with ancient healing practices of original peoples.
Dr. Perkins’ areas of expertise include complementary/alternative or integrative therapies, psychiatric/mental health nursing, group fitness, genetics, and transformational nursing leadership. Her interests include the new sciences of complexity, chaos and wave theory, sacred geometry, biogeometry, quantum physics, consciousness studies, cosmology, and metaphysics, as well as ancient and indigenous healing traditions. Understanding, resonance, coherence, and the principles of “harmonic” evolution, as noted in advanced music theory, have transformed her thinking in terms of nursing theory development.
Dr. Perkins worked as a psychiatric nurse from 1999-2012 at St. Mary’s Hospital, Generose Building, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN. Her hospital nursing experience included addictions, depression/mood disorder, fibromyalgia and chronic pain. She is certified in many healing modalities including: Healing Touch (CHTP), Reiki (RMP-T), Spring Forest Qigong, Medical Qigong, and as an Advanced Practice Holistic Nurse (AHN-BC). She has studied the healing practices of shamans and healers among Native American Indian tribes, and the Q’ero Indians of Peru.
Dr. Perkins has a 33-year teaching career in the health, exercise and fitness arena. She has created programs, taught exercise classes, given workshops, and been lead instructor at various fitness facilities, including the Rochester Athletic Club (RAC). She is certified as a Group Fitness Instructor by the American Council on Exercise (ACE) and has taught many classes in qigong, meditation, yoga, aerobics, strength and toning, water aerobics and a water class for persons with arthritis and fibromyalgia (Arthritis Foundation Aqua Program). She is now developing classes and practicums for nursing students which involve unpacking the body’s wisdom and healing potential through movement and energy practices, bringing “direct” experience into the realm of nursing self-care, as well as developing “healing presence” for patient care transformative moments.
Dr. Perkins will focus her postdoctoral work on articulating a “cosmology of compassion” and the development of a “unitary caring science” in nursing education. Products will include several articles on this subject, and relate to the creation of a holistic, multicultural baccalaureate program at St. Catherine University in St Paul, MN. She will also publish the results of research based on the lived experience of graduate nurses practicing Transcendental Meditation while working full time, raising a family, and attending graduate school.
In brief, praxis of a nurse from the perspective of a Unitary Caring Science includes learning to balance linear rational logic, with intuitive perception and expanded awareness. Embracing the fundamental principles of the natural world, the wisdom traditions of indigenous people, and modern science of the Western world, nurses practice co-creating environments of healing potential. They experience the sacred via an expanded awareness. A maturing consciousness is seen to develop in deep relationship with others. The transformative pathway of an expanding consciousness is developed via meditation, conscious conversations, and “direct experience”. Students learn to modulate mind and emotion, into realms of cosmic and divine potential. The lived experience of synchronicity and flow states are encouraged not only via classroom activities, but also by visits to sacred sites. Students learn to work with the energies of the land, as well as those of the human form, individually as well as collectively. A “cosmology of compassion” develops as field patterns merge, and intention for the highest good for all is actualized. The nature of the whole evolves in exponential ways as “Unitary Caring Science” transforms conditions within self and others. The metaphysics of an expanded consciousness in relation to the natural world is unpacked as thought/feeling and emotion modulate waves of sound, light, color, frequency, resonance, and coherence. The energy patterns shape the creation of the moment in physical form, as love becomes the abiding e-motion. Healing and enlightenment become known as the same process.