Since 2012, the University of Minnesota's Earl E. Bakken Center for Spirituality & Healing has hosted wellbeing thought-leaders to inspire and educate the community, organizations, and life-long learners through the Wellbeing Lecture Series.
Past speakers like Brené Brown, Atul Gawande, Dessa, Celeste Headlee, Rhonda Magee, and Jon Kabat-Zinn have explored a range of topics including purpose, vulnerability, food and wellbeing, gratitude, technology, and mindfulness, among others.
Discover more about your own wellbeing with us through the Wellbeing Series, an opportunity to engage, learn, and experience what wellbeing means to you.
To make disability-related accommodations, please contact the Bakken Center's community relations office ([email protected], 612-625-8164).
2023 Wellbeing Series Speakers
Medical Musician: A Storyteller in Sound With Andrew Schulman
Thursday, September 28, 2023
12 to 1:30 p.m. Central | Online via Zoom
This session led by accomplished professional guitar player and medical musician Andrew Schulman will explore the healing power of music in critical care units. He will share his inspiring personal story, including how music saved his life while in a medically-induced coma, critically ill and given very little chance of surviving. This experience inspired him to give back to the medical staff who cared for him by returning to the ICU as a musician and using music to help heal patients.
Mr. Schulman will discuss the history of music and medicine, and how music can affect patient outcomes and satisfaction. Additionally, he will explore how music helps medical teams by improving morale and alleviating burnout. During this presentation, he will illustrate various stories with his guitar playing.
About the Speaker
Andrew Schulman is a professional guitarist based in New York City, with multiple appearances at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The Royal Albert Hall and other famous concert halls around the world. Mr. Schulman was the Medical Musician in the Surgical ICU in Beth Israel Medical Center in New York from 2010-16, then played in the Surgical, Medical, and Neurosurgical ICUs at NYU Langone Medical Center in 2017. He held a residency at Berkshire Medical Center in Massachusetts from 2017 to 2020. Since April 2020, he has been the Visiting Artist/Medical Musician in the Arts and Humanities Program at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C. He is co-founder of the Medical Musician Initiative, and the author of Waking the Spirit: A Musician’s Journey Healing Body, Mind, and Soul (Macmillan:Picador, 2016). He is currently writing a novel about the power of music to heal.