Jon “Vasu” Seskevich is a Great 100 in NC Nursing award winner in 2005-06″] , was nominated for the Fetzer Foundation Norman Cousin’s Mind/Body Medicine Award in 1996. In 1998 he received the Friends’ of Nursing, “Excellence in Nursing Practice” award, and the “Alumnus of the Year” award from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, School of Nursing, Alumni Association in 1997.Jon has given over 300 presentations, lectures, workshops and classes that teach stress reduction, mind-body, and complementary therapies to hospital patients, health care professionals, community and church groups, and high-school and college students. He is founder and president of the Flying Monkey Programs, which sponsors mind-body-spirit educational workshops and seminars in North Carolina. All of Jon’s programs are designed to help nurses, doctors, health care professionals, and peacemakers deliver more compassionate care to patients, families and communities.Jon is a Certified Practitioner of Healing Touch therapy and is responsible for bringing this healing therapy to North Carolina through more than twenty workshops and seminars in the early 1990’s.

Jon began his own meditation practice in 1972. In 1975, at age 23, he started his training as a teacher of meditation and healing under the mentorship of meditation expert, psychologist, spiritual teacher and writer, Ram Dass (Richard Alpert, Ph.D.), who wrote about Jon in 1996:

“His recognition of the need for both a spiritual dimension in healing work and grounded, responsible social action in spiritual work have defined his career in nursing. To that career he has brought a creative energy for integrating, in mind-body healing, meditative practices with stress reduction, healing touch with traditional nursing practices and a spiritual perspective for patients facing traumatic illness.”

“The integration of spiritual dimensions in his work is very personal for Jon. His own inner work takes the form of being fully present for both patients and fellow staff members, and offering a very warm, heart-full human dimension to what are too often impersonal medical procedures.”

“Jon is truly a brilliant example of compassion in action. He not only serves his patient community, but seems tireless in his willingness to share and teach, and to explore innovative techniques for humanizing nursing for nurses and patients alike.” Ram Dass (Richard Alpert, Ph.D.)