James is a physician and author, both of the international bestseller “Six Months in Sudan” and more recently, “Life on the Ground Floor“. He practices emergency medicine and trauma at St. Michael’s, Toronto’s inner-city hospital and is an award winning teacher at the University of Toronto. He directs a program that works with Ethiopian partners at Addis Ababa University to train East Africa’s first emergency physicians and is a member of Medecins Sans Frontieres, an organization for which he has worked as both a journalist and a physician.
He practices and teaches mindfulness at the Consciousness Explorers Club in Toronto, and is passionate about its potential to encourage personal and social change. He started meditating 20 years ago, and rekindled his practice in response to the demands of increasingly difficult work. As such, his expertise is working with difficult emotions at increasing subtle levels, particularly as they impact frontline workers and caregivers. He has also recently learned how to nap, and considers this unanticipated reward the greatest meditation might bestow a shift-worker.