Belonging to the World
Relationship and Ritual for the Heart of Grief
9 week online program: Feb 1st - March 29th, 2023
Registration is now closed. Next cohort will be offered in the fall 2023
How do I make medicine of all this grief?
Our grief is a language exchange that flows within and between the wider field of living relations around us, seen and unseen. When we consciously enter into this relational reciprocity, we gift our heartbreak eloquence and expression in the world, and we allow our grief to be an offering to life, healing and wisdom.
For many, we have forgotten our place in this soulful and heart-full exchange due to dominant culture and supremacy in all its expressions within oppressed and oppressor experiences, past and ongoing.
We all have a birthright to connect with ritual skills, other-than-human relations, and ancestral practices in ways that are respectful and meaningful in our present-day life, and that support life-affirming grief expression towards dignity, right-relationship, and belonging.
In this 9 week course you will be guided into a framework of cross-cultural principles for grieving to explore the ecology of relationships, rituals and ancestral practices relevant to your own identity that support your grief as medicine. You will be invited into somatic and energetic presence practices that support you as a vessel for metabolizing grief. You will nurture relationships with beings of land, plant and animal kin while deepening your ritual skills of reciprocity. You will explore connection to your ancestors through both spirit work and tangible research into ancestrally relevant grieving practices. You will learn a map for supporting the rite of passage of death and bereavement. You will nurture your grief as an invitation into belonging and possibility towards healing, relational reciprocity, and connection to the world.
When is the course?
February 1st - March 29th, 2023
We start Wednesday Feb 1st with the opening ritual circle, and end 9 weeks later on Wednesday March 29th with the last live call.
Students will have access to the course
content for 3 months afterwards (until June 30th, 2023).
How is this program structured?
Pre-Recorded Weekly Lessons - released Thursday mornings
Each lesson consists of video teachings, guided practices, reflection
questions, and additional resources for deepening your skills and explorations.
Weekly Live Calls - Wednesdays, 4:00-5:15pm Pacific (7:00-8:15pm Eastern)
Each week
there will be a 75 minute Live Call via Zoom
to engage in the content released in the pre-recorded lesson from the
week before. This is a time to bring your questions and to be in group
discussion and experiential ritual practice.
I highly recommend prioritizing the weekly live calls, as this is where the content comes alive in a relational field of learning and ritual practice.
Live calls will be recorded for later playback.
What will I receive?
- Over 9 hours of video/audio lesson content
- Over 11 hours of live weekly experiential practice and discussion via Zoom
- Guided visioning, reflections and/or ritual practices each week
- Additional resources for each lesson to explore further if you choose
- Access to the content for 3 months after the course ends
Will the content be relevant to me?
I
welcome folks who are navigating personal, ancestral and/or collective
loss. All grief is embraced and welcomed here, and will be met by the
skills we are learning and practicing.
I welcome
folks of diverse ancestries, faith-based and cultural traditions, and
lived
experiences. This course is a queer-celebrating, trauma-informed,
anti-oppressive, and culturally-inclusive
framework focused on offering you a pathway to deepen into your own grief practices as relevant to your identity and current social location.
Please note: I cannot ensure a fully safe space
for folks of diverse backgrounds and lived experiences (race, gender,
class, etc) coming together to be in grief practice and cultural change work. I do however offer
a
brave space, and am responsible and dedicated to this as we gather in a learning space that acknowledges differences in power, privilege, and dominant cultural impacts.
The folks who participate in my offerings have so far been
majority white, across an age range of 20's-60's, of diverse genders,
and across a span of socio-economic backgrounds.
Please reach out if you have any questions or want to talk about this more to discern if this course will meet you well. I am happy to connect with you in this way.
Are there prerequisites?
I recommend taking Coming Back to Ourselves - Embodiment and Culture in Grieving, as it sets up the foundations from which this course Belonging
to the World then continues to build on. This would be helpful and supportive, but it is not mandatory.
Prior experience with your own grief work and a willingness to engage in
self-reflection and self-inquiry around your own experiences of
loss/transition/grief is an important aspect of this learning
experience. Having experience and a personal practice in relating to spirit ones or
ancestors is also helpful.
It is important to also have your own support systems in place (family,
professionals, friends, care practices, community, etc) that help
keep you resourced and centered when needed.
Is this course the same as a therapeutic grief circle or grief ritual?
No. This is
an experiential path based in guidance, invitational ritual practices and self-inquiry within a group learning setting (live
calls). This course offers therapeutic and ritual healing value and opportunities
for personal sharing of your learning experiences, however it is not
designed as an intimate witnessing circle for a personal healing
process.
**Please note: If you are currently experiencing acute grief from a recent loss, I recommend having a counselor/therapist that you are already receiving individualized support from. In the immediacy of loss, your grief experience may need a personal attuned care and presence in addition to what the scope of this course offers.
What I loved most were the heart-centered rituals and self-regulation strategies. These have become an integral part of my personal self-care "toolkit" and I use them every day. I recommend this course to anyone seeking the time and space to nurture themselves by shining a loving light on their grief. Thank you Shauna for creating a beautiful course.
~ Chelsea Peddle, end-of-life doula
What does this course cover?
Welcome - Ritual Opening Circle
Lesson 1 - Cross-Cultural Principles for Grieving
- Exploring relational and ritual perspectives
- Rooting into somatic presence practices
Lesson 2 - Energetic Presence & Grief Expression
- Grief as an energetic reality
- Three centers for metabolizing grief
Lesson 3 - Partners in Grief
-
Connection to land and animist relationships
- Relational consent and reciprocity
Lesson 4 - Ritual Skills
- Ritual as birthright and language
- Self-designed grief rituals
Lesson 5 - Ancestral Wisdoms
- Ancestral connection and support
- Exploring ancestral ritual elements
Lesson 6 - Elder Wisdom
- Meeting with an Elder guide
- Relational ecology of ancestral support
Lesson 7 - The Rite of Passage of Death
- Death journey and grief ritual support
- Needs of deceased and needs of bereaved
Lesson 8 - Grieving towards Belonging
- Gateways of grief into an ethic of living
- Grief as initiation, vocation and collective healing
Learning -
this course is a mixture
of video lessons, live Zoom calls, audio guided
meditations, written content, and downloadable
PDF handouts.
If you have any accessibility needs, please reach out and let's explore what could make this an easeful experience for you. Thank you.
Cost - The cost of this 9 week course is $360 USD (debit or credit cards accepted)
I
offer two limited tiered-pricing options at
$310 and $260. All options have
payment plans of 2 installments.
Please reflect on your social location and access to
financial resources as you discern which tier. For folks coming from
current and historically
marginalized populations, such as queer and trans people, BIPOC, First
Nations, and disabled folks, please reach out to me if
price is a barrier beyond the pricing options I have offered here. I would love to chat about what would be supportive
for you.
Reach out if you have any questions: shaunajanz-at-gmail-dot-com
This course is closed for enrollment.
About my approach in this program.
The content and practices that I guide in this course are an outgrowth of over 15 years of offering therapeutic grief support in diverse settings for diverse losses, over 10 years of offering community healing rituals, over 5 years of offering individual and group ancestral healing rituals, and an ongoing commitment to decolonial ancestral reclamation, personally and professionally.
The embodiment approaches that I guide for grief ritual work are rooted in my 15 years of offering trauma-informed support and facilitation, and from the growing field of somatics and nervous system regulation, from teachers such as Linda Thai, Patti Elledge and NARM. The energy-body and ritual approaches that I guide are embedded in learning directly and indirectly from many teachers, some including: Francis Weller, Malidoma Some, Martin Prechtel, Betsy Bergstrom, Maris Bergrune, Carly Forest, Healing Pathways, Ancestral Medicine, Marion Woodman and Jungian psychoanalysis. My program are all deeply informed by my relationship to my elder guiding ancestors and spirit partners, and as an outgrowth of 20 years of spiritual contemplative practice and study.
I consider myself a life-long learner
and as an educator and ritualist my aim
is to bridge accessible skills and approaches towards embodied relationships and ritual in grieving. The scope of what I offer is not towards
gaining expertise, but towards invitations for a living embodied ritualized life that embraces grief as love, as relationship, and as a pathway to liberation.
To learn more about me, please visit this page.