Coming Back to Ourselves

Embodiment and Culture in Grieving

Registration now closed for the 2024 cohort. Get on the waitlist to be the first to know when this program is offered again in 2025.

Our grief is not something that needs to be healed. Grief is a vital expression that supports the work of healing - personally and collectively. As human creatures, we all have the innate ability to experience, express, and metabolize grief.

What often does need healing however, is how we relate to our grief, how we access it, what we have been taught about it through our family system and within dominant paradigms, how we show and express it, and how we do so in ways that are life-affirming, healthy and nurturing of connection and relationship.

Grief is relational and a learned skill, yet for many, cultural teachings for healthy grieving have been jeopardized by legacies of oppression, historical disruptions, and dominant cultural narratives.

In these modern times, many of us have been steeped in dominant narratives informed by capitalist, patriarchal and colonial ways of relating that undermine soulful and relational grieving. Reclaiming our ability to be in relationship to grief includes returning to ourselves - to our embodied presence and capacity to recognize and be with grief.


In this online course I will guide us to take a compassionate look at how our relationship to grief is embedded in dominant cultural conditions and the adaptive strategies that can form in response to this. I will offer foundational principles of grieving and a comprehensive somatic practice based in secure attachment and nervous system awareness that supports our capacity to grieve. We will deepen our relationship to resiliency and our ability to express grief in ways that align with our unique needs and emotions. We will explore the old stories that no longer serve our grief, and move towards an ethic of grieving as a living and loving practice. We will nurture our grief in service to personal healing, relational connection, and cultural change.

 

Coming Back to Ourselves, is such a gift in the world that offers guidance, somatic practices, and connective space to those seeking a deeper sense of connection, belonging, and contact with grief. The content is carefully woven together and delivered with heart. Shauna is very skilled in her ability to hold space for a group; I felt safe,seen, and welcome at all points along the way. Maria Johnson, Ecological Grief facilitator

***

This course offered me simple, effective tools for receiving grief (mine and others') from a more present, embodied, and compassionate place, and helped me to connect that work to the broader political healing our society so desperately needs. Shauna is clearly a very experienced at facilitating and holding space for group learning, and led by example in her own gentle, affirming, and vulnerable presence. Participant 2022

When is the course?

This course is 9 weeks long, Feb 28th to April 24th, 2024. Live Calls convene on Wednesdays at 4pm pacific time.

Students will have access to the course content for 3 months afterwards.


How is this program structured?

Weekly Pre-Recorded Lessons

Each lesson consists of a learning path with video teachings, and a practice path with guided practices and reflection questions. Each week also includes additional resources for deepening your skills and awareness.

Weekly Live Calls - Wednesdays at 4pm pacific (7pm eastern)

Each week there will be a 60-75 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 practice.


What will I receive?

  • Over 9 hours of video/audio lesson content
  • Over 13 hours of live weekly experiential practice and discussion via Zoom
  • Guided visioning, reflections and/or somatic attachment 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-aware, anti-oppressive, and culturally inclusive framework focused on compassionate cultural analysis and attachment-based embodied regulation for healthy grieving. The content can be worked with in ways that are relevant to you. In other words, you will have the flexibility to explore what strategies and critical reflections work for you personally and culturally to nurture affirming grieving practices.

Please note: I offer a brave space for folks of diverse backgrounds and lived experiences (race, gender, class, etc) coming together to be in grief practice and cultural change work, acknowledging differences in power, privilege, and dominant cultural impacts.

The demographic of folks who participate in my offerings have so far been: majority racialized as white, across an age range of 20's-60's, of diverse genders, diverse queer identities, diverse neuro-typical, neuro-divergent and disabled experiences, 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.


Is this course the same as a therapeutic grief circle or grief ritual?

No. This is an educational path based in teaching and guidance, skill development and experiential self-inquiry within a group learning setting (live calls). This course offers therapeutic 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.

I recommend you have active support outside of this course as you move through the content.


**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 educational course offers.

 

Shauna skillfully teaches how we can show up for not only grief, but all kinds of challenging emotional territories with more resilience. This program is rich and deeply thoughtful, and I have grown my capacity to be with my own and with others' activated emotional states with more ease. Participant, 2022

***

The way this course positioned grief and grieving in dominant culture and intersectionality really landed and worked for me. It was a major ah-hah and connected this work so deeply with social justice and peace work. Shauna balanced the content and learning for head and heart, thinking and experience, and that was such a thoughtful and powerful design choice. The live facilitation nurtured lots of learning from, with, and between the other folks in the course, and deepened and connected our observations/sharing. Participant 2022

What does this course cover?

Welcome - Establishing our Learning Community and Vision

Lesson 1 - The Ground of Grief

  • Grief within dominant culture and disrupted lineages of learning
  • Rooting into foundational grief principles and awareness

Lesson 2 - Nurturing Self

  • Cultivating secure attachment to grieving
  • Embodied presence and adaptive strategies

Lesson 3 - Cycles of Regulation and Embodiment

  • Polyvagal approach to grieving
  • Trauma, somatic tracking and regulation practices

Lesson 4 - Grief and Resiliency

  • Neurobiology of resiliency in service to grief
  • Expanding resource and emotional capacity

Lesson 5 - Spheres of Culture

  • Family, tradition, lineage and unlearning towards choice
  • Implicit and explicit grief beliefs

Lesson 6 - Healing the Seeds of Disconnect

  • Becoming current in relationship to grief
  • Adult consciousness and attunement

Lesson 7 - Metabolizing Grief

  • Grief expressions through head, heart and body
  • Cross-cultural principles in grieving

Lesson 8 - Grieving towards Cultural Change

  • Approaching grief as activism, elder and love
  • Supremacy culture and collective grieving
 

Honestly, this course was SUCH a game-changer. The unexpected part of that was that I was realizing as we delved further into somatic work that I needed to seek out individual support with this, which I did. It's been TREMENDOUS to have a little extra support - like, for example to say "when I try to orient, THIS is what happens." Also, I was hit with a new inspiration for expanding my own teachings and competencies around supporting people's nervous systems through change more effectively, which is already proving to be so valuable to the way I'm able to show up for clients. Participant 2022

***

Shauna is extremely skilled at offering teaching on grief that gives participants concrete content about somatic support, grieving styles, and ancestral connections. But not only this! She also convenes live calls for participants in which she skillfully facilitates discussion and ritual so that this learning comes alive. Candace Tkachuck, 2021

Learning - this course is a mixture of video lessons, live Zoom calls with closed captioning, 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.



Financial Reciprocity

This program is offered on a sliding scale which acknowledges folks' different access to resources within an inequitable capitalist system, and is offered within a commitment to economic justice and community care.

I invite you to read my Financial Access Commitments to learn about why and how I do this, and to review a more comprehensive framework to help you discern which pricing tier to choose given your financial situation and access to resources.

Two-part payment plans are available for all tiers at no additional cost.


Pay it Forward - $630 USD ($70/week)

You have access to wealth, can pay for this course without much financial consideration, and have the ability to pay a little extra to directly support someone else who needs financial access options to participate.

Program Cost - $540 USD ($60/week)

You have access to reliable income, and/or own property/mortgage, and/or are paying at the higher end of rental, and/or are in a double-income home, and/or have personal savings/investments. You are able to pay for ‘wants’ and spend little time worried about securing necessities in your life, such as housing, food, transportation.

Reduced Cost - $400 USD ($44/week - limited available)

You have access to income that allows you to meet your basic needs, you may have some expendable income, and/or have access to resources through family/partners to request support from. You may need to budget or cut back in some other areas to make this program happen, but it won't cause any long-term harmful impact on your life.

Sponsored Cost - $180 to $360 USD ($20 to $40/week - limited available)

Your access to resources and income stability is limited, and meeting your basic needs is stressful and inconsistent. Paying at any of the higher tiers would have a harmful impact on you.

I prioritize BIPOC, LGBTQI+ and disabled folks in financial need for the sponsored spots. Please reach out directly to shaunajanz-at-gmail-dot-com to request this and let me know what financial reciprocity amount you can pay between $180-$360 and I will enrol you.


Refunds

I am happy to offer a full refund within the first 2 weeks of the program start (the Intro and Lesson 1 will have been released). After that, no refunds are issued.

 

Shauna’s course ‘Coming Back to Ourselves’ allowed space to open fully to connecting and relating to grief as an expanding energy in my life. Her wealth of knowledge and invitations to practice integrating these explorations is personal and yet also felt like being a part of a collective field. Shauna has a beautiful ability to allow people to feel seen and heard and her courses are woven together with great attention to order, full of heart and she is a library of resource. Just being in her presence allows one to breathe into the fullness of life. I have so much gratitude that she keeps showing up to offer these spaces for people to grow and heal into. Evamarie, 2022

About my approach in this course.

The content and practices that I guide in this course are an outgrowth of my 15 years of active grief work: offering individual and family grief support, leading traumatic bereavement support groups, offering trauma-informed facilitation training, working within diverse cultural and organizational contexts offering grief education, supporting marginalized communities in responding to loss, and informed by my years of both academic/professional study and self-study in grief counseling, and critical cultural, feminist and decolonizing analysis.

The embodiment approaches that I guide for grief work are all rooted in the growing field of somatics, polyvagal theory, attachment and nervous system regulation. I am grateful for learning directly from Patti Elledge, Sage Hayes, Resmaa Menakem and Carlin Quinn, Linda Thai, and NARM and through the extensive and ongoing self-directed study of trauma healing and embodiment and through other communities of learning and practice.

I consider myself a life-long learner and as an educator, my aim is to bridge and make accessible these skills and the importance of embodied presence in relationship to grieving. The scope of what I offer is not towards gaining expertise, but towards psycho-education, resilience skill development, and pragmatic application in service to grieving, together.

To learn more about me, please visit this page.

This course is closed for enrollment.

Frequently Asked Questions


When does the course start and finish?
We start Feb 28th with our Welcome Call and end April 24th with our last Teaching Call.
How long do I have access to the course?
You will have access to the course content and all recorded live calls for 3 months after the end of the course (July 31st, 2024)
What if I am unhappy with the course?
If you are unhappy with the quality or content of the course, I would appreciate hearing from you to see if we can find a way to make it more useful for you. Otherwise, I am happy to offer a full refund within the first 2 weeks (the Intro, and Lesson 1 will have been released). Any refund requests after this date will be based on a conversation and discernment of fair reciprocity for value of content already delivered.. If something arises and you are no longer able to attend the course in the way you hoped, I am happy to transfer your enrolment to the next cohort offering instead.
Are there pre-requisites to enroll in this course?
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. It is important to also have your own support systems in place (family, professionals, friends, self-care practices, community, etc) that help keep you resourced and centered when needed.
What if I can't make all the live calls?
It is not expected that you would be able to attend all the live calls, however these live calls are a significant part of the learning and integration of the skills and content. Please prioritize them. These will be recorded for playback. I also welcome you to email me any questions that are arising for you.
What if I am experiencing acute grief over a recent loss?
If you are currently in active grieving over a recent loss, I recommend reaching out to me so we can discuss if this is the right timing for this course and what would best meet your needs. While the content will invite personal reflection as a therapeutic learning method, it is aimed towards deepening grief literacy and grieving skills, rather than offering grief support catered to a specific loss. Acute grief often needs individual attuned responses in addition to what this course will offer.