Coming Back to Ourselves
Embodiment and Culture in Grieving
Registration now closed. Next cohort will run in Winter of 2024.
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. Next cohort dates TBA.
Students will have access to the course
content for 3 months afterwards.
How is this program structured?
Pre-Recorded Lessons - released each week
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.
Live Calls - weekly
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 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 - $720 USD ($80/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 - $360 USD ($40/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 - self-determined (one spot 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, and I will enroll 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.