The Natural Carer
12-week doula training for Nature-inspired care at the End of Life
"This course is having an unexpected and wonderful effect on my life. Thank you. - Jackie"
How do we show up for the people we love when they need us most? How do we help give them the space to be truly heard? How do we ask the questions to help them be truly seen?
When my mother was dying, I didn’t know how to talk to her about the stuff that really mattered. We were lost in a medical maze. I felt helpless.
Maybe you are caring for someone with a life-limiting illness and feel that sense of helplessness too?
Are you a health professional suffering from burnout and looking for ways to care for yourself better while caring for others? Or an individual just wishing they could do more to help care for a loved one?
Maybe you have a sense that deepening connection to the healing power of nature can play a huge role in shaping how we can care for others, in helping us care for the whole of the person, and for the soul of a person, but you need help making these ideas real?
Throughout my life I have been no stranger to death and dying, but my mother’s death in 2014 set me on an odyssey exploring ways throughout history and across cultures, where mindfulness, compassion and nature connection have enabled us to care for ourselves, others and our world. These three factors help by transforming suffering, building resilience and deepening our capacity for caring for others in a deep and soulful way. It was through them that my father’s death in 2019, taught me more about love than I knew possible.
From 2019-2022 I offered a range of End of Life Care workshops and courses, including a thought-provoking and transformational 12-week online programme called The Natural Carer in which we draw together practical, spiritual and ecological ways to help people caring for people at the end of life. I have taken a sabbatical due to work and life commitments, and to guest teach with other organisations including the Conscious Dying Collective. I will be making some of this course content available here and am looking at bringing workshop and the 12-week programme back in 2025.
In the Natural Carer content, we delve deep into compassionate and contemplative care, we look at how nature, art, music can feed the soul and provide comfort for carers and patients alike. We draw on ancient wisdom and we look at the practicalities of the contemporary care context. We learn how to open up space and communication so that a person is able to express the things that really matter, and help others see the things that bring them comfort.
We bring death and dying back to its natural place in life and living. We see ourselves as part of Nature and supported by Nature, in life and after death.
Students have included hospice nurses, therapists, healers, people caring for loved ones at home, and people wishing to enter the growing field of end-of-life doulas and death midwifery.
“The way you have cared for family and friends at the end of life by gently linking them to nature, has been profound. As a nurse I have seen just how special it is for everyone in the room" - Olivia
Overview of Training
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Module One
We explore what we mean by terms such as doula, compassionate care, care for the Soul, nature-based care, Modern care, History of care of the patient.
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Module Two
Verbal and Non-verbal communication techniques, how to start a conversation about death. Working with energy, touch and chakras.
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Module Three
Practicalities for Peace of Mind. paperwork, burial and cremation, what is required when someone dies.
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Module Four
Connecting to Nature.- what do we mean, nature and the senses, Nature and Soul, Nature and rhythms, Plant essences, oils and aromatics.
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Module Five
Ritual. sacred space, rituals for love and release, rituals after death, caring for the soul after death, cleansing the room, ritual for when there is distance between you and the person dying.
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Module Six
Vigil. Being at the bedside as death nears. Care for the body after death.
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Module Seven
Book of Wishes. Capturing the things that will bring us comfort, legacy work, and coaching.
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Module Eight
Grief. how grief shows up, nature and grief.
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Module Nine
What we need to establish our own end of life coaching and doula offerings.
Your teacher
I have supported many people as they come face to face with their own mortality, or that of someone they love. I believe that when we return death to a being a natural part of the life cycle, great healing can occur, and we can find inspirational and compassionate ways to navigate the find stages of life.
I have trained as a Sacred Passage Doula and Coach with the Conscious Dying Institute in the USA. I am an ordained Interfaith Minister, and I have undertaken training in end of life care with luminaries such as Frank Ostaseski and Joan Halifax, the Zen Centre for Contemplative Care in new York, and Dale Borglum of the Living/Dying Project in San Francisco. I have also worked for a Funeral Director.
It it Nature and the dying that have taught me the most of all.
Georgina x
