The Sitting with Death and Choosing Life Foundation Course

Do you have past or current grief you’d like to explore?

Perhaps you are experiencing the death of a loved one, compromises to your own health and well-being, family estrangement or another major loss? And you know exploring in a supportive group will help.

Or, you feel numb and despairing in the face of all the threats to life and the humanitarian crises on the planet? And you’re missing your sense of meaning and purpose.

Maybe, a life chapter has ended and your old story and identity that has brought you this far has fallen away, leaving you confused and unsure of your new direction?

Or, you would like to understand grief, loss and the process of transformation better so that you can live more fully and be more creative and engaged with others?

If so, the Sitting with Death and Choosing Life Foundation Course offers an intentional where you can come out of isolation and explore in a like hearted group. The course will help you to get grounded in your own truth and strength and support your movement through loss and grief, to confidence, renewal and new possibilities, until you arrive in a place where you are ready to say a wholehearted Yes to life. We believe this is vitally important not only for you as an individual but also for the future of our world.

“I see myself as not very good at sharing, at all. Stepping into the unknown was somewhat difficult to begin with, l found the gentleness of the facilitator and kindness of fellow participants, helped develop my confidence to share and learn. What l loved – was the willingness of sharing the good the bad and the ugly, to no judgement. Having had a taste I am now on another journey to learn more.”

This is not a therapy group but a process of inquiry and deep discovery.

When you join the course you will receive:

Access to the online course which will lead you through a guided process of inquiry, reflection, simple practices and deep discovery conversations. You can keep this for life;
A Guidebook for Your Transformational Journey, a collection of stimulus materials including personal and reflective writing, simple practices, meditations, questions for inquiry and recorded conversations with healing practitioners. These are intended to touch and move you and invite you into both your personal inquiry and the group conversations. They will spark insight, creative thought and new perspectives and encourage you to explore your own experience and find your authentic truth;
Simple practices you can use again and again to raise awareness so that you can know yourself better, recognise mental and behavioural patterns that are limiting you and have more freedom of choice;
Membership of a small group of no more than eight people who will be your companions on this adventure;
Eight x 2 hour group sessions.
An experienced facilitator who has been on her/his own deep healing journey and who will listen deeply to you, never judge you and keep you on track;
Membership of our Sitting with Death and Choosing Life online community so that you can stay in touch and keep growing stronger during and after the course;
The possibility to follow up in one of our deep dive courses and even to become a facilitator in the programme if this calls to you.

“This Foundation Course is a gem of a group inquiry. There are different aspects of grieving to look at each week, from grieving our own losses to grieving for the world, the subject matter is very wide. It didn’t take long for the group to bond and support each other as we shared our experiences and sparked off each other on our weekly zoom calls. Laughter and comfort too is in there. As we expand on what can be a difficult subject, integration and healing of long forgotten incidents that needed grieving and releasing occured between the zoom sessions. The course was powerfully and expertly facilitated by Sundy Gilchrist. I highly recommend it as an introduction to a subject that is often overlooked or avoided, though it is a subject that can drive deep healing when handled in a respectful and safe place.”

The eight 2 hour group sessions will encourage you to develop the skills of group inquiry around the following themes:

An Introductory Session supports you to develop your practice of inquiry and enables you to decide if this is the right course for you.

Session One: What is the Practice of Deep Discovery and How Can it help Me?

Deep Discovery is a transformational process and requires a group container which inspires confidence, risk taking and growth, while allowing space for expressing individuality and difference.

Session Two: Freeing Yourself to Grieve

To heal and become more whole you need to make space for grief. Grief is the flow of emotion and energy through the body and mind that enables you to let go of loss and to integrate the gifts of loss into your being. Then you can move forward wholeheartedly and creatively.

Session Three: Allowing Yourself to Feel

Many people fear and avoid the grieving process because grief involves such intense feelings. However, when you suppress your feelings and emotions you deprive yourself of the full range of your humanity and exist in a flattened state in which you never feel fully alive.

Session Four: Making Friends with Loss

Loss is a natural and inevitable part of every human life and it comes in many forms throughout a lifetime. Like water lapping against the river bank or dripping onto a stone, loss shapes our lives. When we bring awareness into the descent into sadness and heartache, we are changed. Grief can open us to the full range of human experience; awaken in us the motivation to transcend our limitations and free our full potential, so that we become truly fulfilled.

Session Five: Approaching Death Consciously

As you face into the inevitability of death, you are led to question how you live; what is most important in your life; and whether you are living as fully and as consciously as you would like to.

Session Six: Grieving for Our World

There is so much to grieve in our world at this time you may feel overwhelmed by it all and shut down your emotions. But if you want to be part of the movement for conscious change and transformation don’t stop feeling. Find the courage to let the river of sorrow flow through you, and learn to transform sorrow into the true wealth of spiritual gifts.

Session Seven: Celebrating Life, Practicing Choice and Conscious Evolution

Death, loss and endings are followed by birth and new beginnings. This transition to new life can be a messy and painful affair. We live in a chaotic time which calls out the unlived potential in all of us. The process of becoming authentic, creatively empowered and globally responsible, is a journey of experiential learning, leading to greater trust and awareness. This process enables the development of the skills and wisdom necessary to be of service to humanity and evolves through a series of transformational shifts.

Session Eight: Completion and Harvesting Your Gifts

A time to pause and reflect on what you have learned, to say goodbye to your group and decide what your next steps might be.

“My feelings around this course are surprising. I honestly did not expect to move through my left-over grief with such a journey.
What I found was a cozy, caring, loving, kind group of people from around the world. We shared our stories and experiences of our grief, as we truly saw it and felt it, in a heartfelt held space. The warmth, the acceptance and the willingness to fully utilise our precious time was really inspiring.
The well thought-out guidebook was so well written and easy to follow. I found the exercises incredibly revealing for my stuck areas around trapped grief.
I found out how unprocessed grief was holding me back from giving my fullest expression to who I am becoming. My confidence and my choices have expanded so much from this thoughtful course. The gentle yet totally focused leadership helped enormously with a fusion of creating a brave trusting space to explore freely what you wished to explore at your own depth and pace. I’m very grateful that I did this course and I also wish to do another course that builds on to this one.”

The stimulus materials and the group sessions offer you the following support:

Making time for your own inner Soul Sanctuary will hold you and make you feel safe;
Some foundational understandings and skills for the grieving process give you a more stable ground to stand upon;
The encouragement to commit to the practices of inquiry and deep discovery enable you to explore your unique experience and find your authentic truth;
Skills to build your transformational muscles and fully embody and release grief;
The opportunity to join an intentional community and engage in deep discovery conversations so that you can move out of isolation and into an expanded experience of belonging to the unity of life;
The enlightened perspective that death, dying, grief and loss are natural aspects of life and essential parts of a collective, evolutionary process, and that by engaging in deep healing you are participating in creating a better world;
The ability to make conscious choices which will enhance your peace of mind and creative possibilities.

The Foundation Course is run by members of the Choosing Life Team:

Sundy Gilchrist, Mark Mullis, Janie Nolan, Jackie O’Carroll, Karen Scott and Ele Waters. They all have their own professional expertise as well as their share of personal grief and losses. After participating in the Essential Skills for Grieving Well and the Facilitator Training, they now join together as the Choosing ife Team to facilitate the Foundation Course and support the spread of this project.

INBTRODUCTORY SESSIONS FOR THE NEXT FOUNDATION COURSES WILL BE HELD AS FOLLOWS:

Sundy Gilchrist:

Mark Mullis:

Janie Nolan:

Jackie O’Carroll:

Karen Scott: Introductory Session Wednesday February 2, 7-9pm