Dark Woods Grief Tending & Ritual Facilitation Training
Begins April 2025
An 8 Month Professional Training for
Therapists, Visionary Leaders & Alchemists
Space is limited to 14 participants
The Structure
BEGINS April 2025
- We meet on Zoom 2-3x per month over 8 months (April 22nd-November 25th) for a 3 hour training session. There are 16 calls in total plus several bonus calls for a total of 50+ hours of online training.
- We meet in-person for 3x live training retreats throughout the year at Halfmoon Haven on the West Coast of BC (near + easily accessible from Vancouver) for a total of 115+ hours of live, in person training.
- 2025 Training Retreat Dates are as follows: May 9-12th, Sept 18-22nd, Nov 6-10th.
- The training also requires participation & observation of Through the Dark Woods – Real Life Skills for Navigating Grief & Trauma group counselling sessions. These sessions typically take place 2x per month on Monday evenings from 5-7pm (Vancouver/LA time) & 1x per month on Wednesday mornings from 9:30am-11am (Vancouver/LA time). **You do not need to attend every session, but we strongly recommend you attend regularly throughout the year.** In these sessions you will learn grief-tending practices & processes you can use with your own groups. You will also have the opportunity to work with and process your own grief within this space. A year subscription to this group is included in the cost of the training.
- Return from the Underworld Course – 12 modules of practices + tools you can use with private clients + groups. You will be guided via email prompts to work through several modules + practices from this course each month throughout the training.
- Lifetime access to Through the Dark Woods online community forum + training material, including bonus material added in future years.
- 2025 Dark Woods of Grief Training Manual
- 6 x 45 minute mentoring sessions with Josea: These are somatic-based check-in sessions to support your own personal growth and to help you navigate any growth edges arising for you throughout the training, as well as the opportunity to have Josea’s support & reflection around planning, marketing & facilitating your own groups. These sessions are not therapy, although they may have a supportive/therapeutic aspect to them. All sessions must be used by December 1st 2025.
- There are no live calls in August as we follow the natural rhythms of the Earth and hold this as an integration/slowing down month. It is recommended that you book 1:1 mentoring sessions with Josea and review course material during this time. It is also a good time to start planning your own offerings!
- The September & November retreats are an opportunity for each participant in this cohort to practice offering/facilitating within our group. You will receive support from Josea to plan your offering, and you will receive compassionate & authentic feedback from the group and our team.
- Cost of accommodation is not included due to variable options from camping to private rooms – please expect to pay an additional $725-1225 USD in accommodation costs (approx. $250-$400 per retreat) depending upon your accommodation choice. Accommodation options include private rooms, shared rooms + (limited) camping also available.
- View PDF of live zoom call dates + training retreat dates HERE
Pricing Details
SPACE IS LIMITED TO 14 PARTICIPANTS
REGISTER IN ADVANCE TO ENSURE YOUR SPOT.
When you register, you pay a $500 USD deposit. This deposit is 50% refundable before December 21st, and non-refundable after that date.
2 partial scholarship spots available (BIPOC folks only)
But what will I actually
do with this training?
I will say a lot more below about the value of grief-tending and ritual facilitation, but for a moment let’s get really practical.
You’re thinking of paying $6000ish to do this training. It seems interesting, maybe even exciting, but is it a pragmatic choice in a world where groceries and gas are rising in cost seemingly every week?
Is it worth it from a financial perspective?
How will this really support you in your life, both financially and in other ways?
People need a place to grieve together in every community.
It is SO needed & wanted, and the world needs more facilitators who know how to hold this kind of space.
Since I started offering grief rituals on Salt Spring Island in 2018, people have traveled from far and wide to attend.
People hear about it from even further away, and write to ask if I will come there and offer a ritual or if I know anyone offering grief circles in this style. If I wanted to make a life of traveling and offering rituals every weekend, I could easily do it. The thing is, I don’t really like traveling. I believe in local, and I want to be at home and build my community here.
People are willing to pay for this kind of help.
When you complete this training, you will be able to facilitate groups in your own community on a regular basis. Offering 2-3 weekend retreats or day-long rituals will recoup the cost of the training.
This can be not only a great income source on its own, but if you are a counselor, healer or health practitioner in your community, offering these group sessions and/or retreats can be a great way to promote your 1:1 work.
Not to mention this is an amazing way of building community. When groups do this work together, they almost instantly feel closer, more trusting of and more connected with each other. With the world becoming more and more unstable every year, the value of building community around you at this time is priceless.
Another benefit of this training is the trauma-informed aspect. If you are working with vulnerable people in any sector, becoming a trauma-informed practitioner is so important. You will leave this training with an understanding of how to support both yourself and others to navigate trauma in a safe & truly helpful way.
And there is another less-spoken about part to this as well. Being trauma-informed doesn’t necessarily mean you are grief-informed. Being able to differentiate between when someone is grieving vs. in a trauma state is very important. This training will also give you that.
But what about you, and your energy levels and health? Many practitioners in the health industry – from counselors, social workers, & addiction support workers to doctors, nurses, massage therapists, & intake staff at any of these places – struggle with taking on too much from their clients. This training will teach you how to differentiate between your own and others’ energy & emotion so you can maintain deep joy, health & vitality while supporting others who are struggling in the dark woods of grief & trauma.
About Grief Tending and Ritual
This offering emerged from years of facilitating grief rituals & grief tending practices for individual clients and groups. Within these spaces incredible transformation occurs on an individual, ancestral, and community level.
After a few years of facilitating this work, I realized that I would never be unemployed again.
There is so much need for this work. People need to grieve in community.
I can’t possibly be everywhere it is needed, which led me to dreaming of training many others to hold this work. 2025 will be the third cohort of this training, and we now have practitioners offering groups and rituals all over North America and even in France & the Netherlands!
I envision every town, community, & organization having someone trained and confident in holding space for grief, and specifically grief ritual when it is needed. So much more is needed!
Thanks to the destructive force of colonization, there is a foundational lack of grief and ritual literacy these days.
This is not a vague coincidence. Colonial forces banned healing rituals & ceremonies, both in old Europe and in North America, because they are the most powerful way to bring unity and strength amongst the people.
Grief ritual is a radical thing to offer. It is an act of decolonization.
The last 8 years of my life, I have been on a committed journey of studying, practicing, remembering, and bridging these old ways back into the world.
So many people are feeling the stress of ecological change & humanitarian crises, and are simultaneously holding their own personal and ancestral grief and traumas.
It is almost an impossible task to orient to the individual, transgenerational and ecological grief unless we are held by communal ritual & practices.
If we cannot access safe space to process our grief and trauma, our tendency is to instead act out habitual trauma responses, creating even more destruction to ourselves and everything around us.
We need these spaces.
There is intelligence to our trauma responses in that they are pointing towards the places our nervous systems want to heal, and they are quite literally begging to be transformed in order for a more beautiful world to be created.
We must, now, cultivate the safe spaces within our communities so needed at this time for humanity to transform our collective pain into medicine.
A long time ago, we knew how to do this. Many of us remember it in our bones. Can you feel it?
Let’s build the skills and practices needed to midwife the world we want to pass on to the future generations.
We can do this, together.
I believe that ritual and grief literacy is key for humanity to access the gifts lying hidden within our individual and collective trauma and pain.
Becoming a Grief Ritual Facilitator:
Your Role in Collective Healing
This work calls to some of us deep within our souls, as if our willingness to step into the shadows with others was forged over many lifetimes.
And still, as humans, we need community and mentorship to guide us along our path.
As a somatic trauma therapist and grief ritual facilitator, I am infinitely grateful for my teachers & mentors and the opportunity to pass on the teachings.
There is so much work to do and we need more individuals willing to learn how to hold safe spaces for this critical work of transformation..
Holding ritual space for grief tending is an incredibly important role (and privilege) and this training was designed to support you in the personal healing and skill development required to step into that role in a way that supports rather than diminishes your wellbeing.
Would you love to:
- Gain more ease and confidence in sitting with and supporting the grief of others
- Be initiated into deeper personal and ancestral healing
- Feel empowered to step into your own unique gifts
- Learn enhanced energetic and nervous system care for space holders
- Build confidence as a community leader & visionary
- Get connected to a network of others committed to personal and collective healing
- Help build a foundation for grief literacy for future generations
- Access greater joy from a place of service to the world
This training could be for you!
the
Overview
This is an 8 month program beginning in April 2025.
The intention with this training is that you will hone skills in tending grief for your clients, friends, family and community.
You will leave the training feeling capable of supporting friends/family in times of need through grief tending practices and ritual facilitation.
Those of you who are already counsellors, healers or space holders of some form or another in your community may feel confident facilitating larger scale grief rituals or grief tending circles/support groups in your communities.
You will have the opportunity to look deeply into any of your own current or past unprocessed grief and trauma and be held in a container of people who are committed to their own, each other’s, and the collective healing.
Because doing the work consistently ourselves is a big part of what qualifies us to hold it for others!
Each participant will throughout the program co-facilitate a grief ritual with guidance and real-time mentorship from Josea, as well as follow up and integration of the teachings via Zoom.
Pricing Details
$5555 uSD + Deposit + GST (5%)
PAyMEnt Plans available
PAyMEnt Plans available
What is Included:
- 16+ live zoom training calls including guest teachers
- Through The Dark Woods membership for one year
- 1x 4 day training retreat and 2x 5 day training retreats
- Beautiful organic food at retreats made with love.
- 6 x 45 minute mentoring calls with Josea
- Opportunity for ongoing mentoring (Year 2 Internship) with Josea + Dark Woods Team
When you register, you pay a $500 USD deposit. This deposit is 50% refundable before December 21st, and non-refundable after that date.
Then, there are 8 monthly payments of $725 USD or Pay In Full $5555 USD.
Alternative payment plans may be arranged depending on need.
2 partial scholarship spots available (BIPOC folks only)
Mentorship Style Training
This is an 8 month, deeply transformational journey into the depths of what it is to hold space for deep grief + suffering.
If it goes well, we also might build a mentoring relationship that lasts years.
A mentorship-style training asks you to not only receive passively, but to give 100% of yourself to it.
This training will stretch your capacity and ask you to show up in new ways to face the places within yourself that you may not have welcomed before.
Here’s the deal:
You bring your full self – your inquiries, questions and commitment to transform anything that stands in your way.
I will bring my full self – I’ll offer knowledge, support, guidance, experience and a little bit of comedic relief.
I want to support you to embody and carry this work in the world in a real, pragmatic way. If that’s what you’re looking for, let’s do it.
how to apply
enrolment process
Start by filling out this application form HERE.
Once you have filled out the application form you will be invited to book a call with Josea for us both to feel into if the training will be a good fit for you.
If it is decided that you will join, you will be invited to join Through the Dark Woods Membership sessions beginning in January and will receive instructions on preparation for the training.
Eligibility
Prerequisites: Anyone can join the training, but you must complete at least 3 months participation in Through the Dark Woods - Real Life Skills for Navigating Grief & Trauma as well as completion of the first 6 Modules (approx 2-3 hours of video content to be watched and worked with over 3 months (January - March)
Email or text me if you have questions about any of this.
So much love to you all and thank you for your continued support in both doing this work and bringing it into the world. You are amazing.
For those of you who are called, I can’t wait to speak with you soon!
Deadline to Apply is December 1st.
Start by filling out this short application form below.
faq
The main “credential” needed for this training is having done enough work on your own grief and trauma to be able to differentiate between your own trauma/triggers and your present moment experience. If you have suffered a recent major loss and are still in the depths of grief, this may not be for you. If you’re not sure, you can always apply and we can chat about it in your interview.
While basic counselling skills can be helpful in facilitating this work and this is NOT a basic counselling skills training, it is not necessary to be a counsellor or psychotherapist or have other credentials to facilitate grief work in the way it is taught in this training.
This course is open to anyone and is especially beneficial to mental health professionals, community organizers, healing arts practitioners, teachers, mindfulness practitioners, coaches, and anyone seeking to find a greater literacy and skills in grief work, ritual practice, and space holding in service to community wellbeing. This is an education program and not a licenser program, although you will receive a certificate upon completion.
This program is NOT for those seeking a container specifically and primarily to work on their own trauma. While healing can and will happen in this container, it is also a professional training, and students will be expected to be engaging outside support i.e. working with a therapist, supportive friends & community, as well as their own inner resource to process any triggers or material that surfaces within the training. If you’re not sure, fill out the application and we can explore this more together.
- Through the Dark Woods is a part of the training. These sessions typically take place 2x per month on Monday evenings from 5-7pm (Vancouver/LA time) & 1x per month on Wednesday mornings from 9:30am-11am (Vancouver/LA time)
- The facilitator training also meets 2-3 x per month on Tuesday mornings from 10am – 1pm PST
- In addition, there are 3 in person training retreats: 1x 4 day training retreat May 9-12th, and 2x 5 day training retreats Sept 18-22nd & Nov 6-10th
You will receive a certificate of completion when you reach the end of the training. This certificate acknowledges your mentorship with me and my endorsement of your facilitation and grief tending skills. It is like a blessing for you to bring your unique gifts into the world using these ways as a vehicle.
Ritual is a powerful way of making what is an invisible internal process visible and tangible. Because of the physical movements and actions that take place in ritual which represent the internal movements and changes taking place, it is innately somatic.
It allows the use of the collective energy to hold and meet a charge in the nervous system that could not otherwise be met and processed. Most indigenous cultures worldwide use some form of ritual to process grief and trauma.
As people move through the steps in the various forms of grief rituals I’ll teach you, there is a transformation that happens that is far different than what can occur in 1:1 therapy or self-healing work. I believe collective, community ritual is critical to embodied healthy culture.
Definitely not. This is a year long training and we journey very deep together. We begin in April 2025 and once the journey has set sail, the ship will not reenter port again until 2026! Come now or come not! Likewise, this is NOT a monthly membership program. Once you commit, you will be given one of 14 spots and are expected to stay committed for the full year!
meet josea
About Your Facilitator
I’m committed to helping people to access the innate wisdom of their physical & emotional bodies as a doorway to deeper awakening and freedom. I believe that while 1:1 therapy can be profound and life changing, there are things that can only be healed in the presence of community/group work.
Meet Your Facilitators
Josea Tamira Crossley
primary mentor/teacher/guide
I have over 22 years of study and experience and have been facilitating Grief Ritual and Process work for the past 7 years. My work is grounded in training in Somatic Therapy, Attachment Theory, Healing Sexual Trauma, Deep Nature Connection, Visionary Craniosacral therapy, SER, Shamanic Study, Holistic Nutrition and Yoga.
I have trained with Francis Weller (author, Wild Edge of Sorrow), Mariah Moser (Relational Somatic Psychotherapy), Peter Levine (SE), Diane Poole Heller (DARe), Irene Lyon (SmartBodySmartMind), Elizabeth Claire Burr (CST, SER & Vijnana Yoga), Sonara Medicine Wolf & 8 Shields/Connection 1st Institute.
I believe firmly in the intertwined health of individual, community & ecosystem. As the world falls apart around us, we need each other more than ever. If you feel called, I am so looking forward to meeting you in retreat.
Guest Teachers
Elizabeth Claire Burr
Co-facilitator & Support
Elizabeth has been studying the Vajrayana & Nature of Mind teachings in the Tibetan Buddhist Tradition with Mingyur Rinpoche since 2008. **She has taken the Bodhisattva vow, and her deepest aspiration is to support all beings with wisdom and compassion and to practice this in the world as best she can. This has come to manifest in many forms; meditation and yoga teacher, cranial sacral and somatic therapist, founder/owner of a healing arts center, kirtan leader, doula, mothering, mentoring and sacred partnership.
She embodies compassion and joy in a way that is rare in this world, and people often say they experience Love of the Divine, self and each other in a way they haven’t before when being in her presence. She currently resides by the ocean on the traditional territory of the Ligwilda’xw people; the We Wai Kai, Wei Wai Kum and Kwiakah First Nation.
Tim flynn
Co-facilitator & Support
Tim Flynn is a writer, teacher, and crafter of transformative practices. He has a BA Modern Society and Social Thought from UCSC with a focus on Death & Dying studies, an MA in Transformative Arts from JFK University Art & Consciousness program, & ritual performance. He is former faculty of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, and is trained in advanced shamanic programs offered by Tom Cowan and Betsy Burgstrom.He’s spent over 30 years practicing shamanism and related healing processes. Tim also has an extensive background in movement including dance and martial arts. He continues to immerse himself in celtic ancestral myth, story, and recovered traditions. A widower, Tim is raising his two children in the high desert of Central Oregon. You can read Tims blog and his book, Wilder Grief at alchemistsjournal.com.
Jane Spielman
Co-mentor & Retreat Support
Jane worked as an educator for 50 years, supporting transformative, inquiry-based literacy for children from birth through teenagers to undergraduate and graduate teacher candidates. She helped build trauma and healing informed school programs all over New York City that got to the root of what was in the way of student’s learning. When her wife of over 3 decades fell ill, she began her study of caregiving and grief. Jane believes that learning how to grieve and face trauma in safe-enough spaces is essential to physical, emotional and spiritual life; and is absolutely essential in the process of discovering the gifts we have to offer the world.
Jane has studied with Zen and Tibetan Buddhist masters, hospice providers and is a graduating student in the Dark Woods Grief Tending & Ritual Facilitation Training. Her work is grounded in these lineages as well as Somatic tools, Internal Family Systems work & Reiki.
Jane is a Jewish anti-Zionist who believes we were born for these times, and a lifelong activist, with a focus on allyship in anti-colonist struggles. She is also a proud lesbian who has always represented and collaborated with other LGBTQ2S folx.
Jane has built her own active practice in Sow the Seeds of Healing to support individuals as well as groups in somatic grief and trauma work.
“Q” Christine Hrvatin
Co-facilitator for Retreats
Christine, or Q, is one of my dearest friends in this world and has supported me through so many of my own personal moments of deep grief. She carries a depth of wisdom and love that I believe comes partly from growing up with a grandmother who was born in the Old Country of Yugoslavia and raised in a true village, and partly from being so deeply called to breaking from worn out convention and following her own soul-song in this world. You can read her full bio and check out her work at coherentmind.ca.
Through practices that work with the nervous system & rewiring the brain learned through my studies in Somatic Therapy, Attachment Theory, Healing Sexual Trauma, Deep Nature Connection, Craniosacral therapy, Shamanic Study, Tibetan Buddhism and Yoga, I’ve learned to support people to completely transform how they experience the world and themselves.
I believe that for each person, your gifts are directly related to your wounds, and it is only through deep listening and care of the soul that you will fully remember who you are and what you are here to give to the world.
I believe that every single person, including you, has something to offer to this liminal time we are living in.
In terms of walking through the dark woods and returning with gifts, I am a living, breathing example, and this work is my offering to you.
I grew up fast, having to take care of myself almost entirely on my own. There was not much space for safety, nervous system regulation and healthy relationship to self or other in my first 16 years in the world. But slowly, I started to find it.
Like someone who is thirsty beyond comprehension, I drank it in. I made it sacred.
Are there things like that for you? What do you consider as sacred as water? That you would walk miles for, carrying a heavy load? What are you longing for in your bones?
It is my mission to create spaces in this world where people can experience enough safety & belonging, and can gain enough skillfulness, to be able to heal.
The body does the rest.
I want this for you.
I have trained with expert grief facilitator Francis Weller (author, Wild Edge of Sorrow), as well as key Somatic & Relational Therapy teachers Mariah Moser (Relational Somatic Psychotherapy), Peter Levine (SE), Diane Poole Heller (DARe), Irene Lyon (SmartBodySmartMind), & the 8 Shields Institute.
I have held grief-tent space at gatherings of 150+ people. I have held grief rituals in my community for the past 7 years, and curated a unique online space for grief process work since the beginning of the recent pandemic.
To this date, I’ve supported hundreds of people to change their lives. To transform their wounds – and the most difficult, painful parts of their experience – into gifts.
This year I am training a group of brave humans to do what I do. To not only walk through the dark woods, but to guide others through as well. If you feel the resonant call, I hope you’ll join me!
