Roots of Ritual

Grief Tending Foundations Facilitation Training
- Be an Anchor for Healing in Your Community -

4 Month Professional Online Training Starts March 24th, 2026

Early Bird Pricing $3000 usd or $397/month for 8 months
Early Bird Ends February 1st, 2026
Space is Limited

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You KNow you'r'e here to hold space for transformation & Healing...

Perhaps you're Already Doing it on some level -
as a therapist, guide, or coach.

But You're REady for something DEEPER

 You’d love to expand your skillset so you can support your clients & community to alchemize their deepest pain & suffering into medicine. You’re looking to go beyond theory & fine tune your level of presence, so you can feel confident in meeting the moment, no matter the challenge in front of you. You want real, tangible skills & structures that you can use in today’s world to meet the needs of the folks you’d love to help. 

You’d love to be held, yourself, in a circle of other practitioners who aren’t afraid to be in it together. 

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 unique gifts
  • Deepen your understanding & embodiment of how to do this work without burning out through nervous system care for space holders
  • Build confidence as a community leader & visionary
  • Deepen into 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!

I have a vision of what's possible when more of us are equipped to tend grief in a deeply soulful way in our communities. 

I see a world where pain isn’t pushed away or suppressed, but transmuted into gifts. 

Where ritual creates a sense of belonging. 

Where our broken hearts become pathways to deeper connection.

I dream of somatic-based grief tending spaces in every community, every organization, every gathering place. Places where we can unravel from the colonized mindsets that separate us from our emotions, from each other, from the Earth. Places where we remember that grief and trauma are not problems to be solved, but initiatory energies we need to honor and alchemize. 

In these times of collective upheaval, ecological crisis, and profound fracturing of our communities...

…the call for those who can hold space for grief has never been more urgent. 

Many of you have been asking for a more accessible way to learn this work, and I’ve been listening.

I’m excited to announce a new doorway into this work: 

Roots of Ritual: Grief Tending Foundations (Online Training)

josea-tamira-crossley-geometric-icon-small

This 4 Month online journey guides you through the foundations of grief tending & Ritual Facilitation while honoUring the sacred & POWERFUL nature of DEEP RITUAL WORK

You’ll develop practical facilitation skills grounded in somatic awareness and ancestral wisdom, all while being held in a circle of fellow practitioners committed to bringing this essential healing back to their communities.

No travel required – just your willingness to step into this sacred work from wherever you call home.

From March through June 2026, you’ll receive 9x pre-recorded (video, transcripts & PDF notes) modules covering foundational grief tending & ritual facilitation skills. 

We will gather for weekly live discussion & practice calls to deepen into the material you are learning via the prerecorded sessions. We will take one integration week per month, for a total of 10 live calls.  This is an opportunity to receive direct mentoring & guidance, and to be inspired by the collective wisdom of our cohort of learners. 

You will also receive access to our supportive community forum and our live community Grief & Praise sessions for grievers – a space where you can bring your own grief, as well as learn a powerful model for grief tending support groups. 

We will work together to build your capacity to create grief tending spaces where pain can transform into medicine – where broken hearts become pathways to deeper connection.

This training has been carefully curated to bring the potency of grief tending & foundations of ritual facilitation work to you, no matter where in the world you reside. 

Please note: I do not teach full-scale ‘Grief Ritual’ in this online training, because I believe that is training that must be done in person due to the intensity & power of ritual work. This training is a prerequisite for our Level 2 Grief Ritual Facilitation Training – more details coming soon!

This training may be calling you if:

  • You've witnessed how unacknowledged grief creates dis-ease in body, mind, spirit, and community
  • You're already holding space for others but would love to deepen your skills and support
  • You sense that ritual and grief tending are missing medicines in our fractured world
  • You yearn to create spaces where people can reconnect with their emotional wholeness
  • You feel a longing to bring these healing ways to your community, organization, or clients
  • You recognize grief tending as essential to decolonization and cultural healing work
  • You envision being part of a network of grief tenders seeding these practices worldwide

There is so much heartbreak in the world at this time, many days I ask myself, how can we go on?

But we must. 💔We must because here we are, and what is the alternative, really? 

There is a saying in Arabic – In’shallah. It more or less translates as, “God willing.” 

I love this, because it is a kind of prayer but also an acknowledgment that we are not, ultimately, in control of what happens. 

Yes, we can affect change. 

Yes, we can create meaningful things in the world, and we certainly are a part of co-creating our own realities. 

Yet, ultimately, the big things, like how and when we and the ones we love the most will die or leave us, are simply not up to us. 

But what we can do is keep showing up. This does not always mean having the right answer. Sometimes it means not knowing anything at all anymore. 

Sometimes it means being open to the unknown in a completely new way. 

Sometimes it means continuing to let our hearts break, rather than going numb. 

As Francis Weller says, “So much depends on a broken heart…”

Trauma Informed Vs. Grief INformed

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.

grief training

Our Journey will unfold Through THESE 10 Modules:

  1. Entering the Dark Woods: The Six Gates of Grief 
  2. Ethics & Diversity: Building Inclusive, Culturally Responsive & Regenerative Ritual Spaces
  3. Understanding Grief, Complex Grief, and Trauma
  4. Somatic Skills for Group & Ritual Spaces Part 1: Basic Somatic Skills
  5. Somatic Skills for Group & Ritual Spaces Part 2: Language & Inquiry for Somatic Deepening
  6. Somatic Skills for Group & Ritual Spaces Part 3: Primal Energy & Movement 
  7. Story as Elder: Myth as Medicine for the Grieving Soul
  8. Tending the Inner Fire: Facilitator Preparation, Energy Clearing & Integration
  9. Ethics & Relational Dynamics: Cultivating Spaces for True Well Being
  10. Planning Your Grief Support Circles: Birthing Your Unique Vision

Throughout our time together, we’ll explore how grief work is fundamentally decolonization work – reclaiming our emotional sovereignty, our right to feel deeply, our connection to ancestral ways of metabolizing loss collectively rather than in isolation. We’ll examine how colonization has severed our relationship with grief and how we can restore these vital practices. 

There is also ample space made for discussion, INQUIRY & questions to deepen your understanding.

The Gifts of This Journey

This is not just a training—it’s an initiatory journey into creating alchemical spaces for suffering to transform into medicine. When you step into the Roots of Ritual Level 1 Training, you receive:

  • 10 Live Group Mentoring & Discussion Circles that will transform how you understand and facilitate grief work. Call dates are March 24 & 31, April 14, 21 & 28, May 12, 19 & 26, and June 9 & 16. Live calls will be held at 11am pacific time, and if there is demand for it we will add a second call later in the day to accommodate different time zones & work schedules (would be 4pm pacific time most likely)
  • 9 Pre-recorded Modules covering foundational principles of grief tending & ritual facilitation
  • 3 Private Mentoring Sessions where I’ll hold space for your own process, your questions, and your emerging vision (additional 1:1 sessions available at $200 USD per hour) 
  • Lifetime Access to the Dark Woods Online Community Forum—a digital hearth where our community gathers
  • The Return from the Underworld Course—12 additional modules of practices & tools that will help inform your learning
  • The 2026 Roots of Ritual: Grief Tending Foundations Manual—written with both practical guidance and soul wisdom
  • One Year Membership to our Dark Woods Grief Support Group, where you’ll both receive and observe the work in action
A Vision Unfolding

This Level 1 online training is part of a larger vision. It is the foundation, the first spiral of the journey, which you may choose to follow with our Level 2 training which will take place in Fall 2026 online &  in retreat on the West Coast of BC, and *hopefully* in other key locations in the world soon! 

Calling in the Circle…

Is Your Soul Calling You to This Work?

Listen deeply, because this training will ask much of you. It will invite you to face your own ungrieved losses, to stretch beyond comfort, to step into leadership in ways that may feel frightening at first.

This is a mentorship-style training – not a passive consumption of information, but a mutual commitment to transformation. 

As you step closer to your fullest potential as a leader and space holder, old wounds tied to your gifts may arise. 

A Call to the

Brave

Due to the deep nature of this work, it isn’t for everyone. You will be asked to consistently reflect on your personal triggers and blind spots. Grief work – especially grief tending work – asks you to own and integrate all parts of self. Sometimes it isn’t fun,  but it always leads to greater freedom & sovereignty. 

This means having a high degree of ability to self-reflect and reach out for support if you are struggling with any of the material or context that is presented. 

What you will learn can (and will most likely!)  bring up unresolved grief & trauma in you, and this is a wonderful opportunity! 

This training asks you to arrive with your grown-up pants on; asking for what you need and being courageous enough to receive support. 

We are looking for people who are willing to feel the uncomfortable stuff and face difficult terrain with courage and heart. 

It is strongly recommended that you plan to work with a trained Somatic Therapist for a minimum of 5-6 sessions throughout the training. If you aren’t already connected to someone who offers this work, we can offer recommendations. 

The time is now and YOU are needed.

The level of suffering in the world is great at this time.

Systems are collapsing. Communities are fragmenting. Hearts are breaking in isolation.

And yet – when grief is properly tended, it becomes compost for new life, for vision, for the world we know is possible.

This is decolonization work at its core – reclaiming our right to feel, to break open, to be held by community rather than shamed for our vulnerability.

Are you ready to commit to what it takes to step into your gifts, your fullest presence + offering in the world?

Are you ready to go beyond your comfort zone to claim the life & work you most long for?

If something in you is trembling with both fear and recognition – that is a good sign.

The Dark Woods are calling.

Will you answer?

With fierce love and commitment to creating a world where grief has its rightful place,

Josea

APPLY HERE NOW

The Commitment:

The training includes 1:1 mentoring as well as many other supportive components, and is designed carefully to empower you to navigate these places with grace.

Yet still, you need to be prepared to walk through the gates of initiation that prepare you to hold powerful space for others. This is why registration for this training is also by application only. 

The Early Bird Investment for this journey is $3,000 USD or 8 monthly payments of $397 USD. 
(Early Bird Pricing Ends February 1st – regular price is $3,500 USD – BIPOC Scholarships available) 

We all need support on the journey of stepping into our gifts as the leaders and co-creators of the world we envision for the future. 

This training offers you a way to nurture your own leadership by being in a deeply supportive cohort of others who are walking the same path. 

Are you ready to make a bold commitment to yourself and to this work?

To begin your application journey or to speak with me about whether this path is right for you, you can apply at the button below.

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"Thanks Josea...

...for your wisdom, curiosity, care and attention during the course. It was a privilege and a gift to be in circle with everyone. I cherished the time we spent in vulnerable presence with each other. I learned much about holding the space for grief and being held by community, ancestors and the earth.”

~ Ahava Shira

"The work I did with Josea Tamira Crossley in 2015 and 2016 literally changed my life and was part of what saved my life from the brink of serious breakdown. Josea is hands down my go to expert on how grief and trauma are held in the body and how as a community we can come together for deep healing. I have never met someone so committed to living the truth of what they teach. Truly trauma informed in her approach, if grief is even remotely something you're dealing with (even collective grief) working with Josea is necessary work! Big claim i know. I stand by it."

~ Emma McCann