„Embracing Life's Closure: Training on Death and Dying“
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Navigating Transitions With Wisdom and Empathy with Aneesha Dillon
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4 modules
6 November 2024 - 7 September 2025
This training is about making friends with death, choosing to acknowledge death as a natural part of our life journey. In every module we will have many opportunities—exercises, sharings, meditations--to open up to the deep mystery of death, with curiosity, trust, and an open heart. Softening the heart, we can open the door to our humanity through this utterly human experience of death and dying.
This will be a personal exploration of beliefs, attitudes and feelings about aging, illness, and death. As well, we will learn about the physical and medical aspects of dying, and what to expect in the weeks, days, hours, and minutes before death. We’ll learn about the psychological and emotional issues that can arise both in the dying person and the family who are there supporting. We’ll explore how to support clients in sensitive conversations, and through your presence, sitting silently at the bedside.
Death of the physical body is an event that virtually everyone will pass through. And so, this training is for everyone who has an interest in learning more deeply about death and dying, and about what to expect at the end of life.
And particularly, this training is for people who work with people, especially as therapists, counselors, and personal growth teachers. Older clients often need to talk about issues connected with aging, illness, death, loss, and grief.
This training we will ready ourselves for such conversations.
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Who is this training for?
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Exposing social conditioning that keeps death in the dark, and fuels fears and worries we carry about aging and dying.
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Grief, loss, letting go, and the changes we encounter in body and mind as we age.
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Personal life review—what is working well in your life, and what needs to be changed or left behind?
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Regrets, unfinished emotional business, forgiveness, gratitude
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What are the actual physical symptoms of dying, in the months, weeks, days, and hours leading up to death
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Practicing presence at the bedside
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What are Hospice Care and Palliative Care?
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Pre-death altered states and Near Death Experiences (NDEs)
What will participants take away? What skills will be gained?
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We will study and practice working with an end of life Counseling/Coaching method called “The Best Three Months”. In this process, we explore five Life Domains—the Physical body, the Emotions and relationships, the Spiritual Domain, the Life Legacy/Meaning/Purpose Domain, and After Death Care, to offer a way for people who face a terminal diagnosis to review their life.
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How to talk about death with those with a terminal illness.
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Invaluable practical information from medical and hospice professionals about how we die.
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Practices that teach how conscious touch, music, and simply silent presence, can provide comfort for someone who is dying.
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We will learn how to conduct a “Death Café” as a tool for community outreach.
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We will come to understand that to live with an awareness of our mortality will only increase the wonder, joy, and fulfillment of living life with totality in the present moment.
What will be addressed?
General Description
For far too long, our Western cultures have pushed Death, and the process of Dying that leads up to it, deep into a dark and scary closet, as ‘out of sight’ as possible, to be avoided at all cost. For most of our human history, old age and death were considered a natural happening—sad, grief-laden—but a family, community event, just as birth is.
For the last two centuries death has been medicalized and hidden away in hospitals and old -age homes, and we have lost the familiarity with death that all humans knew until modern times. Now, almost nobody wants to talk about death, or see it, or think about it; we have learned to fear this deeply significant life transition. In doing so, we have closed our hearts to one of the most significant truths of Nature.
There is a new movement afoot; a movement to bring aging, dying, and death out of the closet and into the light of a new heart-centered understanding. We can re-consider all our past conditioning about these topics, and perhaps find a new acceptance, compassion, and equanimity for ourselves and all creatures, all of nature.
November 6-10, 2024
Module 1
The first module of the training will offer an opening to the many complex human issues and emotions that are likely to arise for all of us at the End of Life. Death asks us to look deeper, to review our life, and to ask “What have I done?” “Who have I loved, and been loved by?”, “What has been the significance of my life?”, “How did I contribute to make the world a kinder, more loving place?”. We will explore our attitudes about death, society’s taboos, and personal fears that we carry unconsciously. We’ll bring awareness to our own inner emotional barriers that can prevent us from experiencing a peaceful death. Now is the time when we can take positive steps to heal some of the early inner wounds that prevent forgiveness, humility, and the possibility of deep relaxation and let-go at the end of life.
March 12-16, 2025
Module 2
In the second module, we will take a deep dive into all aspects death, and of the dying process. Death of the body is natural and inevitable, and we’ll learn the stages of how the physical body dies. We will explore ways to support a dying person; We’ll learn practices and meditations to bring calm and relaxation. Listening practices, touch practices, using music, help with legacy projects, supporting personal spiritual practices, and more. We will also learn about the practical aspects that arise when we die, and the importance of clearing up unfinished emotional and practical business beforehand. We will discuss medical care, hospice and palliative care; legal aspects--wills, trusts, and distribution of belongings; memorial services, life celebrations.
June 18-22, 2025
Module 3
In the third module, we will focus on how to share these teachings about death and dying with friends, individual clients, with families, and also in a group/class format. We’ll learn how to work with the “Best Three Months” process, an End of Life exploration and Coaching method, originally designed at the Conscious Dying Institute in the U.S. Another group tool we’ll explore is the “Death Café”, an informal gathering to open a space for people to talk and share their feelings and thoughts about Death. And we will practice different ways to be at the bedside of a dying person and tools of comfort and care to support peace and acceptance at the end of life.
September 6-7, 2025
Module 4
Two-day online training. This is the time for questions and answers and for integrating all knowledge, practices, and experiences.
Practical info
The duration of training is 190 hours. including at least 20 hours of independent exchange sessions between training.
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Parts I, II, and III will be residential and will take place in Lithuania at the "Shanti Resort" rural homestead in Trakai district, Lithuania (how to find it and more info about the resort at www.shantiresort.lt).
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Part IV will be held online via Zoom over 2 days.
Training will be held in English. with a translation into Lithuanian.
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Dates:
Module I. 2024 November 6-10, Residential, 5 days.
Module II. 2025 March 12-16, Residential, 5 days.
Module III. 2025 June 18-22, Residential, 5 days.
Module IV. 2025 September 6-7, online, on the Zoom platform, 2 days.
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Registration and information:
Amiya tel. +37068381991
email: haraamiya@gmail.com