“Like birth, we want to bring death back where it belongs; in the hands and hearts of loved ones, in the home and community, in sacred space. We want to bring back touch, care, love, connection and to uphold the importance of death as a holy threshold and transition. We want to change the narrative around death, no more euphemisms, no more dirty words, no more taboos. We honour grief; our own, each others and that of the ancestors and the world.” Founding statement from 2017

Our End of Life Doula Preparation course is radical, deep and very much what is needed in our world at this time. We gather in circles, in community, and we learn through the sharing of stories, experience and wisdom. Our facilitators are just that, holders of space and we are all learning from the teacher that is Death. The course is 12 – 18 months in length and comprises of a 4 day face to face retreat and then a 12 month online inquiry with your cohort of fellow pilgrims on this journey. 

Sacred Circle doula preparation occupies a space between 2 worlds; the mainstream world as it is where death is primarily seen as a medical event and a different paradigm. We are calling into being a world where death and grief are woven through, and welcomed in, our communities. Where death and grief consciousness is commonplace and we return, together, to right relationship with land, place and space; a deep remembering of the ancient ways for our modern times. 

We prepare doulas to bridge between the mainstream, medicalised world of the death industry infusing every interaction with presence and care; while simultaneously strengthening the community connections and threads of story that will carry us forwards as our systems and institutions of care struggle and fail to meet our dying, dead and bereaved well. Some of our practices include sharing circles, wholesome ritual, keening and lamenting, grief ceremony, home care of a dead body, social justice and care of the bereaved following sudden and violent deaths. 

Doulas cannot work in isolation; nor can we attend to another when we have unresolved feelings around our own mortality; so this preparation course is as much about yourself and your relationship with death and then being in community as it is anything else. 

The new redesigned course is between 12 to 18 months long depending on how soon you sign up before the face to face aspect of the course. 

Please see our Pricing Policy for more information about how we came to our price, financial accessibility and the bursary fund which is available to doulas from communities traditionally under-represented in this work.

The new Course Content looks like this:

1. Upon registration you are immediately welcomed into our community and can join our weekly Zoom calls and facebook group
2. You are part of the online community forum hosted in our password protected part of our website
3. You get a face to face residential retreat (5 nights / 4 days)
4. The face to face experience will be led by a lead facilitator with between 2 and 4 co-facilitators
5. On the retreat you will cover all the aspects of the course listed below
6. At the retreat we give you the Journey with Death course and workbook which you can start
7. You will meet your cohort of fellow students of death and contract together for the following 12 months
8. You will be facilitated by our incredible team through the 12 months journey with death together with your cohort (you are no longer obliged to take a mentor but we heartily recommend it if you can)
9. The Zoom calls with Alexandra and the wider community happen once or twice a week and you have lifetime access to the Zoom calls for as long as they sustain
10. The wider community holding provides you with an established global community of contacts, networks and resources; we have a shared set of ethics and standards which we mutually adhere to
11. To be considered a Sacred Circle doula will afford you a respectable reputation grounded in strong ethics; our reputation is for providing robust radical, ethical and sustainable preparation for death and service

What is covered in the Face to Face aspect of the Course?

1. Welcome, Grounding, Contracting, Consent Process
2. Ceremony and Ritual (throughout the whole time together)
3. Mapping the Ancestral Landscape
4. The Nature of Trauma and Attachment (and its impact on a “good death”)
5. Healing Trauma (Grief is the Medicine)
6. Introduction to Keening and Lament (Song, Sound and Silence workshop)
7. The timeline of death and grief (and how a doula can serve)
8. What to expect at a death
9. Laying out the Dead (practical workshop)
10. Grief Ceremony (a rare cathartic opportunity)
11. Living Wake
12. Mapping your pathway forward and the importance of a Strong Ending

The “vibe” of the course is earthy, radical, loving, transformative, more funny and light than you might imagine but also deep, we encounter our shadows, we explore the dark places together. The whole experience is woven together with ritual and ceremony; held very consciously with the Unseen; we are working with Land, Place and Space and so every group constellation and every location will make each course completely different. The facilitators all bring their unique and diverse skills but we all share a secular but spiritual approach rooted in Earth based traditions, we embrace animism and ancestral work, although the word “shamanic” is overused and not quite culturally relevant it does go some way to describing the way that we work. We work with story; we sit and learn to listen deeply by listening to each other’s stories; much of the experience is beyond words; we explore sound and silence together including keening (which if you don’t know what this is you may wish to look it up before you come), we expect people might very well cry a lot (and we welcome it if you do) and we do not fix, we will not stem your tears. Our courses invariably include a lot of laughter and silliness as well; always, we believe, in a respectful way.

If you would like to hear some voices of those who have gone before you in this work do check out our podcast “Conversations with Death” for a diverse range of experience of the course and if you have any questions please email our team on [email protected] 

The course begins the moment you sign up. The number of places for 2027 is limited so don't hold back if you feel called! We ask you to sign up according to which face to face course you wish to attend (details and dates below) but do remember the course is 18 months long and requires a commitment to personal study, engagement in the Journey with Death and the community as well as the Retreat. Make sure you read our student agreement and if you have any questions before you commit then throughout 2027 we will be holding Zoom meetings to answer questions; so email [email protected] to get on those calls or to add your question (they will be recorded). 

One last but rather important thing; please note that the residential retreats take place in centres with multiple beds in rooms. We thought long and hard about how to allocate rooms and whether we should do the "single room supplement" thing but often people need a single room because of a disability so it would be exclusionary of us to make them more expensive. Instead the rooms will be allocated according to people's needs (to the best of our ability) which means if you have a disability or very high priority for a single room you can email us on [email protected] to see if there are any single rooms available before you sign up; and we will hold it for you while you join. What that means for the rest of us (the shy, the snorers and the restless... is that we need to be prepared in advance to share and bring earplugs)... It's all part of the adventure!

If you have any concerns or questions clear them up with us at [email protected] before clicking on the Sign Up button. We're here for you, every step of the way.

This course is really beautiful, gentle and radical at the same time. It has taken form over the past 10 years and we 100% stand behind its integrity, power and impact. 

We hold an anti-colonial and anti-racist stance. We are queer led and actively celebrate and champion LGBTQIA+ folks; so if you are transphobic, homophobic, xenophobic, sexist, racist or a fragile bigot in any way... you are going to struggle immensely. That said, we do know our bigoted kin need space to grieve and lament and grow and learn as well. We just will not allow violence towards anyone in our community; physical, emotional or psychological. So we ask people to only apply if they believe deeply in our ethics and standards and are willing to listen, learn and grow, always. 

The time requirements are 5nights, 4 full days of in-person retreat experience (if you miss any part of that we cannot in clear conscience say you have completed it as every moment of it matters). There are 1 session per month with your cohort called "Check In" sessions, 2 hours per month and require a minimum of 3 hours preparation using our workbook materials as a guide. Additionally there are also 2 hours per month Skills Sessions which are recorded. 

Attendance at the Check Ins is strongly encouraged and if you missed more than 4 in 12 months then we couldn't in clear conscience say you completed the course. Attendance at the Skills Sessions is also encouraged but not mandatory, so long as you watch the recording afterwards. 

There are weekly community zoom calls lasting one hour - they are completely open and voluntary but attendance at them demonstrates the kind of commitment to community and connection that a doula needs, so they are very much there for your own good. 

The course itself a curious mix of intensity and nuance. The in-person retreat is held by world class facilitators and includes deep dive inquiries into Ancestry, Lament and Ceremony. We hold an inclusive, spiritual but secular space (meaning ALL faiths and none are welcome) but we do not shy away from the sacredness of Death. For some people this is strong and challenging and for others they rejoice in it.

The 12 months of online inquiry takes a slow gentle but well held and guided amble through our Course Companion Guide. You travel through this, again with brilliant facilitators and your cohort that you met in person on retreat. The skills we learn and the topics we cover are deep and invite a lifetime of exploration. You are going to need to pay attention and prepare yourself for the calls, simply attending and hoping to vicariously absorb the material will do yourself a disservice. 

So do you have what it takes to sit in Circle with Death as our Teacher? Can you hold your own in group situations because we are not the mollycoddling types! You will need to be able to take responsibility for yourself and for asking for your own needs to be met in a mature way. 

We hold a non-hierarchical space which means we do not treat you as knowing less or being less just because you join as a student and at the same time our facilitators are incredibly experienced in this field of death and dying. If you are an experienced facilitator can you allow yourself to be held and led? 

We ask these questions borne of experience, to help you prepare and to introduce at the very outset the kind of people we know will thrive in this course and to filter out those who are not yet ready. If you suspect you are not yet ready then please do email us for a conversation because you might be... or maybe the Community Educators course would be a stepping stone for you. 

What we are looking for are: 

Mature, self responsible individuals with an established self care practice and some form of regular discipline eg spiritual practice 

and

Humble, open hearted souls who are willing to engage, participate and show up for the Work. 

and

Folks who have support, community and some kind of mentoring and supervision habit.

Fear not, of course we are not looking for the finished article before you even start! The right people will understand why we are setting our stall out like this and even if you know you need support to reach the qualities above then you are definitely our kind of people! 

It's the folks that have none of the above in place that we want to hold carefully and say "not yet... not yet..."

If you DO feel you align with what we are saying then can you imagine the power of sharing space with folks who feel the same call to learn from Death as a Teacher?!

An important note; as a social enterprise we have to strike the balance between generating enough cash flow and turnover to sustain our work; while remaining financially accessible. We know the course is a big financial commitment. Once you sign up - even if you sign up on a payment plan - you are committing to paying at least half of the course cost because you immediately have access to our infrastructure, materials, community and facilitators. Please consider this before signing up because if you later withdraw we may ask you to honour this agreement. In practice we probably will not hold you to paying the rest of the 50% if you are on a payment plan but we will not be able to return to you what you have already paid; we have running costs and relatively high overheads to meet. 

The financial commitment is part of the wider spiritual commitment; and we remain open hearted and compassionate especially in these difficult times to those on low income; we have simply found that people do not extend US the same care and consideration at times, we are not a faceless corporation but humans, doing our very best to offer an amazing service and sustain good work and connect kindred spirits. 

So if you are ready... 
Join us! You are so welcome. 

To meet our 2026 facilitator team see this page MEET THE TEAM HERE and our 2027 facilitator team will be announced around April time.

How long the course is for you depends on when you sign up, there are basically 3 phases; the space between signing up and retreat where you get to explore the materials and join our community calls, read our newsletters and explore our recordings of past skills sessions. 

Then there is the retreat itself, we always try to work around the time of the Autumn Equinox as it is most conducive to the spirit of the Work. 

Then you have an integrative space between the retreat and the start of the 12 months Journey with Death which runs from January after the retreat ends. 

This years retreat venue is the spectacular Trefacwn in Pembrokeshire. The venue itself is just wonderful with comfortable shared accommodation, a fresh water cold swimming pool, sauna and the most beautiful group space you will ever see Ty Sanctaidd (Holy House), a hand built, cob walled roundhouse with log fire and extraordinary acoustics to lament in! 

The venue is very near (walking distance for the fit, a short car ride for the rest of us) the beaches and coastal path of Pembrokeshire, a truly liminal and spiritual experience to be had high up on the clifftops. Nearby is also the sacred well of St Non, a wellspring of renewal and rebirth. 

We will have one of our regular chefs with us to prepare beautiful, locally sourced meals. 

The Retreat content is deep but we go at it gently. The sessions run from 10am - 1pm and 3pm - 6pm with space in between for integration, rest and play. We are toying with the idea of giving folks the opportunity to surrender their phones and tech entirely for the duration; it's just such a shame when the opportunity to deeply retreat gets filled with scrolling on instagram! 

We will arrive on 20th September in the afternoon to check in around 4pm and then dinner will be around 6pm. That first evening we will gather and cover the group agreement and introductions but that is the only evening we work. 

For the 4 subsequent days we follow the 10 - 1 and 3 - 6 pattern, with sharing circle and discussion topics in the morning and skills based sessions in the afternoon. 

We take time to settle into long listening, so you will want to be comfortable so wear loose clothing and layers, bring slippers for inside Ty Sanctaidd and you may like to bring yourself a nest of cushions and a blanket or a folding chair from home if sitting on the floor isn't for you. The Ty Sanctaidd has gorgeous comfortable wooden seats around its outside but depending on numbers we will bring the size of the circle smaller; so a folding chair, jack chair or cushion will be a good thing to bring. 

There is disabled accessible bedrooms on the ground floor of the main house at Trefacwn please specify if you need one of these rooms due to mobility challenges. Please know that the paths are gravel, the terrain undulates and the path into Ty Sanctaidd is up a slope. It is, we believe, essentially accessible for most with support and we want you to know that we are 100% here to support you if you have access needs. If you have any concerns about that in advance then please email us on [email protected]

The pool would be used entirely at your own risk and we will bore you with some risk assessments on arrival because it can be slippy underfoot and the temperature especially at that time of year means it is for the most hardy only, neither Sacred Circle nor the venue can take responsibility for those choosing to use it, we get access to it as a privilege as it is the private space of the owner. The sauna we pay extra for so it won't be open every night, we will use on the evening after the grief ceremony - again, use of sauna is entirely at your own risk. 

For a glimpse of the venue here is their website, although it doesn't show everything:  https://www.trefacwn.co.uk/

Please do not contact them directly about this course including requests for additional nights, this is something to approach us about so we can co-ordinate communications with them in an efficient way. 

Sign up link coming very soon

5 nights, 4 days at the beautiful but basic Eiri retreat centre in South West Cork. We get to gather at the traditional time of Samhain and the venue has a beautiful ceremony room and its own private sunset bay beach, which is magical and honestly SO worth it.

That said, the bed situation is quite "youth hostel" vibes and this is reflected in the price. The beds are comfortable and you can expect to share with 2 or 3 other people; the rooms are not en suite you share toilets and showers. If you want or need a more luxurious experience maybe consider coming on our Wales retreat, or if you want some more insects and heat come to Zimbabwe! 

We will always try to accommodate disabled people with as much grace as we can, please inform us of your needs before you sign up and we will be able to advise. If you have a camper van or caravan you are welcome to bring that to Eiri, for your own space. 

Sign Up link on its way very soon :-) 

In partnership with Kamhandire's Cove, near Harare.

International participants can arrive earlier and stay later; sleeping accomodation for all is available at Kufunda Village near Harare (please do not contact them but book through us) and you get a basic bed in a bunk room or shared hut for $20 per night. Walking distance from Kufunda is the neighbouring venue called Kamhandire's Cove which is a partner organisation of Sacred Circle, it is a permaculture land based social enterprise creating a Hospice Village, natural burial ground and grief gardens. Our course will take place in their new Dare (circular community structure) which is currently being built. Food will be provided by Kamhandire's Cove. 

Much much more information on this including the facilitator team (two Zimbabwean Deathworkers plus Alexandra Derwen), considerations for international travellers, all the plans and of course costs, are coming very soon. You can register your interest by emailing sacredcirclecic at gmail dot com

Sign Up link on its way very soon :-)