Through Sacred Relating with Self, Land, and Others
End of Life Planning & Paperwork Workshop

With Mary Lane & Lee Warren

Walking Towards A Good Death

—An Invitation for Internal Preparation

Join us for this four-part online series.

 

Week 1: Sunday, February 19, 2023. 4-6pm

Week 2: Sunday, February 26, 2023. 4-6pm

Week 3: Sunday, March 5, 2023. 4-6pm

Week 4: Sunday, March 12, 2023. 4-6pm

 

All times are Eastern (UTC-5 time zone).

REPLAY of Q&A Session with Mary & Lee from 2.8.23 and 10.13.22

If you’d like a copy of the recording, please give us your info and we will email you the link.

“The only security in life comes from facing your death.”

~Richard Rudd

Workshop Description

This four week introduction to the internal process of preparing for a good death is a contemplation of four sacred ingredients: Letting Go, Soulfulness, Presence, and Receiving.

We have everything we need for a positive and conscious death experience. It is our birthright. In truth, it’s standard internal equipment for all humans–we are wired for it. 

Yet we must nourish the components of our infinite selves in order to access and enhance this birthright.

As we walk towards death during our lives, the hope is to fully show up for our finale and transition in an energetic resonance of love and acceptance. Paradoxically and unsurprisingly, these principles and practices lead to a more ecstatic life. 

This LIVE workshop will contain educational components combined with discussion, integration, and contemplation. Simple awareness exercises are available for home study as well as an option for partner time. To get the most out of this deep experience, plan to devote solid time and attention to this process during these four weeks.


Notes: This is a sister workshop to the “End of Life Paperwork and Planning” Workshop which tends to the external preparation for death. These workshops stand alone. There is no prerequisite to either but together they provide attention to both the internal and the external preparation processes.

Curriculum & Schedule for 2023

Week 1—Letting Go
Sunday, February 19, 2023. 4-6pm (Eastern):

Incarnating is a big deal. So to begin with, you’re already a badass. In addition, during our lifetimes we’ve been through many life/death/life cycles. Dozens of them. Let’s honor these cycles and the letting go process that’s been inherent in all of them. Including and especially our births, which required us to surrender to the void, to nothingness, and to the mystery of the next chapter. We’ll contemplate the transitions we’ve been through and look at the transitions we’re facing. We’ll discuss how we can learn to trust the letting go process more fully. We’ll examine the actual somatic process of the cycle of letting go. In a supportive process, we’ll practice letting go until it becomes a familiar pattern. 

Week 2—Soulfulness
Sunday, February 26, 2023. 4-6pm (Eastern):

Whatever you call it: Soul, Self, Spirit, God/Goddess, divine, inner voice, intuition, consciousness, guidance, or essence…..what is the quality of your relationship with this eternal part of you? Regardless of who surrounds us at the moment of our death, the experience will be between us and this infinite part of us. If we’ve built a strong relationship with our essence we will be stepping into a world where we are related, connected, and familiar. Doesn’t that sound delicious? Let us begin. Let us nourish, strengthen, and turn up the volume on this primary relationship. 

Week 3—Presence
Sunday, March 5, 2023. 4-6pm (Eastern):

Being human is tender. And we do a lot to protect ourselves from painful experiences. Yet learning to be present with all of life is a prerequisite to receiving, which is a prerequisite for a good death. On the journey towards being more fully present, it’s helpful to realize that there’s an intelligent universe inside of us–vast, wise, ever evolving, and benevolent. We will examine how trauma, shadow, and conditioning often stand in the way of this expansive world view. We will discuss some processes of moving through these blocks and beginning the process of opening the heart, trusting life, and honoring all experiences as necessary for the soul’s evolution.

Week 4—Receiving
Sunday, March 12, 2023. 4-6pm (Eastern):

A healthy life is about the balance of yin and yang. Our culture is very YANG: driven, productive, outward facing, image conscious, and youth oriented. It values being active well into old age. There’s value in this, but it’s remarkably unbalanced. Dying requires exquisite receptivity. Living requires receptivity. We receive from the sun, from food, from sleep, from others. In fact, the most important and most valuable things in our lives often come when we allow ourselves to receive: friendship, support, nourishment, connection, contemplation. If we neglect the receptive, interior, and quiet parts of ourselves, we do damage to our capacity for a healthy life and death. We will explore how to turn up the volume on the YIN in our lives and grow our capacity to notice, celebrate, and enhance our receptivity.

Join us on this supportive community journey as we step into a partnership with the beautiful, mysterious, and profound and turn up the volume on these pathways to the divine. 

Praise for Walking Towards A Good Death Workshop Series:

  • Movement/Mindfulness/Generating Curiosity Coach
    “The depth and breadth of this workshop was excellent, enriching, and expansive as it touched all the participants in our bodies and minds with much love! The safety created by seasoned, knowledgeable facilitators guided with heart, and curiosity manifested a group of participants that shared vulnerably and thoughtfully with courage and a desire to meet our souls in a more truthful loving way. “Walking Towards a Good Death” is all about living a more truthful, peaceful, beautiful life!”
     
  • 2022 Participant
    “This workshop helped me with reflection and deepening on the core topics of living a soul-driven life, which will improve my chances of walking towards a good death. It helped me realize that it is more about what I do now and going forward that will help prepare me verses something to do when it’s too late! Thank you both for your wonderful ability to co-create and lead us through difficult territory.”
  • 2022 Participant
    “As a result of the Walking Towards A Good Death workshop, I felt the connection between learning to live a good life and learning to have a good death became so clear. I understand that the letting go begins now in order to receive. Also, honoring my stepping out of the mainstream was so confirming for me.”
     

     

  • 2022 Participant
    “This workshop is a rare opportunity to share and discuss death using embodiment practices such as movement, breath, and imagination to ground all the profound teachings. Thank you. Death now seems more natural. I intend to make awe moments more frequent. This has been very freeing.”
     
  • 2022 Participant

    “This wonderful online workshop invited me to delve deeper into what’s preventing me from living more fully (in this now of my life) and not postponing to death. Mary and Lee compliment each other well, and present a very inspiring pleasant flow of amazing readings and prompts to ponder. I was able to journal during the week, which supported my process of depth and clarity. I would certainly be inclined to take this workshop again.”

Instructors

Mary Lane

Mary Lane is an elder who has walked the archetypal journey through the healing of our connection and relationship with the natural world. She has spent the last 40 years integrating and distilling the wisdom from her lifelong experiences, trainings, and deepening connection with Mother Earth. She supports others to embrace the never ending life and death cycle of nature, so they too can benefit from this Divine intelligence of nature as a masterful teacher, to let go of the old and birth the new, through both life, and death.

Mary has trained with Hospice, taught two years at the Doorway Into Light Conference on death and dying, on the island of Maui, and sat by the bedside of those going through the ultimate letting go of a lifetime. She learned that letting go needs to start long before we are on our deathbed. And, the ultimate teacher is nature.

If you would like to know more about what Mary offers visit her web site. www.divinenourishment.net  

 


Lee Warren

Lee Warren has been fortunate to learn from the dying in the context of a village. Over the course of two years, from 2016 to 2018, there were six deaths at Earthaven Ecovillage, the place she’s called home for more than two decades.

Those deaths, and the generous people who experienced them, were incredible opportunities for service to the great mystery. From end-of-life paperwork preparation, to working with hospice and sitting with the dying, to collaborating with blood families on all aspects of the death process, to tending our beloveds for after death services, to creating home wakes, home funerals, and home burials, the village came alive with cooperation and the magic of synchronized flow.

These end-of-life ceremonies and rituals weave together the fabric of community, which gives meaning to every aspect of the death process. People, both from within and from outside the village, expressed how life-changing and heart-expansive these experiences were for them.

What Lee learned during this sacred time is the following:

  • Death is a gift for all involved.
  • We have everything we need internally for a good death.
  • Conscious and positive death experiences are possible.
  • Preparing in advance, both internally and externally, makes a good death more possible.
  • A village context is by far the best way to depart. So let’s build the village. Everywhere.
  • Tending to the dying creates a bond with the whole in a way that nothing else does.

Lee has woven end-of-life education into her community building work as foundation to becoming alive, present, and embodied humans. 

“You can’t have a miserable life and a good death.”

~Mary Lane

Death is Only a Door

“This body is not me; I am not caught in this body, I am life without boundaries, I have never been born and I have never died. Over there, the wide ocean and the sky with many galaxies all manifests from the basis of consciousness. Since beginningless time I have always been free. Birth and death are only a door through which we go in and out. Birth and death are only a game of hide-and-seek. So smile to me and take my hand and wave good-bye. Tomorrow we shall meet again or even before. We shall always be meeting again at the true source. Always meeting again on the myriad paths of life.”
 
-Thích Nhất Hạnh, No Death, No Fear

“The only choice we have as we mature is how we inhabit our vulnerability, how we become larger and more courageous and more compassionate through our intimacy with disappearance.”


~David Whyte

Get Registered

For This Event


Sliding Scale Donation Structure:

Sliding Scale is a type of fee structure where people with more resources can pay a higher price and people with fewer resources can pay at a lower price. In this system the student determines the rate, no questions asked. There is an inherent trust, allowance, and collaboration in this system that honors both the time and experience of the teacher as well as intuition, income, and ability of the client.

That being said, PLEASE choose the highest level on the sliding scale that you can. A good rule of thumb: Pay at a price point that is a stretch but not a strain. Grassroots educators are akin to artists and farmers: we rely on receiving a livable wage to continue to offer high quality education at an affordable price. If all of our students choose the lowest price point, these offerings will quickly become unsustainable. 

Other Details:

This workshop is offered with the spirit of community in mind. The minimum suggested donation is $95. 

There needs to be a minimum of 8 people for this workshop to run. If we don’t meet the minimum you will be refunded in full. 

When you click the PayPal button, you will see a window popup for you to enter your PayPal information or a credit card. PayPal keeps your transactions safe.

There are no refunds for this workshop.

If you’d like to attend but don’t have the funds, please contact me via the contact information in the footer. No one turned away for lack of funds.

Special Offer

For Previous Attendees

For folks who have previously taken this workshop and want to do it again, below please find special pricing. Taking this workshop multiple times can help deepen the teaching. In addition, previous attendees are able to contribute much to the group process. 


Sliding Scale Donation Structure:

Sliding Scale is a type of fee structure where people with more resources can pay a higher price and people with fewer resources can pay at a lower price. In this system the student determines the rate, no questions asked. There is an inherent trust, allowance, and collaboration in this system that honors both the time and experience of the teacher as well as intuition, income, and ability of the client.

That being said, PLEASE choose the highest level on the sliding scale that you can. A good rule of thumb: Pay at a price point that is a stretch but not a strain. Grassroots educators are akin to artists and farmers: we rely on receiving a livable wage to continue to offer high quality education at an affordable price. If all of our students choose the lowest price point, these offerings will quickly become unsustainable. 

Other Details for Previous Attendees:

This workshop is offered with the spirit of community in mind. The minimum suggested donation for previous attendees is $65.

When you click the PayPal button, you will see a window popup for you to enter your PayPal information or a credit card. PayPal keeps your transactions safe.

There are no refunds for this workshop.

If you’d like to attend but don’t have the funds, please contact me via the contact form in the right sidebar. No one turned away for lack of funds.

This workshop is offered approximately twice a year. Stay tuned for future dates if you cannot make this one.

“I have to go to the woods, and I have to meet the wolf, or else my life will never begin.”


~Clarissa Pinkola Estés

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Shared Experiences

  • Patrick Davis, MA

    Hospice Chaplin & Leadership Coach

    “After 25 years of coaching leaders and teams, I have found Lee’s Relational Leadership workshop to be a unique and powerful combination of both practical tools and effective leadership  principles. Her proven experience leading different causes makes for an approach that balances both head and heart.” 

  • Evalena Rose

    Meta Therapist & Channel

    "Lee is an experienced and truly competent guide in the vast landscapes of end of life plans. Her thoughtful pacing helps us navigate the territory of decisions to make, who to involve, emotions and choices. Being supported in preparing for this rite of passage by creating our death care team settles a lot in me. I highly recommend. Everyone involved will benefit."

  • Teri Grunthaner

    Re: Thriving in Community Workshop

    "This course covers the vital social-emotional aspects of community that just isn't talked about openly enough. I so appreciated Lee's candid sharing of her own experience and warm encouragement of our own self-reflection. I truly believe that if more folks did the kind of personal and interpersonal work Lee outlines in this course, more communities would thrive!"

  • Keary Jenkins

    Executive Vice President & Wellness Coordinator

    "When I heard Lee say, "functional teams demonstrate communication, transparency, and trust," in her Relational Leadership workshop, it changed everything for me. I'm being that change in my workplace and finding others who resonate with that change. It is having impact with everyone in the entire organization, including the CEO. Employees who felt powerless in the past are now starting to light up. Our work ecology is changing and the transformation is beyond powerful."

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