Self-Return: A Guided Living Death Reflection by death doula + grief worker, Brooke Manning
Sunday August 25, 4-6pm @ Studio Buddy, The Junction, Toronto
Sliding scale beginning at $25
12 spaces available - UPDATE JULY 19 - 5 spaces left
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* July 21st + August 25th GLDR’s will be offered at sliding scale rates beginning at 25 and 35 dollars respectively. It's important to me to make this offering as accessible to the community as possible while still covering my own costs and sustaining my ability to keep these offerings going. In the fall and afterwards, rates will increase slightly and these ceremonies typically sell out quickly. Please let me know if the introductory sliding scale rate is inaccessible for you -- I am always happy to work something out. If you'd like more information or to read testimonials for this event, please email me or visit https://www.lengthofacandle.com/
These workshop-style ceremonies have seen upwards of 200+ folks in the last 1.5 years and I can genuinely say that everyone has mentioned a positive, uplifting, and empowered experience. My goal is to create a safe, encouraging, curious, warm, loving environment to return ourselves to a healthier sense of mortality salience, agency, dignity, acceptance, and grace when investigating our lives. Together, we will attempt to turn our daily awareness toward death from this place with the careful, compassionate investigation of mortality and impermanence through the lens of love, nature and its cycles. I like to give a clear understanding of the setting and tone to help everyone feel as comfortable as possible before arriving so forgive me if this is long-winded. I'd like to also note that this particular method of work is my own and proprietary. I have spent years developing this process very carefully and I outline it here in trust. Each ceremony is a little different but below is the flow of what we will do together.
The format flows as follows:
We introduce ourselves, though the introduction is an invitation - no one has to speak if they do not wish to. I explain my work both personally and historically, many thanks are given. A brief educational and conversational lecture on anti-capitalist and green options in death care, how death became an industry, terror management theory, and impermanence using nature as a guide are next. There are two meditations to begin, one reflecting life and the other reflecting death. We journal and complete a holographic will. The focus here is a return to self without consideration for property or possessions. We explore the meaning and value of grace and beauty, love and grief, forgiveness and acceptance in reflection of our own impermanence and mortality. We lay in a guided meditation that sits with subtle noise to imagine our bodies returning to the earth simulating a still and peaceful death space. Ending the ceremony, there is a space for questions, reflection, greater green death education, aftercare and integration tips.
This experience is very personal - each person sits facing an image of themselves most of the meditation, and nothing you write in your holographic will is shared. No one is forced to speak if they do not wish to, though there are opportunities for many questions and communication. I do many check-ins and pay close attention to care that may be needed throughout the meditation. Death -- similar to perhaps only birth and nature -- is the universal binder of all though each individual's experience of death is a very unique reflection of one's worldview; personal experience, culture, gender, religion, race, class structure, ancestral mapping, etc. In recognizing this, I intend to pull a common thread that connects through the lens of nature, focusing our attention on our impermanence in reflection of its cycles. We forgo a last will that upholds death-as-industry ideas post-20th century (e.g. personal possessions, work/productivity, or capital in reflection of one’s life) and instead gently move toward the fundamental understanding of the cycle of the body and consciousness through nature. Nature can quietly connect us all to our mortality daily. We can carry these new gracefully infused understandings of death and impermanence into our daily lives moving forward. When the time comes to face our own mortality in a more direct way, we can meet it with greater presence, self-reflection, self-acceptance, and loving awareness.
A death doula leans into the spiritual-socio-bio-psycho-philosophical needs of each individual to co-create holistic and personalized places of understanding and care with each person or group they work with whether in active stages of grief, dying, or otherwise. In a group setting, it is important to me to create a safe space for all that attend. I recognize that I am unable to have lengthy conversations with each individual before the meditation but I do invite you to share with me anything you feel I might need to know about you to help create a place of safety for you during the meditation.
Refund + Exchange Policy:
Due to the dedicated, devoted, and delicate nature of this work, the space rental, supply cost, as well as my time and disabilities, I have worked out a careful system that may support us both when there is a cancellation. I aim to be flexible, understanding, and compassionate to the times + environments we live in + compete with daily. Here is what I am able to offer:
* 100% refund or exchange to future in-person ceremony when cancellation email is sent to me 14 days or more before the event date
* 50% refund or exchange to future in-person ceremony when cancellation email is sent to me 7 days or more before the event date 7 days or less before the event date:
* exchange to any future in-person ceremony when cancellation email is sent to me 4-6 days before the event date
* 40% refund or exchange to any future online-only ceremony when cancellation email is sent to me 72 hours before the event date
* 25% refund or exchange to any future online-only ceremony when cancellation email is sent to me 48 hours before the event date
* exchange to any future online-only ceremony when a cancellation email is sent to me less than 48 hours before the event date
ABOUT BROOKE:
Though I am wary of death doula training programs, I am trained under the Institute of Traditional Medicine and INELDA and have been a practicing death doula since 2017, working in the death realm long before that. I am careful with whom I learn from using academics, constant peer/colleague education, personal experience, and ancestral knowledge and teachings (both in my lineage and gratefully, through many of my teachers) to inform my scope of care. I am averse to much of the very white-washed spiritual wellness world and also feel similarly about colonial notions of privilege and value through heavy-handed institutionalization though I recognize that both exist. I follow INELDA's code of ethics (happy to share this document at request). I am currently studying psychotherapy at the Gestalt Institute of Toronto and Clinical Hypnosis at U of T. For more information, you can visit my instagram at @lengthofacandle or my website at lengthofacandle.com.
Info about the space + Covid Measures:
Studio Buddy is up one flight of stairs -- it is important to me to find spaces that are accessible at ground level -- I am working on this for the fall. If you are aware of any spaces, please don't hesitate to reach out. I am longing for a private outdoor space as well.
These events are not scent-free, though only natural scent is used (no citrus). I am immunocompromised and masks are highly encouraged + offered. At times I wear a mask, others I choose not to -- I take many personal precautions depending on my risk assessment + the group. Strict mask-only accessible events will be offered seasonally and online events begin fall 2024. If you need any support at all - for your body, mind, or spirit - please reach out with your needs. I aim to offer compassionate support however I am able.