Sitting with Death and Choosing Life

The Sitting With Death And Choosing Life Foundation Course

Do you have past or current grief you'd like to explore?

Perhaps you are experiencing the death of a loved one or a family estrangement? Or maybe, you have compromises to your own health and well-being or another major loss? You’re feeling alone with your grief and you’d love some gentle encouragement in a supportive group.

Or, you feel numb and despairing in the face of all the threats to life and the humanitarian crises on the planet? You’re missing your sense of meaning and purpose and ready to get it back, but you’re not sure how.

Maybe, a life chapter has ended and your old  identity has fallen away. You’re confused and you’d like to be with others who are experiencing similar transitions.

You feel you live much of the time in a numbed out, distracted state, somewhere between life and death, and you suspect unprocessed grief may be holding you back? You’re ready for  some skills and practices to help you get moving in a positive direction.

Or, you would like to understand grief, loss and the process of transformation better so that you can live more fully, be more creative and more engaged with others?

If you can relate to what I’m saying, the Sitting with Death and Choosing Life Foundation Course offers an intentional group space where you can come out of isolation and explore in a like-hearted group. The course will help you to get grounded in your own truth and connected with your strengths and resourcefulness.  It will  support your movement through loss and grief to confidence, renewal and new possibilities, until you arrive in a place where you are ready to say a wholehearted Yes to life. We believe this movement through grief to fully-lived life is vitally important, not only for you as an individual, but also for the future of our world.

“I see myself as not very good at sharing, at all. Stepping into the unknown was somewhat difficult to begin with. l found the gentleness of the facilitator and kindness of fellow participants helped me develop my confidence to share and learn. What l loved  was the willingness of sharing the good the bad and the ugly, to no judgement. Having had a taste I am now on another journey to learn more.”

– Foundation Course participant

This is not a therapy group....

This is a process of inquiry and deep discovery.

When you join the course you will receive:

  • Membership of a Small Group of no more than eight people who will be your companions on this adventure.
  • A Guidebook for Your Transformational Journey, which you can keep for life. This is a collection of stimulus materials, including personal and reflective writing, simple practices, meditations, questions for inquiry and recorded conversations with healing practitioners. These are intended to touch and move you and invite you to step into both your personal inquiry and the group conversations. As the stimulus materials spark insight, creative thought and new perspectives they will encourage you to explore your own experience to find your authentic truth.
  • Access to an Online Learning Platform provides further support for your learning. The course resources  will lead you through a guided process of inquiry, reflection, simple practices and themes for deep discovery conversations.
  •  Simple Practices you can use again and again to raise awareness so that you can know yourself better, recognise mental and behavioural patterns that are limiting you and have more freedom of choice.
  • Eight x 2 hour group sessions on zoom.
  • An Experienced Facilitator who has been on her/his own deep healing journey and who will listen deeply to you, never judge you and keep you on track.
  • Membership of our Sitting with Death and Choosing Life Online Community so that you can stay in touch and keep growing stronger during, and after, the course.
  • The Possibility to Take the Next Step into one of our deep dive courses, and even to become a facilitator in the programme if this calls to you.
“This Foundation Course is a gem of a group inquiry. There are different aspects of grieving to look at each week, from grieving our own losses to grieving for the world; the subject matter is very wide. It didn't take long for the group to bond and support each other as we shared our experiences and sparked off each other on our weekly zoom calls. Laughter and comfort too is in there. As we expanded on what can be a difficult subject, integration and healing of long forgotten incidents, that needed grieving and releasing, occured. The course was powerfully and expertly facilitated by Sundy Gilchrist. I highly recommend it as an introduction to a subject that is often overlooked or avoided and that can drive deep healing when handled in a respectful and safe place.”

The eight x 2 hour group sessions

will encourage you to develop the skills of group inquiry around the following themes:

An Introductory Session supports you to embark on your practice of inquiry. 

Session One: What is the Practice of Deep Discovery and How Can it help Me?

Deep Discovery is a transformational process requiring a group container which inspires confidence, risk taking and growth. This provides space and encouragement to express those tender and challenging experiences which are often difficult to put into words.

Session Two: Freeing Yourself to Grieve

To heal and become more whole you need to make space for grief and allow  the flow of emotion and energy through the body and mind. This  enables you to let go of the pain of loss and to integrate its gifts into your being so that you can move forward wholeheartedly and creatively.

Session Three: Allowing Yourself to Feel

Many people fear and avoid the grieving process because it involves such intense feelings. However, when you suppress your feelings and emotions you deprive yourself of the full range of your humanity and exist in a flattened state  never feeling fully alive. By becoming more aware you can begin to make simple choices that will free your energy.

Session Four: Making Friends with Loss

Loss is a natural and inevitable part of every human life and it comes in many forms throughout a lifetime. Like water lapping against the river bank or dripping onto a stone, loss shapes our lives. When we choose to descend into sadness and heartache, with awareness, we are changed. Grief can open us to the full range of human experience and awaken in us the motivation to transcend our limitations and free our full potential, so that we become truly fulfilled.

Session Five: Approaching Death Consciously

As you face into the inevitability of death, you are led to question how you live, what is most important in your life, and whether you are living as fully and as consciously as you would like to be. From such an inquiry new, life-affirming choices arise.

Session Six: Grieving for Our World

There is so much to grieve in our world at this time,  you may feel overwhelmed by it all and shut down your emotions. If you want to be part of the movement for conscious change and transformation don’t stop feeling. Find the courage to let the river of sorrow flow through you, and learn to transform sorrow into the true wealth of spiritual gifts.

Session Seven: Celebrating Life, Practicing Choice and Conscious Evolution

Death, loss and endings are followed by birth and new beginnings. This transition to new life can be a messy and painful affair. We live in a chaotic time which calls out the unlived potential in all of us. The process of becoming authentic, creatively empowered and  responsible, is a journey of experiential learning, leading to greater trust and awareness. This process enables the development of the skills and wisdom necessary to be of service to humanity. 

Session Eight: Completion and Harvesting Your Gifts

In this session it’s time to pause and reflect on what you have learned, to say goodbye to your group, and decide what your next steps might be.

The Foundation Course was created by Rose Diamond

and is run by members of the Sitting with Death and Choosing Life Facilitator Team

The facilitators all have their own professional expertise as well as their share of personal grief and losses. After participating in at least one of the Sitting with Death and Choosing Life courses, and the Facilitator Training, they now join together to facilitate the Foundation Course and support the spread of the Sitting with Death and Choosing Life project.

Check below to see when our Facilitators are offering their

NEXT FOUNDATION COURSES

All the Foundation courses will start with an introductory session, which you do on your own, and then run for one session a week over 8 weeks in a group. If  you are already in contact with a facilitator they will tell you how to enrol.
If not, choose the facilitator you resonate with, and whose group is at the right time for you, click on their photo and contact them by email.

Janie Nolan

Janie’s course is for people living in New Zealand and elsewhere in the Southern Hemisphere.

Sundy Gilchrist

Sundy’s next courses starts on Tuesday January 23, 6pm till 8pm. And Wednesday February 21, 10am to noon. 

Karen Scott

Karen’s Introductory Session for the Foundation Course is on

Sara Rushworth

My next course: 
TBA

Sofia Sanchez

Sofia’s next Introductory Session is on

Liz Sokoski

Liz’s next Introductory Session is on

Elizabeth Kaley

Elizabeth’s next Introductory Session is on

The Fee for the Foundation Course
is £175

Please talk with a facilitator first and confirm your place in the group. When you enrol, £50 is payable for the course materials and the facilitator fee is paid directly to your facilitator, who will tell you how to do this.

We don’t want anyone to be excluded from participating in this programme due to financial constraints. What is affordable for some can be a stretch for others.  Supported places may be available. Please talk with your facilitator if you need this support.

The stimulus materials and the group sessions offer you the following support:

  • You will be encouraged to make time for your own inner work in a way that holds you and makes you feel safe.
  • Foundational understandings and skills for the grieving process give you a more stable ground to stand upon.
  • The practices of inquiry and deep discovery enable you to explore your unique experience and find your authentic truth.
  • Skills to fully embody and release grief, progress your healing and build your transformational muscles.
  • The opportunity to join an intentional community and engage in deep discovery conversations will move you out of isolation and into an expanded experience of belonging to the unity of life.
  • Engaging in deep healing will awaken the enlightened perspective that death, dying, grief and loss are natural aspects of life and essential parts of a collective, evolutionary process.
  • The ability to make conscious choice will enhance your peace of mind and creative possibilities giving you the confidence that you are participating in creating a better world.

What people love about the Foundation Course

"My feelings around this course are surprising. I honestly did not expect to move through my left-over grief with such a journey. What I found was a cosy, caring, loving, kind group of people from around the world. We shared our stories and experiences of our grief, as we truly saw it and felt it, in a heartfelt held space. The warmth, the acceptance and the willingness to fully utilise our precious time was really inspiring. The well thought-out guidebook was so well written and easy to follow. I found the exercises incredibly revealing for my stuck areas around trapped grief. I found out how unprocessed grief was holding me back from giving my fullest expression to who I am becoming. My confidence and my choices have expanded so much from this thoughtful course. The gentle yet totally focused leadership helped enormously with a fusion of creating a brave trusting space to explore freely what you wished to explore at your own depth and pace. I'm very grateful that I did this course and I also wish to do another course that builds on to this one."
Not only is the Guidebook a treasure trove of resources supporting our journey through the course but it is also a very skilful and compassionate way to encourage the process of inquiry. The questions for inquiry enabled deep reflection and discussion. We were a small group of individuals, strangers to each other, meeting on zoom, and we had very little experience in talking to anyone about the losses we had experienced. I am in awe of how Jackie helped us create a safe intentional group. In our first session we explored qualities, states and values we chose to nurture in our group and we truly created a magical healing space which enabled us to touch into some incredibly raw and painful places. With Jackie’s guidance we were able to offer each other deep listening, reflection, emotional support and immense humour. She was extremely skilful in knowing exactly when to lead us into a grounding meditation to put our shattered pieces back together again. We shared vulnerability and became more courageous in doing so. There were so many times when I could feel the loving warmth radiating from my heart. It really was as if my broken heart was healed and nourished by sharing my troubles.
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Janie Nolan

Janie Nolan lives in Otepoti/Dunedin, Aotearoa/New Zealand. Her parents were of Irish, Highlander Scottish and English descent. She is the sister of a brother and a sister, mother to a son and grandmother to three mokopuna/grandchildren. She lived in Western Australia for 30 years, and her son and his family reside there.

Loss and grief have been intertwined on deep levels in her life and her own soul searching has led her to many pathways of learning, wisdom and exploration. A Gardener of life, she tends to her inner world with care, adding the nutrients of her experiences to fertilise growth. There is always a gift in every situation.

Along the way, Janie has worked selling Vintage clothing as well as being a care worker for the aged and disabled. Aroha Holistic Health is her business, where she offers Holistic Bodywork, Reiki Practice and Teaching, Aromatherapy, Transformational Guidance, Embodied Counselling, Meditation classes, Ecstatic Dance Facilitation and Mentoring. Janie has Visual Art qualifications, writes Haikus and channels The Language of Light. She has recently joined the Choosing Life Facilitation Team.

Janie’s Foundation Course starts on Tuesday March 7 – April 25,  6.30-8pm NZ

To enrol, or for enquiries, please email Janie at or message her direct by using the form below.

Sundy Gilchrist

My name is Sundy and, as well as delivering on the Sitting with Death and Choosing Life Programme, I’m a Healing from Estrangement and Disconnection in Relationships Coach, with a specialist area of Adult Child Estrangement, supporting parents to move through the grief of being rejected by their adult children.

Working through my own experience of being estranged by my own adult children has given me a vast array of experiential understandings around grief, loss, rejection, feelings of not belonging, isolation, lack of support and loneliness.

Joining the Sitting with Death and Choosing Life Programme as a participant I quickly realised that it offers tools and resources that allow me to explore my own ‘grief song’, helps me to see the work I’ve already done in my own healing and gives me more insights to deepen further into healing.

I joined the team in 2020 and I now hold the Foundation Courses throughout the autumn and winter months.

I live in Ilkley, West Yorkshire, England, with Stephen, my husband and dear friend, and I love cycling in the lanes around my home.

Sundy delivers Foundation courses from October through to May. Her next courses start on Tuesday January 23, 6-8 pm  and Wednesday February 21st, 10am-12.
To enrol, or for enquiries, please email her on or message her direct by using the form below.

Karen Scott

During a life profoundly touched by loss and bereavement, I’ve come to realise that working with grief is my calling, or life’s work. In safely, tenderly held group spaces, I’ve been able to bring personal grief, and grief for our world, to the shared light of awareness. These explorations have felt like putting down a heavy burden I’d carried alone for decades.

Being in the Choosing Life team gives me a sense of belonging with others who recognise the gifts of grief, how it can open our hearts and heal us, while deepening our connections with each other and the vast web of Life.

For me, this is soulful work, diving into the depths, into a place of mystery and not-knowing.  I’m a qualified nature-based and Internal Family Systems-informed coach and facilitator, experienced in holding circles.

You can find out more about me and my work here:
www.beinginnature.net https://www.facebook.com/BeingInNature/

My  Foundation Course begins on 

To enrol, or for enquiries, please message email  Karen at  or message her direct by using the form below.

Sara Rushworth

I’m Sara. I live in Leeds in the UK on my boat with the ship’s cat Dave and an occasional mouse!

I truly love holding a space that facilitates a deeper understanding about ourselves. When we choose to work on ‘our edge’, that learning can be transformational. Engaging in the process of transformation has been a life long journey for me, and, thankfully continues to be so.

A major focus of my work has been facilitating learning about relationships, sexual health, consent and pleasure. It is here where I’ve made friends with my shame and guilt and learned to breathe and slow down.

Lost relationships, the menopause and my mum’s journey with dementia has brought me to a place of choosing to look loss and grief straight in the eye. I am leaning into this process with courage, willingness, self-compassion and community. When I glimpse the light at the end of the tunnel, the moments of joy remind me transformation is not only possible, it is beautiful and energising.

Want to share a journey of discovery? We can hold each other’s hand.

I’m a new member of the Sitting with Death and Choosing Life facilitation team.

My Foundation Course starts on Tuesday 21st February – 11th April, 6.30-8.30pm
To enrol, or for enquiries, please email me at or message me direct by using the form below

Sofia Sanchez

So, here I find myself, in my healing path of reconnection with the sacred universe around and inside me, a new member of the Sitting with Death and Choosing Life Facilitation team.

My name is Sofia Sanchez. I live in a multicultural household in North London.
I landed here while experiencing a period of the sudden unexpected in my life.

One change was leaving behind two decades living as a volunteer tenant, supporting adults with learning disabilities to live independently. And, after fifteen years of co-facilitating the Expert Patient Programme, our organisation lost the funding to continue offering the courses.

The SWDCL Foundation Course has offered me the opportunity to explore how loss has shaped my life at different stages and how transformation is an integral and natural part of life. Amongst many other enquiries in the course. I’ve explored how I navigate the not-knowing, the aspects of me that I reject, and how I can best experience the Wholeness I yearn for (within me and in my community and the whole of the universe).

In my years of facilitating groups, I have witnessed and experienced how, when we come together and share from our authentic self in a safe space, magic happens; inner and group healing and transformation happens. In delivering the SWDCL Foundation Course, it is my intention to offer this opportunity to all of us in the group.
To enrol, or for enquiries, please email me at or message me direct by using the form below.

Liz Sokoski

As I embarked upon this path of grief work, I began to examine the mysteries of life.
What I’ve discovered, whilst taking part in the SWDCL courses, is that grief and endings are part of new beginnings. I’ve processed my grief honestly and transparently, while being brave and open to the new.

Over the years, my own personal struggle has been knowing when to release my attachment to the past and open myself to change. With a deep urge and longing for personal growth and healing from childhood trauma, I’ve had to challenge myself and my beliefs. I’ve explored my limitations, while bringing in a more conscious relationship to my soul through a strong spiritual practice and a deep desire to live authentically.

As a highly sensitive person and an empath, I was born with the ability to feel and sense people’s needs. I’m naturally compassionate with an understanding nature. At the same time, I have a well-developed instinct and intuition. I’m not afraid of delving into unchartered waters and transitioning into the unknown. This for me is often where the gifts lie and the magic happens.

My training has included humanistic psychology and transformational coaching. I see my work now as a facilitator for the SWDCL lends itself to holding the space and being a bridge between the old and the new, as we move through the never ending cycles of death and rebirth.

Sitting with Death and Choosing Life, has enabled me to heal deep grief and my fear of dying, finally allowing me to come to a place of peace within myself.

To enrol, or for enquiries, please email me at or message me direct by using the form below.

Elizabeth Kaley

My name is Elizabeth Kaley and I am a new facilitator with SWDCL (Sitting With Death and Choosing Life) Foundation Course.

My base is in the beautiful city of York, where I will be holding my groups.
I send an invitation out, to live life, free from the anchors, that hold us back from our full potential. 

Dealing with the detritus of Loss and Grief, to no longer live a half life, to be empowered to live your best life.

To enrol, or for enquiries, please message me direct by using the form below.