Sarah Kerr joins BLBD again this week, as we share exciting news about a new course we’ve been developing at the Centre for Sacred Deathcare. Launching in 2025, the Sacred Deathcare Guide Training and Certification is designed as a modern “Mystery School for Deathwalkers.” Participants in this training will learn to cooperate with the deep archetypal patterns that shape the process of death, trusting their intuitive intelligence as they guide others. They will be equipped to explain the energetic and spiritual dimensions of death and loss as we explore healing not only for the living, but also for the dying and the dead. As one person said about Sarah’s classes: “It’s like a path that’s been lit up on the runway. It’s why I’m here, it’s why I was always here. My life now blows my mind.”

Transcript:

Diane Hullet: Hi, I’m Diane Hullet, and you’re listening to the Best Life, Best Death Podcast. This week, I’m here again with Sarah Kerr, founder of the Center for Sacred Death Care. And the Center for Sacred Death Care is really an online community and education place for meeting death in a soul based way. I love the work she does, and we’ve got an exciting project that we’ve been working on together, and we want to tell you more details about that course here.

Welcome, Sarah. 

Sarah Kerr: Thanks, Diane. It’s lovely to be here and it’s been fun to be working with you so closely. Yes, we have a project. It is a project that has been a long time coming. It’s a sacred death care guide training through the Center for Sacred Death Care. And the subtitle of it, and really this just speaks to me so deeply, is that it’s a mystery school for modern death walkers.

If you have that calling in you to offer soul based support, to connect with dying people and their families in a, in a more soul based and nature based spiritual way, how do you take that inner feeling and move it out into the world? and deliver it in service of your community. 

Diane Hullet: This is so exciting to me.

And when Sarah and I first started talking about this, what I was thrilled about was this idea that more people could be really trained, not just listen to Sarah speak or listen to me interview somebody, but really actually be shown how to bring these practices into your work. And that’s where I think this just gets so exciting.

And it’s about awakening and engaging and being supported in energy spaces that you experience as an end of life practitioner. So the course is three months. Uh, it’s going to be online with you and I as the facilitators. You’re the key instructor. I’m supporting students and supporting you. And I think it’s going to be a very dynamic partnership that people are going to appreciate and get something out of both in the observing of what we have to say, but also in the participating in the small group.

It’s very Full 

Sarah Kerr: experiential. I love the idea that it’s a ritual learning laboratory where we’re coming to explore and it’s really designed for a very specific group of people. It’s for people who feel this calling to meet death in a sacred way. It’s a little different than a pragmatic or a more practical way.

Those are important, but this is the the pathway. And so it’s for death doulas who maybe have some skills or developing their skills in the nuts and bolts of death. of the physical aspect of death care, but want more confidence in the spiritual aspect. It’s for just practitioners and professionals in any way, health care, funeral, body workers, energy workers, who want to bring death a different element to their practice.

They want a deeper picture, a deeper understanding, so they can support patients and clients. It’s for people who may have really had a big encounter with death or an encounter with a big death in their own life. And through that big loss, Have found a desire to help others and it’s for what we just call ordinary mortals people who want to dive deeply They may never want to practice.

They’re not looking to have clients They just want to help their friends and their family, but they want a deep dive into Learning how to really facilitate healing for the living the dying and the dead 

Diane Hullet: I love that. Whenever you say that, I love that. And I think that the living, the dying and the dead all fit into this broader framework that you speak to when you talk about the principles of sacred death care.

And that’s one of the things we’re really going to cover in the course. What are these principles? And then how do you practice them? 

Sarah Kerr: We’ve really identified five pillars of sacred death care, and those five pillars will be the journey we’ll walk people through. And so the first pillar is principles. So sacred death care is rooted in a very particular kind of lineage of practice and thought.

So we’ll be talking about the roots in the history and bringing a completely new way of meeting death. So we’re stepping outside of Western thought and outside of sort of materialist Western picture into something deeper, something richer, something with more space for more experiences that hold space for the transcendent and mystical.

So those principles, the first pillar are really about the lineage and the frameworks in a way it’s kind of the conceptual basis of it. So you understand in a very particular way what is happening. But understanding is only one part, right? That’s a kind of head learning. I understand. I can discuss it. I have words for it.

I understand. The next one is how do you do it? What are the, I think of that as hand learning, heart learning. How do you put it into practice? How do I take these new ways of thinking about death and actually apply them in conversations with my neighbor? And In sessions with my therapy clients, when I’m a hospice nurse talking to people or as a deaf doula, what are the very specific tools and skills and interventions?

And they’re soul based interventions. So they are based in image and metaphor and story and they’re, they’re these beautiful, often it’s about language, how to ship. So that’s the second pillar is practices. The third pillar is stance, and I think of this almost every day. That your energy body is like a tuning fork and as you really come to embody and own and hold These ideas and these tools Deeply in your system.

What happens is those of us who who carry this start to resonate at a deep Different frequency when you walk into a room you actually bring something with you That is way more than you can name or that you do, it’s who you are. This work is not about doing as much as being. And that being takes some time to really absorb and integrate and in a way it’s kind of becoming one with that you just, it’s just who you are and you own it with confidence.

So that’s the third pillar, stance. The fourth pillar is community. And community is. I really think of it like a guild. If we were living in a culture that had a healthy relationship with death, those of us who feel the expression of the Death Walker archetype coming through us, would have been identified, would have taken away, and the elders who knew how to do this work would have said, come with me, and you, and you, okay, all of you, come over here, We’re going to teach you how to do this and you’ll learn together.

You’ll have peers and you’ll have mentors. And you’ll have a community where this is normal. And I think so much about in mainstream culture, we have to kind of start way back at the base level when we’re talking about the mystical experiences around death. But in this community space, we’re going to jump to level nine and then talk from there.

So we take for granted as fundamental assumptions a lot about the soul’s journey through death and loss. And that opportunity to come together and talk to other people and talk with other people who get it is just so juicy. Fourth, the fifth is source. And that’s where it’s a little bit related to stance, your medicine body, but it’s not just.

The energy you resonate with, it’s how you’re attuned to and drawing from and connected to and expressed by a much larger spiritual well of wisdom. In my work, I really feel like so much of what I do is just act as a conduit. Someone brings me something. I didn’t know this story. I haven’t had to deal with this situation before, but when I get really attuned, I plug into the principles and grounded my principles.

I know my practices. The answers just come, and that source is something that we can learn to really work more deeply with. So that pathway of principles, practices, stance, community, and source is the framework that people need in order to bring this work into the world. 

Diane Hullet: I just love hearing you talk about those because there’s so much richness in each one, and there’s so much to be learned.

Uh, teased out and explored as a group, and that’s what we’ll be doing in this, in this training. And I think, you know, you and I’ve talked about the power of transformation, you know, this really, this is transformative learning. We, we think that people will come in one way and they will come out the other end of this three months together transformed.

And I think that’s the piece that’s Really sets it apart and makes it a little bit different. Is this transformation that we know will happen? We’ve seen it happen. And our our job is to guide that transformation for people with these five pillars. 

Sarah Kerr: You have a beautiful image that you shared of. People walking around in the world who have this Deathwalker energy inside them, but it’s, it’s latent.

It’s not fully expressed. They have like little buttons with lights on the top of their head. And then what this course is going to do is go around and boop, kind of turn on the lights so that they can really be that and offer this in service of their community. So it is, it’s definitely, it’s a, it’s a come in as one, go out as another.

And the goal is that people feel really deeply grounded and confident in this work. It’s one thing just to know it. But it’s a different thing to be able to articulate what’s happening at a spiritual and energetic level as someone is dying. How do you explain that to people, especially people who might be skeptical, right?

How do you really own that so deeply you can share it in a neutral, easy way? How do you hold that space for a deep healing and transformation when you’re with dying people or their family? How do you? I don’t even have language for so how deeply I lean into these archetypal pathways, these patterns, we have maps for the soul’s journey through the dying process, and I just lean into those maps and that’s how I guide families I just.

I don’t do it. I just lean into this deeper power. It’s really about that. When I’m really in the, I call it sort of being in the zone. When I’m really working with a client, the world disappears and I can feel not only these deep, archetypal truths, these deep spiritual principles. But I have a real sense of being in a lineage of Death Walkers, that it’s not only behind through time and space and culture, not necessarily my blood ancestors, but just people who share this medicine.

And I’m excited about the idea of them spreading that laterally so that there are more of us here now in bodies doing this. 

Diane Hullet: Beautiful. What else do you want to say about the course? 

Sarah Kerr: I think we’ve talked a little bit about how you and I are going to teach it. I think that’s exciting. You know, I’ve taught a lot on my own in this material and having you come on board and really help organize and midwife this process, that’s really what you’ve done, is that I had The ideas and the energies and the vision, but I couldn’t quite put it all together.

And so your, your gift is really curriculum design, structure, really taking this big ball of energy and making it real and out in the world. So I’m thrilled to be teaching with you. I’ll be doing the teaching of the material, but your space holding and your, your, Sort of supporting me and being there to bounce ideas off of and to continue to evolve and organize the curriculum as we go through.

That’s really exciting. I think it’s a bit of a different way of teaching and I think it has lots to offer the students. 

Diane Hullet: I think this is going to be a dynamic way to learn. I think it’s going to be an exciting way to teach and I’m just thrilled and I can’t wait to see who turns up in this course. So you can find out all the details at sacreddeathcare.

com. Look under courses for sacred death care guide training and that’s where all the details are of dates and sign up and registration. Thank you so much, Diana. It’s been great 

Sarah Kerr: to design this with you 

Diane Hullet: and 

Sarah Kerr: wonderful to talk about. 

Diane Hullet: Well, I’m thrilled. We’ll be talking about it a lot more as the months come.

Thanks so much for listening. You’ve been listening to the best life, best death podcast. And as always, you can find out about the work I do at best life, best death. com and more about Sarah’s work at sacred death care. com. Thanks again.