In our sacred roles as spiritual directors and companions, we are adept at addressing issues of spiritual joy, suffering, grief, and the quest for ultimate meaning. Anchored in diverse spiritual traditions, or trusting to the unknowing, unfolding Mystery, we offer language that guides others in discerning their unity with God, The Universe, Allah, Brahman, or however they name The Ground of All Being.
We also acknowledge that each of us carries the weight of our wounds and burdens. Our life’s journeys are marked not only by personal trauma, but by the collective traumas of racism, pandemics, climate change, loneliness, and despair that we all experience, in varying degrees. These collective burdens are additional burdens that drag us down, weighing on our psyches and souls, and further obscure the essence of our true Selves.
Our companions’ spiritual journeys increasingly call upon us to engage with these profound matters, though we often feel ill-prepared or even frightened. As spiritual directors and companions, we have a solemn duty to compassionately tend to both our individual and our collective wounds. These are the contemporary challenges that spiritual directors face. Thankfully, we do not do this work along, nor should we.
A well-prepared spiritual director or companion should not only possess the tools and discernment to navigate these complex terrains, but also both understand and experience the healing power of community and belonging, essential for unpacking the heavy burdens of trauma we carry.
We recognize that we all bear these weights, and together, within our containers of spiritual companionship, we can find solace and restoration. In doing so, we prepare ourselves to be of service to the world, healing its wounds one soul at a time, and working collectively to heal the deep wounds of society, finally seeing and freeing our true Selves as we truly are – Divinely Beautiful Beings.
Building on the deep learning experiences of this past January’s Trauma and Wellness course, we invite you into the circle of dialogue of learning, healing, and service, as we confront together the profound traumas of our time. Join us in this transformative SDI Course, where you’ll draw from the wisdom of spiritual directors and companions across spiritual traditions and orientations, who bridge the realms of counseling, psychotherapy, nature, art, and somatics. Learn how to identify and address mental and physical health issues, and together, explore pathways to heal the traumas within ourselves and in our world. In twelve enlightening sessions, you will emerge a more informed, more integrated, and more confident and compassionate spiritual care provider, ready to hold the sacred space for the complete healing of each individual’s journey and contribute to the healing of our collective wounds, finding both liberation and flourishing for all.
Schedule
Twelve sessions, each 90-120 minutes courses, Tuesdays which were recorded between January and March 2024.
Sessions are all recorded – watch at your own convenience.
This offering continues in a stream similar to our January 2023 course. And while the January course is not a prerequisite for this one, there are links between the two you may want to uncover. Click here to find out more.
What to Expect
- Presentations and discussions on trauma and spiritual companionship from a broad range of practices and perspectives.
- Topics will cover working with trauma as spiritual companions, incorporating a variety of tools, from a multitude of practices, including counseling, psychotherapy, nature, art, and somatics (body work).
- 12 Weekly Zoom sessions with diverse and compelling wisdom teachers from across the spiritual and trauma-care spectrum. Read their bios below for more.
- Our faculty come from across the spectrum of trauma care. We seek to offer a broad range of perspectives - from those spiritual directors who also serve as mental health professionals, and spiritual companions who have creatively woven spiritual trauma care into their practices. You will learn from all of them, and find inspiration to discover your own way.
- All sessions recorded
Testimonials from Course Participants
Learn from a diverse faculty across multiple modalities of spiritual direction and companionship
COURSE Faculty
Additional faculty, and a full outline, will be announced in the coming weeks as we get closer to the start date of this course.
Rabbi Dr. Tirzah Firestone
Rabbi Tirzah Firestone, Ph. D., is an author, Jungian psychotherapist, a leader in the international Jewish Renewal Movement, and a renowned Jewish scholar and teacher. Widely known for her groundbreaking work on Kabbalah, depth psychology, and the re-integration of the feminine wisdom tradition within Judaism, Rabbi Tirzah lectures and teaches internationally about spiritual and ancient wisdom practices that are honed to assist us at this critical time in world history. Her latest work, Wounds into Wisdom: Healing Intergenerational Jewish Trauma (Monkfish, 2019) is the recipient of the 2020 Nautilus Book Award Gold in Psychology and the Jewish Women’s Caucus of the Association for Women in Psychology 2020 book award.
Genjo Marinello
Genjo Marinello is a trained psychotherapist, spiritual director, and the Abbot of Chobo-Ji Zen Temple in Seattle. Genjo sees adults, couples and sometimes adolescents, and enjoys working with people who are aware of their own journey of awakening. His work includes traditional talk therapy in line with the thinking of Adler, Jung, Winnicott and Maslow. He has lived the arc of suffering, awakening and maturity that he writes about in the SDI Press Book, Awakening and Maturity for Spiritual Directors and Companions.
Liza Hyatt
Liza Hyatt, ATR-BC, LMHC, ATCS, CCM, RYT-200 is a board certified art therapist and license mental health counselor in Indianapolis with over 30 years of trauma-focused counseling experience. As an art therapist, Liza incorporates all forms of creative expression into therapeutic work, including visual artmaking, creative writing, movement and dance, and music. She is trained to teach Let Your Yoga Dance, and is completed her 200 hour yoga teacher training in March 2019. Liza is also a a certified EMDR therapist and finds trauma focused therapy combining both EMDR and expressive art therapy to be extremely effective in helping trauma survivors shift nervous system arousal and rediscover how to connect and feels safe.
Dr. Jamie F. Eaddy-Chism
The Rev. Jamie Eaddy-Chism, DMin, works with people’s healing and well-being, perhaps especially with navigating trauma, loss, and grief. Her work intersects justice, theology, and thanatology, and she incorporates art, music, and movement when providing education and care. She is a 2015 Princeton University Black Theology and Leadership Institute Fellow. She received her Master of Divinity from The Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology at Virginia Union University, and is a certified trauma professional (CTP). She is a certified thanatologist through The Association for Death Education and Counseling (ADEC). She founded The Remembering Station, a 501C3 committed to providing resources to those navigating grief, whether finances for funerals or resources for doulas.
Affectionately known as Dr. J, she facilitates sessions on the intersection of Trauma, Black Grief, and White Supremacy throughout the United States and abroad. Dr. Jamie is the author of Getting Naked to Get Free and curator of the “The Ratchet Grief Project™.
Igal Harmelin
Igal Harmelin offers sessions for healing developmental trauma, spiritual direction, and mental health coaching. He conducts meditative attunement workshops for therapists, and is a certified practitioner of the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM).
While Igal’s training as a spiritual director was done in a Jewish context, the principles of this practice are universally applicable to all seekers. Igal’s extensive study of the teachings of the world’s major religions makes him comfortable to sit in direction with followers of all faiths, as well as with those who profess to follow none.
He has taught meditation to thousands of people on four continents and has spent years in extended meditation retreats under a number of spiritual teachers.
Igal is a member of the Spiritual Directors International (SDI) and at present, offers spiritual direction sessions online. Formerly he was part of a team that offered spiritual direction services to rabbinical and cantorial students at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. He has translated into Hebrew a number of books on religion and spirituality for Israel’s largest publisher.
He expects to be ordained as a rabbi in the summer of 2024.
He now lives in New York City with his wife, Rabbi Lisa Goldstein.
Edgardo Lugo
Edgardo Lugo is currently serving as the Director of Bereavement at Calvary Hospital where he leads a team of bereavement counselors who offer individual and group counseling to children, adolescent and adults and offer training on grief, mourning and bereavement to education and mental health professionals. Prior to Calvary he served 20 years in community mental health services in New York as a therapist and supervisor. He is a spiritual director and is affiliated with the Ignatian Spirituality in Everyday Life ministry with St. Francis Xavier Church in New York, New York. He was trained in Spiritual Direction in the Center for Spirituality and Justice in Bronx, New York, 1991-1992. He holds an MS in Pastoral Counseling from Iona College, a Masters in Social Work from Fordham University, and is currently completing an MA in Christian Spirituality in Fordham University. He recently presented in SDI’s New Perspectives in Ignatian Spiritual Direction Course.
Candace Lewis
Candace Lewis, former SDI New Contemplative (2018), is an assistant professor with a dual appointment in the School of Life Sciences and Department of Psychology. Her research focuses on the impact of early life social experiences on epigenetic regulation of gene systems involved in mental health; the relationships between peripheral epigenetics and brain structure, function, microbiome composition and behavior; and the potential of psychedelic-assisted therapy to reduce symptoms through psychological healing and epigenetic alterations. Lewis has been funded by the Science Foundation Arizona, Fulbright Association and the National Institutes of Health (specifically, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes Program, and the National Institute on Aging).
Harry Pickens
Harry Pickens is an award-winning musician, educator, and life transformation coach. He holds practitioner and trainer certifications in EFT and Spiritual Technology and a Certificate in Applied Positive Psychology from the Flourishing Center. He is the developer of the From StageFright To Standing Ovation™, From Burnout To Bliss™ and Rewire Your Brain For Inner Peace™ Workshops, and creator of Emotional Empowerment For Personal Mastery™, a step-by-step protocol that is designed to help his clients quickly and easily release the pain of the past, fully embrace the miracle of the present moment, and consciously create their best possible future.
Tara Bedeau, ESQ., SPHR, M.A.R
The Reverend Tara Bedeau, J.D. is the Founder and Principal of The Alchemical Workshop. Founded in 2009, it supports people seeking to engage LIFE as it is, with disciplined intention, skillful wisdom and conscious awareness – from a place of love & truth and not fear. As a Speaker, Author, Coach, Consultant and Educator, she guides people in identifying what is most life giving, in support of their wholeness and goal attainment.
The Reverend Bedeau draws on three decades of collective experience and education as an U.S. Attorney; Executive Director & Organizational Leader; Life, Wisdom & Executive Coach; Chaplain & Spiritual Director; Mystic, Shaman, Priestess and Minister; and Fellow Seeker.
The integration of her collective areas of expertise — Wellness, Spiritual Care & Psychology; Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging & Justice; US Employment Law & Mediation; Leadership & Organizational Development and Change Management — informs The Reverend Bedeau’s Alchemical Approach. Collectively, clients served include emotionally intelligent seekers, leaders, healers, culture shifters and change agents.
During her decades of training, The Reverend Bedeau has traveled and lived throughout the globe, studying and participating in wisdom and wellness communities, practices and traditions. She finds being of service to be the highest professional and vocational call.
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The Reverend Tara Bedeau graduated cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania. She received her Doctor of Jurisprudence (J.D.) with a concentration in Public Law from Cornell Law School, and a Masters in Religion (honors earned) & Psychology at Union Theological Seminary, a Columbia University Institution. She has completed certifications in Mediation and Conflict Resolution hosted at the University of California, Berkeley, and in Organizational Development and Change Management. And, she has completed training in Appreciative Inquiry (AI) and U.S. Chaplaincy (Mount Sinai Hospital & UCSF Medical Center). The Reverend Bedeau is an Interfaith/Interspiritual clergy member through The Chaplaincy Institute of Berkeley, California, and sits on the Professional Advisory Group for the UCSF Medical Center Spiritual Care Department.
Beckie Boger
Beckie Boger is certified as an Equine Professional and Practitioner in Natural Lifemanship Trauma-informed Equine Assisted Learning, a trained Spiritual Director, and trained as a Sexual Assault Response Network advocate. She is the President of Divine Equines Horse-centered Soul Care where she offers nature-based/trauma-informed private and group programming to adult trauma survivors.
Laurie Wevers
Laurie Wevers is a Queer Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Spiritual Director based out of the Washington DC surrounding areas. Laurie is licensed to practice therapy in Minnesota, California, Maryland, and Virginia, while seeing spiritual direction clients both nationally and internationally. Laurie is an alum of Richard Rohr’s 2-year Living School program, was a 2023 SDI New Contemplative, and is an aspiring wisdom teacher and retreat leader.
Schedule
Twelve live weekly 90-120 minute courses, Tuesdays beginning January 9, 2024. Sessions will occur over Zoom from approximately 3pm Pacific Time, with a full outline coming soon. To find your start time based on time zone, click here.
Students can participate live or watch at their convenience later.
Course Outline
Ground your practice in spiritual trauma-informed care, to be of service for our times.
There Are So Many Online Courses. Why This One?
Reputable
SDI is the largest and oldest network of spiritual companions in the world. For 30 years we have been creating and curating educational offerings for spiritual companions across religious traditions, and we have our finger on the pulse of the spiritual companionship movement in the US and beyond.
Faculty
Our instructors are the best in the field. You will be in an intimate learning environment with some of the most renowned and sought-after spiritual teachers in the field of spiritual companionship.
Affordable
We are committed to making our courses widely available and accessible. We are keeping the course tuition low and have a generous number of scholarships to give out. We strongly encourage any for whom the cost is a challenge to apply for a scholarship.
Convenient
Watch the lessons when you can, complete the course at your own pace. You will have access to the course content for an entire year after purchase.
Interaction
A moderated community forum offers space online to engage with your fellow students, the course instructors, and SDI staff to synthesize the lessons and apply them to your own spiritual companionship practice. Bring your questions, your stories and experiences! The instructors will share theirs as well.
Welcoming
This introductory level course is open to all! There are no prerequisites and no required readings. Each session will include a basic primer in the fundamentals of that week’s tradition or orientation. It will be easy to experiment, ask questions, and try out some of the techniques taught in the course.
Credits
24 CEU credits available.
Disclaimer
This course is intended to give spiritual directors tools for working with trauma and potential mental health issues within the context of their profession as spiritual care providers. It is for educational and informational purposes only and is not a replacement for proper certified training in these fields. Nothing offered in this course is to be considered medical or mental health advice for yourself or others. The Faculty and SDI assume no liability or responsibility for any actions or behaviors you or your clients undertake. Please consult your licensed medical and/or mental health professionals before making any changes in your mental or physical health routines. You are responsible for your own health and wellbeing and for staying within the scope of your professional practice.
