Policy

We consider Policy as Sacred

At Sacred Circle Training Co CIC our policies are our lived practice and the most important part of these living, breathing, evolving documents is that we know we will most likely only grow from learning from our mistakes. We undertake to remain humble in thought and word; to be open to feedback, learning and growth. The documents below reflect a policy position as of April 2023 for the year to come; they are all open to evolution.

Community Standards and Ethics

Student Agreement 2026/ 2027

This is a gentle persons handshake agreement meaning it is not technically legally binding but we ask that it be honoured nonetheless.

We, the training provider, will provide materials both in hard copy and online to support the course, give you access to our community zooms, newsletter and skills sessions, support you through the in-person retreat and provide facilitation, holding and guidance for the 12 months of the Journey with Death.

We will always treat you as peers and equals, this is not a hierarchy, we are all learning and Death is the Teacher. We undertake to uphold our Community Standards and Ethics in everything we do and when we fall short we welcome loving, constructive feedback in alignment with our Feedback, Grievances and Complaints procedure.

You, the student, agrees to complete your payment schedule except in the most extraordinary of circumstances. We cannot refund you the cost of your retreat and materials once you have received those services, so you are financially committed to a minimum of half the full course costs should you withdraw at a later date. We would consider it out of integrity for you to take the retreat and the materials and then not complete your payment promise.

You, the student, also agrees to self care and take full responsibility for yourself in this process. You will observe, or recommit to, your personal spiritual practice and lean into your support structures. You also agree to communicate with us fully and frankly throughout the course, and to notify us if you are not able to attend any sessions.

We hope that you will attend a min of 8 out of the 12 check in sessions and watch all 12 of the skills sessions recordings if you cannot attend them in person. You will complete the exercises in the workbook and participate to the best of your ability in our community offerings.

If you have a grievance or complaint we ask that you follow our procedure to help you and us get the most out of the process.

We look forward to welcoming you to this community!

The Group Agreement for our Retreats 2026 Draft reads as follows:

This is a new draft for 2026, it includes a clause we have not used before called “Diversity of Thought” and it has been included following consultation with the Race Equality Council on how we as a community could be better anti-racists; Diversity of Thought does not just relate to race but to all axis’ of difference and diversity. The idea is that we need to adopt a humble position of curiosity and deep listening to all; if someone or something is disturbing to us, if we feel a strong response rising… “what do I not know here?” “what do I not yet understand?” “whose voice is dominant here, and whose voices are quiet?” “can we bring in the marginalised voices? Can we recalibrate the dominant narrative?” “what fixed immutable views do I need to surrender?”… this will be the first time this enters our group agreement and we shall just have to see how it goes.

Essential Statement on Diversity

This growing global community of death and grief doulas is certainly diverse but we wish to be more so; we absolutely celebrate diversity along all its myriad axis; and especially welcome disabled people, people of the global majority (black and brown bodied people), LGBTQIA+, all faiths and beliefs… it is a defining commitment of our community to be actively anti-oppression.

If you are challenged by this inclusion statement we cautiously welcome you to come and listen in order to learn more but we will not accept hate speech or violence in any form and our facilitators are very experienced and skilled in calling this in to our group conversations. If we hear white supremacy, bigoted language or see exclusionary behaviour in any form then addressing this takes priority over the content of the course.

Even bigots and the haters will be met with love and compassion. But anyone who refuses to abide by the group agreement once in place will be asked to leave.

Yield, listen and learn… yes. Double down and persist… no. This is the only truly fixed boundary we have, the rest are more mutable and open to flex.

***

This Group Agreement is a DRAFT, based on 10 years of running these death doula retreats and courses it was time consuming and a little insulting to all our intelligence to start from a blank sheet of paper every time; so we started to compile the commonly held group agreements into a draft document to save time; we present it to you as the accumulative wisdom from the community over the years NOT as rules to followed but shared values to adopt… or adapt if they need to evolve. So you are very welcome to suggest additions, amendments or to remove aspects of this group agreement. Please send your suggestions for changes to [email protected] before the Group Agreement call.

Agreement Headlines

We will read this out at the beginning of the retreat along with suggested amendments and we will seek your consent on each of these points:

I commit to “diversity of thought” and will yield to and listen to the marginalised voices; I accept that I do not know everything and that is OK

I agree that Death is the Teacher means I am not the teacher, I speak from the “I” about my own experiences, needs, hopes and stories only; my worldview is equal to all others but not better and certainly not the whole Truth

I agree to keep confidential all that happens in Circle and all that is entrusted to me between Circles

I agree to treat everyone with Respect, myself included; I meet others with grace and allow them and myself to be human and flawed

I agree to observe the practice of Consent; for myself and with others

I agree to take responsibility for my self, to name and ask for what I need if I cannot meet my own needs

I agree to abstain from mollycoddling people in catharsis, I commit to staying with my own process

I agree that (even if I am an excellent facilitator of people) I will try my best to allow the facilitators of this group to do their work and allow myself to be held by the process

I agree to be on time and in all sessions, sober and present to the process

I agree not to leave before the official end except in the most extraordinary of circumstances and to leave only after speaking to the facilitators and properly exiting the Circle

Below there are notes for each point if you need clarification.

NOTES

“I commit to “diversity of thought” and will yield to and listen to the marginalised voices; I accept that I do not know everything and that is OK”

In practice this means we would own and name our own triggers without blaming others for triggering us

It means we might need to ask for a pause in proceedings to allow the Big Feelings to process through

Before going for someone who is irritating us, before judging others, blaming others for how we feel… we are encouraged to ask “what do I not know here?”

An acceptable response in the circle might be to raise your hand and say “there is something I do not have the whole picture on here because I feel very activated and need to ask for some clarity… what did you mean by xxx?

Also it may be that if the flow of the group discussion hits a tense edge, the facilitators might take a gentle steer; they may request the dominant voices to please yield and the marginalised voices to be heard

“I agree that Death is the Teacher means I am not the teacher, I speak from the “I” about my own experiences, needs, hopes and stories only; my worldview is equal to all others but not better and certainly not the whole Truth”

The “Death is the Teacher” clause keeps our facilitators off pedestals and the group learning in the shared stories of death and loss

The facilitators carry inevitable rank in the space; totally acknowledged; but they do not have authority and are in no way superior or different; we are all equal before Death

It also means that when people might try to talk in academic or heady terms about something they have no lived experience of, we will all notice it and this is discouraged but not shamed… we try as best we can to stay with the human stories that the retreat process is designed to draw out

“I agree to keep confidential all that happens in Circle and all that is entrusted to me between Circles”

Confidentiality means we do not discuss the contents of other people’s stories outside of the Circle

What is said in Circle stays in Circle; do not attempt to bring up what was said in Circle over lunch with out explicit consent

“I agree to treat everyone with Respect, myself included; I meet others with grace and allow them and myself to be human and flawed”

This one speaks for itself.

“I agree to observe the practice of Consent; for myself and with others”

If you have time before the retreat and you are interested you could look at the Wheel of Consent sessions in the Skills Share recordings.

Ultimately it means Yes means Yes and No means No.

We seek consent before we touch people, offer commentary or advice (not usually welcome) or adjust the environment around us eg opening windows

When people share in the circle they are both giving and receiving. When we have finished speaking we might say “thank you for listening” as a way of closing; we will thank you for sharing.

If someone takes a long time to share they may be on the edge of taking too much and those who choose not speak might be giving too much – neither is consensual, we need to monitor ourselves for fairness in the space and listen to consent in our bodies

A gut feeling of something being imbalanced can often be a sign that Consent is out of balance – no shame – we just need to recalibrate it back again by asking for needs to be observed

In group decision making DISSENT is essential – you are absolutely free to dissent at any time and we will thank you for it (remembering the respect and self responsibility of course, no need to actually lose your cool; state your dissent calmly and it will be welcomed as an opportunity to revisit the group agreement)

Without the No and the Dissenting voice then consent means nothing – so your No and and your dissent is very important

If we are in a group decision making process the group will be asked if anyone objects? If there are no voices of dissent or objections then Consent is established. We don’t all need to agree completely, but if someone disagrees completely then this is important information.

“I agree to take responsibility for my self, to name and ask for what I need if I cannot meet my own needs”

We take collective responsibility for the group by meeting and tending to our own needs first and those of others second; this does not mean to be a rampant narcissist; this just means that if we know that everyone is considering their own comfort, their own needs and if they do not ask for help they don’t need mollycoddling… we can just get on with what we are doing without codependently fussing over others and losing ourselves in the process.

“I agree to abstain from mollycoddling people in catharsis, I commit to staying with my own process”

We will be crying. There will be a lot of strong emotion at times in this space, it is designed to be so.

It is a safe way to practice NOT FIXING

It is a place to practice holding yourself and regulating / co-regulating in the presence of other people’s suffering – we are not making you suffer we are exploring our own stories of grief and loss, and encouraging healthy catharsis

This is the basis of being a death doula – we cannot, in clear conscience, turn you out into the world without this basic skill of Presence and bearing suffering; allowing other people the labours of their own process and focussing on your own… top skills!

If someone is (as sometimes happens) tipped over an edge then do not panic, there is literally nothing the facilitator team cannot meet. Stay with your own process until you are asked to support; the circle can be called upon by the facilitators to come closer and hold someone; if that happens consent is given for you to get involved but never to dominate or lead, that would not be cool.

“I agree that (even if I am an excellent facilitator of people) I will try my best to allow the facilitators of this group to do their work and allow myself to be held by the process”

As all good facilitators of people know the hardest people to have in your circle are experienced facilitators!!! Competitive facilitating is a THING. We are often extremely adept at spotting every tiny hole in the group agreement and every “unsafe” edge.

Be the person you would want in your own Circle, please. No shame here, it IS difficult to relax when you are used to leading and holding space. We see you and we know your struggle, it is OK.

“I agree to be on time and in all sessions, sober and present to the process”

This retreat needs to us to be prompt to start and we will do everything we can to finish at the stated time for meals.

Please do not bring alcohol or non-prescription drugs on retreat at all.

Please do not go off site without notifying a member of the team as to where you are going and when you will be back. Please be back and connect with that team member when you are, on time.

“I agree not to leave before the official end except in the most extraordinary of circumstances and to leave only after speaking to the facilitators and properly exiting the Circle”

This has only happened twice in 10 years and on both occasions the people who left later said they didn’t think any one would notice they were gone.

With respect to them, it was akin energetically to a self-killing – a way of centring themselves by taking themselves out.

The fall out in the Circle was one of devastation.

So PLEASE know you are loved, welcome and very much part of this circle. Your absence WILL be noticed and it will matter.

You are not our prisoner, if you need to go then speak to the facilitator team who will, of course, ask you to lean in, and see if you can work through what is arising – but if it comes down to a No… you have to go. Then you are also asked to extricate yourself consciously from the Circle.

Don’t just silently slip out. This links to the Self Responsibility clause… you matter, whether you like it or not.

Group Agreement for Retreats

Short Form of our Group Agreement for Retreat

You will be issued with this Group Agreement as a draft form – a “bones” of an agreement – for your group to review and agree on; with more detail and context for each section. This is a summary of the Group Agreement for you to review in the future and / or for prospective participants on future courses to get a feel for how we work. This will be listed on the policy section of our website Aug 2025 and is due for review October 2026 if not before.

Here are some basic tenets of our work that we feel are appropriate to share at the outset:

1. We offer a non-hierarchical circle where the holding team have roles and inevitable rank but are not superior nor, in their human-ness, beyond reproach. Death is our Teacher.

We hold very carefully and conscientiously the risk of becoming unconsciously cult-like and as part of our cult conscious risk assessment value consent, dissent and challenge.

We have a set of Community Ethics and Standards which we encourage you to read and are included in this document. They provide us with the touchstone of our integrity as a community.

The Work with Death as our Teacher is inevitably strong, yet gentle. You may be confronted with your own shadow and it may present as fight, flight, freeze and fawn responses. You can and will be energetically held and we also ask you to retain personal responsibility for your self at all times.

The healing benefits of being in a death conscious and grief literate community are immense but this is not a replacement for personal therapy, supervision, addiction recovery processes or a substitute for actively building and nurturing your own support structures and networks. The space may be therapeutic in nature at times but is not formally intended as “therapy”; if you find your troubles and challenges are not met in the space we encourage you to seek the circles of support you need. This remains your responsibility as well.

CONSENT

Yes means Yes and No means No: we strive to be clear and aligned when expressing our needs and preferences. Consent is a practice and we are all human and learning all the time. This community collectively values the willingness to practice consent without the fear or shame of getting it “wrong”, we see this as a shared process.

STATEMENT: I AGREE TO HOLD CONSENSUAL LINES WITHIN MYSELF AND WITH OTHERS

CONFIDENTIALITY

Confidentiality is the cornerstone of trust; what is said in a circle, a session or between people in the breaktimes needs to be held in confidence; do not discuss another person with anyone either behind their back at the retreat or afterwards

STATEMENT: I UPHOLD CONFIDENTIALITY AND STRIVE TO BE TRUSTWORTHY

MUTUAL RESPECT

All of you and everything you bring is welcome on this retreat. We come together as peers and equals with Death and Grief the great levellers. This community collectively values mutual respect, equality and equity in our communications.

STATEMENT: I COMMIT TO FINDING MY PLACE IN THE CIRCLE, I AM NEITHER MORE NOR LESS THAN ANY ONE ELSE

SELF RESPONSIBILITY

The holding team are here to make your experience a wonderful one. We are courageously entering often unexplored territory and the holding team are fellow travellers on this journey. As a community we collectively value self responsibility, process and maturity in our selves and each other.

STATEMENT: I TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR MYSELF AND ALLOW OTHERS THEIR OWN PROCESS

BOUNDARIES

This retreat will be gently held, deep, beautiful, raw at times but also wonderful, full of fun and laughter too. In order to ensure the best experience for the majority we hold the boundaries of time, presence and sobriety very closely.

STATEMENT: I WILL SHOW UP TO THE BEST OF MY ABILITY, ON TIME, SOBER AND ENGAGED IN THE PROCESS

EXCEPTIONS

Death as our Teacher, sometimes, brings about shifts in consciousness. Should the occasion arise that a member of the circle hits an “edge” that they seem to not be able to hold for themselves – this is very likely to be a moment of “spiritual emergence” and we will midwife this with care and skill, together. It might, to the uninitiated seem like a “crisis” but it’s a different type of emergence-y and our facilitators are some of the best and will recognise this if it happens. Your lead facilitators will make an approach and explore, with consent, the best way to hold this person. We ask that the circle yields and sits back, bears witness and awaits guidance from the facilitators and do not rush in. These moments, can sometimes, change the time boundaries and flow of the session, which the facilitators will hold conscientiously.

We celebrate this process if it happens.

STATEMENT: I UNDERSTAND THESE ARE ALL GUIDELINES AND NOT FIXED RULES, WE HOLD THEM BUT ALSO FLOW WITH WHAT IS NEEDED, I STRIVE TO TRUST THE FACILITATORS AND THE PROCESS

Pricing Policy incl. Bursary Fund

Payment Policy

The current price for our Death Doula Preparation course stands at £2950 for UK based courses and that is a revision on the 2023 price of £3500. Courses in other countries will be priced relative to the retreat centre costs and may be lower. The revision came about with sourcing lower priced retreat centres and passing on the savings to the participants: however, the £2950 holds a very low margin indeed for the company and really does reflect the real cost of the course.

Once you sign up you are committing to pay a minimum of 50% of the total price even if you later withdraw from the course. If you are paying monthly then we would hope you would honour the agreement and keep paying until you have paid 50% ie £1475 as we have overheads to meet and once you have joined the course we make our full materials and offer available to you. Your uo-to-50% payment can be exchanged for credit for future courses and offers, or indeed transferred to a friend if you wish, but it cannot be reimbursed; it puts too much strain on the cash flow of the social enterprise. We will reimburse you anything over the 50% that you have paid.

Bursaries

We have learned a lot about offering bursaries over the years; we have found that different people have very different bars internally when they say "I have no money" ; we gave people bursaries only to later see them on holiday on social media, or find out they have a hoarding problem, or they had just finished paying for another course. Some people just apply for the bursary to see if they can get money off, without first wondering for themselves HOW they might be able to find the money?

We also found that we were enabling people to underearn and as we became more boundaried and less codependent ourselves we learned it was possibly more loving to redirect people to Underearners Anonymous or Debtors Anonymous, to encourage them to heal their relationship with money and earning so our bursary didn't become just another codependent enabler of chronic underbeing.

Our bursary is really specifically for people who are under-represented in death doula work due to systemic oppression. White, educated, cash poor, women with a long CV of personal development courses under their belt are very highly represented in this work and while we are sympathetic to what it is to live with low cash flow; we also believe in you that you could run an event or fundraise or crowdfund something, if you wanted to. We do offer monthly payment plans and welcome you to apply for those of course.

Black and brown bodied people and other bodies of culture, disabled, queer / LGBTQI+ folk, refugees and asylum seekers, full time carers and (in some cases but not all) single parents are welcome to apply for the bursary.

In the case of single parents we will ask you to qualify what your available income is as being a single parent in and of itself is not always an indicator of low income.

The full bursary is 50% of the cost of the course, which can then be spread monthly.

Another reason we would like people to stretch to see if they can make the cost is because we DO need people to pay what it is worth in order for the organisation, the social enterprise, to thrive.

We welcome all applications and we ask you to prepare yourself that the response may not always be a straight yes, we believe in having open honest and no-shame-at-all conversations about money and we want you to know that we will handle your application and personal circumstances with respect and love, you have no need for embarrassment, shame or fear in applying, you will be well met regardless of the outcome, treated with great care.

Email sacredcirclecic AT gmail DOT com to apply

Revised Sept 2026 due for review Sept 2027

Data Protection

We see your personal data as being your story. What you share with us we hold completely confidential whether that be your life story or your email address.

For the purposes of the training and community development activities eg courses and retreats; we only collect the data we need to communicate with you regarding the courses and the community activities; when you join you are added to a mailing list of students and community members which receives our newsletter; you can unsubscribe any time.

We store your data in password secured and save places for the eyes only of the administration team.

In 2027 we launch the Find a Doula search function on our website, when you sign up to be listed on that website you will be shown a privacy statement which describes how your data is stored and used, in order to be listed you will need to consent. For the Find a Doula search function Sacred Circle Training Co CIC is the "data controller" and our partner organisation Poolside is the "data processor" as they host the find a doula function on their server.

The relationship between Sacred Circle as the data controller and Poolside as the data processor is described and detailed in a Service Level Agreement which contains a Data Processing Agreement in alignment with GDPR legislation. You can be assured that each organisation takes its data responsibilities seriously and your data is kept secure and only for the purpose it was collected for.

You can ask us at any time what data we hold for you and you can also ask us at any time to delete it and we will do so within 3 working days of your request without question.

If you opt into our community whatsapp groups please be aware that other members of the group can directly message you privately from the group and we are not able to prevent that from happening; we have it as an agreement between users of the whatsapp groups that you seek consent first before private messaging someone and / or storing their number in your phone.

We review the data we hold on an annual basis and we will remove any data that is out of date.

This policy was last updated Sept 2026 and due for review when we launch the new search function... if you feel this policy needs to be better, tighter or different we welcome your views please email your feedback to [email protected] with Policy Feedback as your subject line

Safeguarding

We at Sacred Circle Training Co CIC are often in the presence of the vulnerability of humans and we understand and hold in deep reverence and compassion the vulnerability of all we meet in grief, death and trauma.

In doing so we equally champion the sovereignty and personal power of all the consenting adults who join our courses and community to take responsibility for themselves and their own wellbeing, asking for their own needs to be met and remaining responsible for their holistic health.

This may seem like a paradox but we stand by it as a complexity of our humanity; we will witness and empathise with you in your vulnerability but we will not take responsibility for you and thus take your power from you.

This only extends to those who have the power to consent.

People who are classed as legally vulnerable and unable to consent include children and young people and adults without capacity to make decisions for themselves.

Occasionally children and young people have joined our doula trainings with the full consent and 100% presence alongside them of their parents; the children and young people have also been given every opportunity to consent or opt out. They have proven to be extraordinary contributors to our circles.

It is not, however, a policy of ours to open our courses to children and young people and we would only consider applications on a case by case basis with full consent of both the parents and the youth.

When children and young people do attend our courses they remain the full responsibility of their supervising parent or guardian.

What we may commonly come across are stories shared which may, either consciously or unintentionally, disclose abuse of children, young people or vulnerable adults.

Sacred Circle CIC is not classed as a statutory body so if / when we do hear disclosures of abuse we will take the following actions:

We will stop the person sharing with us and gently inform them that they are detailing abuse and if they continue they need to know that we are legally obliged to act to safeguard the vulnerable
We will write down what was said
We will pass the information about the disclosure of abuse to the most relevant authority eg the school of a child, the GP of an elder or social services. If what is disclosed to us is a criminal act then we will notify the police.
We will stand by and support any affected members of our community whatever the outcome

The directors of Sacred Circle CIC will also be notified that we have had to take such an action. We absolutely understand that human relationships are messy and we will not stand in judgment of the human beings involved; we do, however, absolutely take the community responsibility for the wellbeing of our vulnerable seriously.

This policy was last updated Sept 2026 and due for review Sept 2027; if you feel this policy needs to be better, tighter or different we welcome your views please email your feedback to sacredcirclecic AT gmail.comwith Policy Feedback as your subject line

Policy Statement of Self Killing (Suicide and Suicidality)

In 2026 we lost two more members of this community who died by their own hand. This has given us so much sorrow and, of course, reason to review this statement. We find that the 2021 statement still stands. It is utterly heartbreaking that the 3 humans we have lost in our time have all been of the global majority; either Black or Indigenous and this additional layer of sorrow reminds us why this work with Death is NOT just for the privileged dying with their boots off, supported by institutions that were funded and created by colonisation. This work is radical and intersectional, and grass roots. We honestly believe that these friends we lost were heartbroken and depressed when they arrived with us. We wish so wholeheartedly that we could have held them and given them reason to live. For some the promise of death outweighs the promise of life; we strive to offer spaces that strike the right balance of talking openly about death and loss, without glorifying death at the same time.

Here is our original statement from 2021:

"In 2021 a much loved member of our community had a hand in their own death. This event not only devastated us as humans, friends and beloveds of this individual but it also gave rise to a significant review of our safeguarding policy to see if there was anything we could do, as a community and as a company, to prevent this happening again.

We took time and went deep in conversation to ask the questions we really didn’t want to including “if we open space to talk openly about death, will we attract the suicidal?” “did our course contribute to this person’s mental and emotional distress?” or “do we, in our openness and willingness to embrace death as a teacher, in some way, encourage self killing?”

The outcome of these conversations led us to believe that the work that we do towards breaking down the taboos around death and dying is done with the intention of creating a better world where the promise of life outweighs the promise of death. Spaces where suicidality can be discussed without fixing or shaming seem to be better than not talking about it at all.

In the review of the factors that contributed to our friend taking their life we concluded that we couldn’t have foreseen it or prevented it; the person in question did not disclose their suicidality to us and they had been in communication with us up to the 2 weeks prior and did not give us reason to have concern for their welfare. We grieved sorely and we learned and this is what we learned:

Some people will take their own lives and we are powerless to stop them
For some people the promise of death outweighs their desire to live and we cannot fix them
They are not broken or failing as human beings for having these thoughts
It is our world that is broken and our systems that are failing and therefore we hold the spaces we do to share the pain of such failures

If any member of our community discloses to us that they are suicidal we will support them to find help, we will ask them what their plans are and signpost where we can to get the best support possible. We would also extend to them the opportunity to share their stories with us in circle and we will grieve with them their sorrows, in the hope this removes some of the impulse to die.

But at the end of the day, we work with sovereign adults and our student agreement does include a statement of self-responsibility; as an organisation we are not taking responsibility for anyone’s health and welfare.

This policy was last updated Sept 2026 and due for review Sept 2027 but will be reviewed earlier in the event (sincerely hopefully not) of another self killing within our community; if you feel this policy needs to be better, tighter or different we welcome your views please email your feedback to sacredcirclecic AT gmail.com with Policy Feedback as your subject line

Statement of the Assisted Dying Debate

Note from 2026: This bill is still in debate in the UK and until such a time that the law changes the statement from 2024 still stands:

Update December 2024 (the original text of this policy statement remains below until we get some clear guidance and insights into how the changes in the Assisted Dying Bill in the UK will be implemented and we know how this work will be impacted)

At the end of November 2024 the UK Assisted Dying Bill passed its second reading the House of Commons, by a relatively narrow margin. There are still a lot of concerns that people have about the implementation of this Bill and a period of consultation is upon us, including a proposed Palliative Care commission to look into improving end of life and palliative care.

Our position remains unchanged for now, which is that as death doulas we will always work within the letter of the law of the country in which we are based; we would only ever be engaged to accompany someone undergoing assisted dying when it is legal to do so. Nothing a doula does would intervene or interfere with another person's process, we would never be encouraging or discouraging people from taking their own decisions. We remain enduringly neutral, advocating for and championing an individual's right to choose.

The debate around this matter is extremely nuanced. In many ways it belongs in a paradigm of thought about death that we only partially overlap with; in a medicalised world, where decisions about life and death rest on the shoulders of medical professionals, where people are medicated and life is extended as a result of pharmaceuticals that in years to come will be in short supply, where we only have language for death in medical terms... this is the domain in which the Assisted Dying debate dwells. As death doulas we are in service from a place of accepting and meeting Reality as it Is. We cannot single handedly change a system, especially one that is in collapse, so we can show up and serve as best we can within it. While also simultaneously building bridges to a different paradigm, one where death is restored as a community event; and medical / pharmaceutical intervention is in service of that death according to the needs and wishes of those dying; rather than the dying person having to shoehorn themselves into a systemic machine, very short on humanity.

*Original Text below

As End of Life or Death Doulas we are often asked to comment on what we think about the “Assisted Dying Bill” that is currently in debate both in the UK and Irish parliaments.

The number one thing that is essential for all doulas to understand is that we are pro choice.

Tempting as it might be to weigh in with personal opinions based on difficult experiences from the past we are not a liberty to discuss any of situations of the clients we have supported through death and grief; we cannot use their stories as weight in arguments pro and con.

We have numerous examples of where clients of ours in the past have asked us to be with them if they ended their own lives when in terminal pain and suffering. In each case we would decline; regardless of how much we might wish to honour the human being and their wish to die.

The reason we would decline is because it would be illegal to do as wished and would bring the “profession” of death doulas into disrepute and controversy. Furthermore, bearing witness to a self killing is not the same thing as an assisted death in the legal and medical context and should not be confused.

We have death doulas in our community (we are a global community) who live in countries where Assisted Dying is legal. In fact, in some of those countries our doulas have accompanied people through the Assisted Dying process in a personal capacity as spouses and children of the deceased.

The Sacred Circle policy on Assisted Dying is that we will always abide by the law of the country in which we work. No doula will ever actively assist someone to die; we may bear witness and act as a companion where the law of the land permits it.

In terms of the debate pro and con; we champion every individual’s right to decide for themselves; we are in favour of informed choice and hold our personal opinions as secondary to the needs of our clients.

Equality and Inclusion

Here is our unequivocal statement on Diversity, 2026:

"This growing global community of death and grief doulas is certainly diverse but we wish to be more so; we absolutely celebrate diversity along all its myriad axis; and especially welcome disabled people, people of the global majority (black and brown bodied people), LGBTQIA+, all faiths and beliefs… it is a defining commitment of our community to be actively anti-oppression.

If you are challenged by this inclusion statement we cautiously welcome you to come and listen in order to learn more but we will not accept hate speech or violence in any form and our facilitators are very experienced and skilled in calling this in to our group conversations. If we hear white supremacy, bigoted language or see exclusionary behaviour in any form then addressing this takes priority over the content of the course.

Original Policy Statement

The Teacher that is Death asks us to reconsider the colonial construct of “inclusion” and asks all of us to rethink what we mean when we say we champion a “good death” because a good death for one person should be a good death for all people.

The more we sit with Death as our teacher the deeper we are drawn into social justice and the fight for equality. End of Life doulas are not just for palliative and hospice care situations.

Inadequate as our systems of care are and failing as our institutions are; even so to reach an old age or to die in relative comfort with your boots off is a privilege denied to many.

Sacred Circle end of life doulas are available post-death in cases of sudden and violent death and self killing, we are grief doulas and we can hold space for the tragedy of untimely death.

We recognise that death comes younger and more violently disproportionately amongst Black communities and other communities of colour, in communities experiencing poverty and high levels of ancestral trauma, to the LGBTQIA+ communities and to people with disabilities. We see and mourn discrepancies in youth deaths along the lines of the gender binary; young men being extremely vulnerable as are transwomen. We recognise and mourn too the discrepancies in outcomes for Black families at birth and in the post partum period.

All this being said what does this mean in terms of our Equality and Inclusion policy?

Firstly it means that we do not teach that death in hospice is the only death we can be of service at. Our courses speak to the inequalities in deaths in our society and promote social justice and activism.

Secondly, we welcome applications from folks who come from underrepresented communities and we will provide additional support both in terms of learning needs and (where possible) financial support to encourage diversity to flourish in our community.

Thirdly, we recognise that an organisation is as diverse as it is inclusive; so we do not chase diversity as a performative and empty gesture; we work to create safety and accountability in our spaces in the faith that this will lead to ever greater diversity.

Fourthly, we celebrate with great joy the differences in our stories between cultures, heritages, ancestry, land, place and space; we seek to learn from each others stories without appropriating other cultures.

Fifthly and most importantly, the work we do at Sacred Circle CIC is a de-colonising act; to reclaim and remember Death in our communities leads us to uncover the “paths of return” in all cultures but often in white Europe and where the descendants of white Europe have settled; to meet within, once again, the lost indigenous traditions of Europe. In addressing the soul sickness at the heart of whiteness which is both cause and effect of the cultural fear of death, the loss of our rites of passage and traditions around death and grief, we are healing the very forces that led to colonialism and capitalism.

Cult Conscious Risk Assessment

Sacred Circle CIC is a social enterprise with 2 directors and we have a team of facilitators, a community co-ordinator and administrative and financial support. Our remit is to provide education and community development around death, dying and grief. We train end of life doulas and celebrants and these participants in the courses join a global community of kindred spirits. We are secular but spiritual in our approach; we advocate no doctrine and promote no religion or particular faith; all our participants are free to believe in whatever they do and we train doulas to support their clients according to their clients worldview.

We recognise that where we have “community” meeting “spirituality” and in particular in the field of death and dying; there is potential for unconsciously creating cult-like conditions. The following are the characteristics of a cult and below are the measures we take to prevent falling into such a trap:

The group has a charismatic leader to whom member display zealous unquestioning commitment
The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members
The group is preoccupied with making money
Questioning, doubt and dissent are discouraged and punished
Members are encouraged to cut ties with family and friends and give up personal goals
Members are expected to devote all their time to the group
Members are often required to live together
The group often takes the money of the membership
The group is virtually impossible to leave and walk away from

When our co-founders parted leaving Alexandra alone with the Sacred Circle work it was Alexandra’s primary concern at the time that they did not remain the sole head of a spiritual and community organisation for the very reason it could easily become cult-like. Alexandra created the Community Interest Company to share the leadership among the directors and has been working ever since to train up a large and diverse body of new facilitators in order to create the conditions for Alexandra to step back and cease to be the lead.

The process to de-centre Alexandra is ongoing and seeks to pave the way for a non-hierarchical sociocratic culture within the community where leadership can emerge through anyone but will not reside with an individual.

The Sacred Circle training is built on a culture of Consent and questioning and dissent is very much welcomed and embraced as opportunity for growth and improvement.

The courses we offer are products; they are costed to be accessible to as many people as possible and the cost and the offer are boundaried. Membership of the “community” is entirely voluntary.

The Community Interest Company is “not for profit” and any financial surplus within the business must by law be used to purchase assets for social and community gain.

Within our long term vision for Sacred Circle would be the purchase of land and assets to create Earth Hospices; there may be the opportunity for some members of the community to live in these places but rather than being encouraged it would be done on a strictly selective and discerning basis to ensure the people who live on the property best serve the Earth Hospice.

Anyone can leave the community at any time with our blessing.

Sustainability and Environmental Policy

Feedback, Grievances and Complaints Procedure

Feedback, Grievances and Complaints Procedure

Death is an extremely benevolent and loving teacher, but at times the learning can be Strong and confronting and our course material can be challenging to some.

We needed to create a feedback loop that simultaneously filters and extricates what is fair and useful for the organisation to assimilate and learn from while at the same time not allowing the student of Death, our death doula in preparation, bypass and avoid their learning in what is triggered in them by the material.

Most of us will have heard the term "grist to the mill" and it can be used, certainly in our personal experience, by organisations that deflect and avoid feedback by saying "what is this mirroring in YOU?", "what are you learning right now?" rather than accepting and yielding to constructive information given about what the organisation could do better.

And yet... paradoxically the greatest learnings are always in where there are ruptures, and repair. It is in the REPAIR that the expand and grow stronger.

This applies to everyone involved - the complainant and the subject of the complaint. It would be remiss of us as an organisation if we simply took unprocessed and unexamined reactive feedback and apologised; we need to have a mechanism where the learning is not lost for the student while at the same time not using that as a prop to avoid yielding and listening to what is true in what they say.

We have a feedback and complaints procedure which is below;

We also brought in a new boundary in 2025 which is that we request that if you want to talk something through you seek consent of Alexandra, Su or any of the facilitators before you engage them in a one to one in WhatsApp - to protect you and them from becoming engaged in a trauma bonded, less than helpful exchange.

FEEDBACK, GRIEVANCES AND COMPLAINTS PROCEDURE

We welcome feedback and complaints using this structure, this structure exists to give you and us both guidance and support. We all know that Death as a Teacher can be really confronting and at times unsettling, so with Love and respect, if you are experiencing pain and struggle with the course material or with one of our facilitating team; take a moment to first place some time and distance between stimulus and response, breathe, take some perspective and ask yourself if you are upset / activated / angry because they are wrong... or because they are right?

Ask yourself whether the material and the stories used to bring these materials to life are activating in you one of the following core wounds:

I am not Loved or Loveable
I am not Good Enough
I am Wrong or Bad
I am Nothing

These 4 core wounds underlie so much of what we fear and if one of these has been activated in our sessions and material please hold yourself and your inner child or teenager with great compassion and love. These 4 core wounds are also invitations to heal.

The course we offer, Journey with Death, with Death as the Teacher, is not running scared from trauma and of triggering people but we are also not in the business of deliberately triggering people either. We simply know that the material is strong at times and it is common that people with unhealed trauma find some of it challenging.

The Journey with Death material builds on layers and layers of self-loving strategy to create resilience and fortitude within, so we can be with others in their difficulties without being unduly triggered. In theory we should all welcome being activated by the material and course so that it shows us where we are yet to heal. In theory, we say, because it doesn't feel good when it happens.

If you are having a very strong reaction to the material or to one of the sessions then we really want you to know that there is huge potential here for a breakthrough and deeper surrender; and while we receive feedback and complaints with an open mind and heart - we don't want you to miss this opportunity for learning and growth for you too.

That said, if once you have used your self care, spiritual practice and support structures to hold you, if you have identified the learning that this strong response might be a defence against and if you have honestly checked for yourself that you are not reacting in haste and you still feel that we have done, said or acted in ways that our out of our integrity and are harmful to you or to the community at large; then we want to hear it.

Grievances and Complaints Questions:

Please fill out these questions by way of opening the conversation:

1. Do you have a complaint about a particular person? Or our Organisational culture / practice? Please name if a person.

Was there a single moment of fracture / rupture for you where you felt unsafe? Yes / No

If Yes please describe this moment of fracture / rupture as factually as possible.
Is there a pattern or waveform within our culture that you identify as leaving you feeling unsafe? Yes / No
If Yes please describe as best you can this pattern or waveform using specific examples if possible.
If No on both accounts, please describe as best you can the reasons for your feedback in your own words.
Can you offer us some insight into your feelings around the matter? How do you feel about the event, pattern or other reason for offering feedback?
Have you processed this at all through the following channels:

Supervision / mentoring?
Talking in circle with members of this community?
Through your self care / spiritual practice?
Other - please share with us what you found helpful?
What would you like to be seen, heard and understood by us in this matter?
What would you like to see happen as an outcome of your feedback?

We assume you are offering this with love, care and compassion for the individuals involved and we want you to know that we will receive and process this with love, care and compassion for you.

We will respond in the following ways:

1. We will respond to confirm receipt of the form

2. Within 10 working days of receiving this form we will respond in person by your preferred method of contact to acknowledge and affirm your experience, to thank you for sharing it with us and to offer our considered response

3. Where there has been actual harm done we will acknowledge, apologise and detail how we will amend our practices so this does not happen again.

4. Where there has been a personal grievance against an individual we will detail how they are being supported in supervision to learn from your feedback and we will ask you if you want to have a supported conversation with them to make peace?

5. We will detail any learning that the organisation has gained from your feedback with thanks.

6. If the law has been broken we will self refer to the relevant authorities and encourage you to do so as well.

7. We will ask you if you are satisfied with our response and give you the opportunity to come back to us with more feedback if not.

8. We will ask your consent to share the learnings of this exchange in an anonymised form with the community in the spirit of accountability and mutual growth and learning

Statement on Accreditation

Update for 2026: This question never goes away and whereas a few years ago we wavered, wondering if the questions about accreditation were a sign we should go down that route (and this statement was developed to hold us on the right side of our ethics and standards), today... we are delighted that we did not go down the accreditation route as it marks us out as one of the most ethical, integral schools of wisdom offering courses on death and loss. We are seeing an absolute proliferation of online accredited courses, sometimes only 1 day online, that give people certificates in being a death doula or a grief practitioner. It is trending and it is having a moment. BUT these courses are mostly delivered either by medical professionals such as nurses who have no idea what a doula actually does, or they are simply AI created.

We are meeting people more and more who have paid money for those courses and, inevitably, come away feeling their hollowness and lack of Soul. These products are capitalising on the grief of the world at this time, capitalising on the dying and the bereaved and are selling a vision of death doulaship that is a. only for the palliative / end of life sector (which is a colonised, privileged vision of death work) and b. tells participants they will easily find work as death doulas.

What we offer here is an emotional and spiritual development space. We don't get to tell you whether you should or should not work with the dying or the bereaved; the term "death doula" continues to be problematic in many ways but it is simply a term that describes something very ancient being reimagined for modern times. Without a commonly held definition of what a death doula does or does not do; accrediting people is a complete sham.

We absolutely stand behind our convictions that we are a Gold Standard of death doula preparation; we offer the broad holding of a large global community, with the intense, powerful but also gentle experience on retreat, with 12 months or more of integration time, supported with the Journey with Death workbook and worldclass facilitation. You could say you are a death doula now if you wanted to; but are you ready? Are you networked, supported and resourced? THIS is what we offer.

And if all you want is a certificate and to work with people in hospices... we are not the provider for you. We wish you well... there are lots of others out there now, may you find what you are looking for.

If you want to remember the sacredness of death, in community, reclaiming grassroots community care of the dying and the dead, preparing for a collapse in our systems of care and working to reimagine ancient ways for modern times, with social justice and decolonisation at its heart... then you are our kind of people, welcome!

Here is our original statement:

We are often asked about whether our courses are formally accredited and the answer is No. This is a policy decision and a choice we have made because we could relatively easily make them accredited.

The reasons for this decision are thus:

Accreditation requires a lot more academic writing and essays requiring more of our facilitation team, driving up costs and also putting people with different learning styles at a disadvantage
This is an unregulated industry so accreditation would be a farce; you do not need to be accredited to call yourself a death doula or end of life doula or a celebrant; you can do so now if you wish
What we offer we call “preparation” and it is an inner preparation for you to engage with to the extent you wish to. Accompanying the dying is an inherently human act and you don’t need us to tell you whether you are “good enough” or not; the state of readiness for this work arises from within you
In all the years our team have been working as death doulas we have never actually been asked to prove ourselves; we partner with an insurance company that are willing to insure death doulas (but a doula’s work is so low risk you technically do not need insurance)
Our work is intended to decolonise death and dying; and to reclaim it from the hands of institutions and professionals. We do behave “professionally” but we are not professionals in the sense of power over another; we are human beings meeting other human beings. In an ideal society we wouldn’t need doulas and we should work to build such a world; rather than fostering dependency on ourselves.

This policy was last reviewed Sept 2026 and due for review Sept 2027; if you feel this policy needs to be better, tighter or different we welcome your views please email your feedback to sacredcirclecic AT gmail.com with Policy Feedback as your subject line