Death Midwifery Training
Caring for our dead is a practice as old as humankind.
March 27-29, 2026
Earthaven Ecovillage
Near Asheville, NC
Caring for the body of our beloved dead can be a powerful experience, especially in community. In this deathcare training, we’ll dive into the physical, emotional, legal, practical, and spiritual aspects of caring for the dying and dead, as well as their families. Please join us if you wish to reclaim a more meaningful, hands-on experience at end-of-life and gain the skills and knowledge of midwifing death with grace and confidence.
NikiAnne has exemplified the most compassionate, while also honest and realistic, approach to death, dying, and funeral care. Likewise, her work in the field of grief support was a timely and effective presence in my life, via grief ritual. It is most reassuring to have her clarity and willingness to engage in this most sacred realm of life. Thanks for leading the way NikiAnne!
Who is this training for?
This training is for those who want to learn how to skillfully and respectfully care for the dying, the dead, and their families at and around the time of death. This class is for you as a caring citizen of your community, a death caretaker (midwife or doula), a physician, a funeral director, or a hospice nurse. If you wish to offer home funeral guidance professionally, you’ll need additional training and experience.
We expect and will respect the diversity in our backgrounds, experiences, and belief systems. There are infinite ways to tend the dead.
Topics Covered
History, Background, and the Law
- History of death and dying and the funeral industry in the US
- Death Doula and Midwife: What do they each do? What are their respective scopes?
- Caring for your dead: The law and your rights
- How to navigate local bureaucracies after a death
- Green burials — in cemeteries and on private property
Inner and Outer Preparations and Planning
- Embodied apprenticeship: Envision your own death, integrate its certainty, work what you’re learning into your body
- Death planning and advance directives — for yourself and those you support
- How to organize your sacred paperwork: checklists, forms, instructions, and more
Care of the Body
- What happens when we die? How do our bodies respond to death?
- Preparing the body for a wake, funeral, celebration, and/or final disposition through burial, cremation, etc.
Sacred Space and Ceremony
- Self-care as community care
- Grief tending and bereavement support
- Cultivating community engagement and forming circles of support
Tentative Schedule
9:30 am – 5:30 pm (with lunch break)
BYO lunch (lunch is not provided)
Expect to spend an hour each evening, after class, deepening into the curriculum through contemplative practice.
Prerequisite
Filling out your Advance Health Care and After-Death Care Directives prior to this training. Notary services are available in class to make them legal.
If you haven’t completed your directives, you’re not alone; most people I know never get around to them until space is held for them to do so or someone helps them with accountability.
If you want more understanding of your options, there’s all kinds of online resources. If you want support and accountability, please join me for Death Prep: End-of-Life Directives Start to Finish — a four-session, online workshop January 18 & 25 and February 1 & 22, 2026.
Logistics
Financial Co-responsibility and Scholarships
Because some people have more financial means than others, we have created a sliding-scale fee system to accommodate a range of economic realities. We offer several price tiers and leave it to you to select the most appropriate tier. The price range aims to take into consideration economic disparities, historical injustices, and personal circumstances. The system is designed for those with more resources to support those with less.
At Earthaven and through the School of Integrated Living (SOIL), we strive to practice a culture of financial transparency, authenticity, and generosity. Trusting each other to assess their needs, what is within their ability, and when to ask for help. We are excited to include you in our experiment with financial co-responsibility.
We are now offering self-selected scholarships for many of our programs. No proof of need, no questions asked. Just the clear intention of trust that registrants can assess whether the cost of a program is truly a barrier to attendance and the growth of self and community our programs seek to foster.
In addition, we offer partial scholarships (50% of the middle of the sliding scale) to black, indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) with financial needs who otherwise would not be able to afford to attend, even with the self-selected scholarships. We understand that BIPOC may experience more financial and institutional barriers to participation, and this is one way we are able to create more access. If you identify as BIPOC with financial needs and would like to receive a deeper scholarship, please contact us.
SOIL endeavors to support the healthy flow of all resources; whether that be monetary or the skills and information that seed cultural change; and widen the doors of accessibility to what we offer.
Cost
Tuition: $650 – 850
General scholarship: $500
BIPOC rate: $450
Tuition includes instruction, materials, and notary services.
Meals and accomodations are not available for this training.
Registration
Complete the registration form once per participant. It takes 5-10 minutes, and you will complete your enrollment with a credit card authorization.
After your enrollment is processed, you will receive several confirmations…
- An automatic confirmation of receiving your registration form
- A payment confirmation from our card processor
- Confirmation that your registration has been processed
Please contact us before registering if any of these apply:
- You have a service animal.
Instructor
Director, Founder, Facilitator Throughout the last two decades, NikiAnne has dedicated much of her life energy to facilitating transformative learning journeys, particularly in community settings, and with folks in transition — between vocations; stages of life, including death; and those working to live into new, more life-giving stories of the world and themselves. In all her work, NikiAnne partners with the ancestors, the natural world, the power of ritual, and others to best serve the whole.
NikiAnne Feinberg
