Experiences and Immersions
Upcoming Events:
Please join me for Free/Donation-based yoga nidra for the fall equinox, also known as the 2nd harvest. Come rest at the threshold of summer into fall! Equinox falls on September 23rd so we will be resting a couple of days before it.
Come rest at this time of growth and decay. This is the theme for this practice: growth and decay. Whoa huh? I just listen deeply and receive what comes forward! What needs to stay with you as we move toward the dark time? What are you growing from the seeds planted in the spring? What needs to be let go of and allowed to decay? Loosen your grip, come rest and feel into this balance of growth and decay. Holding it all simultaneously. Nidra supports that so deeply.
Come rest in the rhythms of the season. We rest VIRTUALLY on zoom on Thursday, 9/21/2023 at 11am EST and 7pm EST.
Once you register here https://jesskilbourn.as.me/?appointmentType=category:Harvest%20Nidra, more details will be sent out with your confirmation email. PLEASE NOTE: at the registration link there are 2 time options. Please make sure you select the practice time you desire. You are welcome to come for both practices. There is always a bit of a different vibe with a morning and evening class.
Know that when you practice with me, your rest is giving back! These practices are FREE/donation-based (suggested donation of $5-$50 will go toward my scholarship fund for folks to receive 1:1 sessions, to attend my group offerings and also toward an organization TBA that aligns with my own values of supporting folx in welcoming our wholeness in the messy and beautiful of this life). To make a donation go to: venmo @jess-kilbourn, paypal as friend to jessicakilbourn73@gmail.com or zelle at 734-417-4522.
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Welcoming Our Wholeness: A Fall Re-Treat for our Grief, Gratiutde and Joy is happening 10/6-10/8/23 at EarthWell Retreat Center and Nature Sanctuary in Manchester, Michigan. For more details reach out! Would love to have you!
Are you looking for a place to be present with and center your grief experience? You have come to the right place!
"Communal grieving offers something that we cannot get when we grieve by ourselves. Through validation, acknowledgement and witnessing, communal grieving allows us to experience a level of healing that is deeply and profoundly freeing. Each of us has a basic human right to that genuine love, happiness and freedom." Sobonfu Some'
Grief tending, 1:1 and group grief coaching and support, collective grief ritual and ceremony, embodied grief work through Beautiful Grievers offerings. Reach out!
About Beautiful Grievers:
"Jess was an amazing guide for this journey. The embodiment work and meditations were carefully crafted and such a wonderful and fulfilling addition to this work. I also loved the care and time put into the weekly song playlists and listened to them a lot in between meetings. It felt as if I was staying connected the whole time. Jess created a beautiful community for us beautiful grievers and ushered us along our healing journeys. I have deep love for this program." BG alumni, summer 2022
Come receive support, create space to welcome your grief more deeply, share space with others who want to connect more fully and deeply on their grief journeys and live life more integrated and engaged with your grief. Grief is such an amazing teacher. May you be open to its teachings!
Beautiful Grievers work came forward more fully and loudly after the death of dear friend late fall 2021. It is clear that embodied grief work is necessary to our healing and movement forward in our day to day lives as grief makes a home in our body and impacts our inner and outerworlds so tremendoulsy. Grief can be so painful and can keep us stuck in living our authentic beautiful lives. Beautiful Grievers is medicine, it offers warmth and ease to the pain and hardness that grief sometimes shows up as, especially in our heart-space...In beautiful grievers work, we acknowledge, welcome, integrate, metabolize, and alchemize our grief using intentions and practices that come from our inner knowing, and from our relationship to the outer world, especially the natural world, all in relationship to our grief. Often these intentions and practices arise when we ground, breathe and are present in the moment, when we get curious about our emotions and where in the body they are and what they are telling us, and align our body-mind to make space for the tender and sacred that is grief in a safe, brave, and loving space. I hope you feel called to the invitation to do grief work. I am here for it. I am here to support you in this most powerful journey.
What do I mean by embodied grief work? First off to me, embodiment is our sense of who we are in the present moment in relation to our inner world/our True Nature and what is happening and how this connects to our outer world "and how the world is moving through us" (Philip Shepherd). So embodied grief work is about being present to our grief. Not avoiding it but welcoming it. Feeling it and getting curious and recognizing its impact in all areas of our life and how our grieving influences how we show up in the world. This work uses practices that welcome the body (yes, this includes our mind/brain) in relation to our interconnectedness with the all AND also an opportunity to get curious about what is happening within (because remember, grief lives in the body) through myriad practices including but not limited to: nervous system practices, self-massage & manual lymph drainage, Reiki, aromatherapy, connecting with the rhythms of the seasons and cycles of the natural world and elements, breathwork, yoga nidra guidance, writing, stretching, moving, receiving, asking, singing, working with thoughts, beliefs and karmic patterns that keep us stuck, being in silence, resting, reflecting, re-membering, discovering, moving out of our comfort zone, getting curious, growing, and healing our way forward.
I am a griever, death doula, grief guide, certified From Grief To Gratitude grief coach, a certified BodyMind Method Coach, Certified Yoga Nidra Teacher, Women's and Gender Studies Instructor, Bodyworker, Reiki Master Teacher, Ritual and Ceremonialist, Educator, Organizer, Retreat Leader, student, lover of the natural world, the cycles and seasons. I am a wisdom seeker and wisdom speaker. Trust, depth, community, connection, supporting others, anti-racism/social justice, care, rest, integrity and presence are my core values that I work and live from.
My lineage of grief work and experience extends throughout most of my life but starting in the first grade with the death of my paternal grandfather, family dogs, and in the 6th grade with the sudden and tragic death of a classmate and friend. Grief continues to guide the ways in which I make offerings of support to the world, anchored in decades of formal collective community grief ritual rooted in the ways of the Dargara Tribe of Burkina Faso and shared by Sobonfu Some' and Malidoma Some', certified as an End-of-Life Doula, a Grief Coach (From Grief To Gratitude Coach), Grief Work training and Loving, Dying, and Letting Go Instructor training with Amy Wright at The Institute for the Study of Birth, Breath, and Death, direct work with Francis Weller and his offering: The Five Gates of Grief, and numerous personal and collective experiences of holding space for grief.
May you feel welcomed into this space.
"I was led to take Jess’ course and the things I have learned in 4 weeks time have transformed me!" BG alum
