Grief Training Resources
Whether you are just beginning to explore supporting bereaved people, or you are already a grief counselor, coach, peer-support leader, chaplain, or other helping professional, these resources are here to help you build your skills while taking care of yourself.
I created them to help you move beyond vague inspiration into something more practical, thoughtful, and sustainable.
You’ll find guidance on choosing grief training, building essential support skills, understanding scope of practice, and approaching this work with greater clarity, humility, and care.
These resources are for helping professionals who want grief-specific tools that feel practical, grounded, and deeply human.
You can also explore my guide to the Mindfulness & Grief System to learn more about my approach.
My work in grief education and support has been shaped by more than 20 years in the field, along with my own lived experience of loss.
If you are looking for grief-specific training that is grounded, practical, and mindfulness-informed, explore the Mindfulness & Grief Coach Certification.
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Start here with articles on grief training, skills, ethics, and practical grief support.
Walk the Talk: Self-Care for Grief and Death Care Professionals
Grief and death care professionals spend their days helping others pause, feel, breathe, remember, and make meaning. This article explores why you need your own grief practice too, not as another task on your list, but as an ethical and embodied way to stay human, grounded, and compassionate in the work.
Coping With Cumulative Grief for Grief Counselors, Therapists, and Death Care Professionals
Grief professionals often carry the grief they witness at work alongside the grief they carry as human beings. This guide explores cumulative grief, bereavement overload, and simple rituals that help you mark what matters, reconnect with meaning, and stay grounded in the work.
How to Run a Grief Group: 18 Tips for Bereavement Professionals
Learning how to run a grief group means understanding that feelings need space, structure, and support. A safe space to share matters, but without a clear container, people may leave feeling more overwhelmed than held. In this article, I share 17 practical tips for leading grief groups with compassion, boundaries, and care.
Mindfulness Teacher Training For Grief | What It Is and What to Look For
If you are a mindfulness practitioner who feels called to support grieving people, this article will help you understand why grief needs a different approach, what trauma-sensitive mindfulness looks like in this context, and how my training supports practitioners with practical tools, pacing, and ethical clarity.
How to Become a Grief Coach Without a Degree
Can you become a grief coach without a degree? In many cases, yes. But grief work still requires training, clear boundaries, trauma sensitivity, and ethical support skills. This article explores what you do need if you want to support grieving people well, stay within your scope of practice, and approach the work with humility and care.
Essential Skills for Grief Coaching
What skills actually matter in grief coaching? This article explores the essential skills grief coaches need, including deep listening, grounded presence, practical support, ethical judgment, and the ability to stay with pain without rushing to fix it. It is written for helping professionals who want to support grieving people with more clarity, humility, and care.
How to Choose a Grief Coach Training Program
Not all grief coach training programs are created equal. If you are a therapist, chaplain, doula, yoga therapist, meditation teacher, or coach looking for grief-specific training, this guide will help you understand what to look for, which red flags to avoid, and how to choose a program that is practical, ethical, and grounded in the realities of loss.
How to Become a Grief Coach
If you feel called to support grieving people, this guide will help you understand what a grief coach does, how grief coaching differs from therapy, what training matters most, and how to become a grief coach in a way that is ethical, grounded, and genuinely helpful.
Grief Coaching vs Therapy for Professionals: Scope, Training, and Key Differences
Grief coaching and therapy are often confused, but they are not the same. In this article, Heather Stang explains how each supports grieving people, when one may be a better fit than the other, and why training, scope, and grief-informed care matter.
The Dual Process Model of Coping With Bereavement: How It Applies in Real Life
While grief is like a roller coaster, and rarely feels “normal,” most of us have the natural capacity to make it to the other side. Along the journey we will feel a myriad of uncomfortable, intrusive and most of all unwelcome sensations. The pain we feel as a result of losing someone we love seems unfair, but it is natural, and while the loss itself is permanent, the intensity of pain will subside.
Grief Coaching Tools: Practical Ways to Support Clients Through Loss
Grief coaching tools help professionals support clients through loss, emotional pain, and disruption to daily life. This article explores practical methods grief coaches use, including structured reflection, planning tools, and nervous system support. You’ll also learn why a coach’s presence and regulation matter as much as the tools themselves.
Teaching Meditation for Grief: What I’ve Learned About Pacing, Presence, and Permission
If you are a meditation teacher or yoga teacher, you already know how powerful meditation can be. It has likely steadied you through your own difficult seasons. It has helped you sit with discomfort, soften reactivity, and stay present with what is.
The Myth of the Untouchable Helper: Why Self-Care Is Part of the Work
Caregivers often feel pressure to stay strong and untouched by the suffering they witness. This article explores why that belief is unrealistic and harmful. It invites you to imagine a world without caregivers and reflects on why your wellbeing is part of the work itself. You deserve the same compassion you offer to others.
How Mindfulness Makes You (and Me) a Better Therapist
Yoga cracked open 23 years of unattended grief and led me to the bedrock of my work: mindfulness. In this piece I share how a daily practice steadies me in tough sessions, reduces burnout, and helps clients, using a framework that blends structure with spaciousness.
Mindfulness Exercises for Grief Counselors: Plus Free Download With 8 Coaching Cues
Discover how mindfulness-based grief therapy helps clients face pain without drowning and rest without avoiding. You will learn practical grief counseling techniques, taught with trauma sensitivity, to build awareness, compassion, continuing bonds, and capacity for posttraumatic growth. Includes who can teach, session-ready practices, and a free webinar for clinicians.
The Hidden Cost of Caring: How To Cope With Compassion Fatigue, Burnout, and Vicarious Trauma in Grief Counseling
In many bereavement organizations, support systems for professionals are an afterthought—if they exist at all. While strong boundaries help, the reality is that compassion fatigue, secondary trauma, and burnout can