Courses & Internships

The online classroom experience of the Animal Being Internship covers concepts and methods from neurosciences and psychology to explore how animals think, feel, and experience consciousness. Historically, ethology (also called animal behavior) has been used to study nonhuman animals with psychology being reserved for humans. However, the discovery of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in free-living elephants has brought all vertebrates including some invertebrates under a single conceptual umbrella, trans-species psychology.

Charlie Russell was a chief architect of the shift in attitudes towards Grizzly and Brown Bears. This course explores the philosophy and science of this remarkable man and how he was able to live peaceably among Grizzlies for the seventy-plus years of his life. Visit the Talking with Bears page.

This is a series of webinars on Trauma-informed Care where we hear from professionals around the world with their understanding and insights on trauma and trauma healing. There are two webinars to date: Trauma-Informed Care for Animals I–Fundamentals Concepts and Trauma-Informed Care for Animals II–Healing in Sanctuary. Visit the Trauma-informed Care for Animals webpage.

Conduct your research from the eyes and lives of the Animals themselves. Globalized research and education over the past five hundred years have been shaped by the “Colonial Paradigm,” a way of thinking and perceiving which has been driven by the belief that humans are separate from and superior to Nature, and that the knowledge gained by indigenous peoples is merely anecdotal. Visit the Takin’ It to the Feet page.

Carol Buckley, the world’s foremost authority on adult Elephant psychology and trauma healing, shares what she has learned in her over forty years’ journey with these great beings. Visit the Lessons from the Elephants page.

Unconditional love, honesty, compassion—by cultivating these qualities which Animals naturally possess not only do we enhance our ability to self-care, but we increase our capacity to be who Animals need us to be. This course introduces concepts and practices of mindfulness and meditation to consciously develop healthful ways of mitigating the stress, pain, and uncertainty associated with work with Animals in need and activism. Topics include:

• Understand the difference between stress, suffering and pain
• How ego affects our ability to provide optimal Animal care
• How acceptance differs from detachment and indifference
• Cultivating mindfulness as an antidote for overwhelm
• Understand how to healthfully hold fear, stress, and grief
• How presence nourishes yourself and others.

Global change is on everyone’s mind, bringing an entirely new suite of symptoms—ecoanxiety, extinction illness, and ecological grief. The impact is immense. But, conventional therapies typically do not address these kinds of personal distress. Visit the Greening Your Practice webpage.

Trauma results from an overwhelming experience which we are not able to mentally or physically process. Trauma healing begins with psychoeducation–learning what trauma is and how it affects us individually and as a community. Developed by Sandra Bloom, MD (Drexel University School of Public Health) and Joe Foderaro, LCSW (University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy & Practice), and co-taught by Gay Bradshaw, S.E.L.F. provides a framework to help individuals, groups, and organizations gain shared understanding and approaches to trauma and relational healing. You will learn how to apply trauma-informed principles and practices in your work with humans and Animals.

In contrast to the prevailing “me above others” ethic, accompaniment centers our lives to benefit and support others. Harvard professor of Medicine, Paul Farmer, defines accompaniment: “I’ll go with you and support you on our journey wherever it leads. I’ll share your fate for a while—And by ‘while’ I don’t mean a little while. Accompaniment is about sticking with a task until it’s deemed completed—not only by the accompanier, but by the person being accompanied.” Using clinical psychologist and activist Mary Watkin’s beautiful new book, Mutual Accompaniment and the Creation of the Commons (Yale, 2019) as a core text, this course explores accompaniment in context of Animal and human activism to catalyze profound social and cultural change.