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Animal carers and advocates work in situations of intense emotions and conflict. The love and commitment we feel for Nature often seem at odds with the situations that arise. How can we be who the Animals need us to be and do our work successfully?

Nature Mindfulness™–Meditation Practice for Animal Activists, Rescue, and Care is a self-paced, six-class course that introduces you to the foundations of mindfulness and meditation. You are provided with tools and skills you need for engaging positively and healthfully with difficult situations and emotions. Our course is designed to enhance your ability to self-care, navigate difficult situations healthfully, and develop wisdom into Animal experiences.

The methods and ideas we are passing along to you here are thousands of years old. They have lasted so long because they work. They work because they are based in truth and love.

Nature Mindfulness™ differs from other meditation courses because it explicitly embeds mindfulness in Nature consciousness. Nature consciousness means shaping your thinking, values, and actions to the ethics of the wild. Through mindfulness and meditation, you will learn how to adopt and mirror Nature’s qualities of lovingkindness, honesty, equanimity, and compassion, and in so doing, bring health and healing to all of earth.

Please complete and submit the form below to make a secure credit card transaction via PayPal. Course access information will be emailed to you as soon as possible following registration. Please note that tuition is non-refundable.

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Learning Objectives

Through this course, you will learn the foundations of mindfulness and meditation and how to integrate them into your daily life.

You will learn to:

  • Develop fresh perspectives that reveal new, constructive pathways of understanding and response
  • Gain the tools you need to cultivate compassion for yourself and others
  • Cultivate a mindfulness meditation practice to help navigate difficult situations, strong emotions, and overwhelm
  • Bring greater clarity, authenticity, and deeper understanding to your relationships with Animals and humans

Course Structure

The content of this self-paced six-class course is recorded and online, so you can take more time or revisit sessions to process the material more fully. Classes build on prior material and practices and can be integrated as you progress. The pace is up to you.

Each class consists of recorded presentations, guided meditations, readings and resources that center on a particular theme or topic. There are also Questions for Reflection that provide an opportunity to engage more fully with the material  and, importantly, put this learning into practice. You are invited to connect with other learners in the Nature Mindfulness Group on the Kerulos Learning Institute (KLI) platform or on the Kerulos Constellation Facebook page where you can meet, discuss, and share. You may also schedule a private mentoring session with an instructor to discuss the material and practices in greater depth.

By transforming yourself, you transform the lives of Animals.

Class One: Mindfulness in a Changing World. We begin with reflections on the importance of mindfulness, and why grounding mindfulness and meditation in Nature is vital for a revolution in human consciousness to heal the planet.

Class Two: Animals and Mindfulness.  This class explores mindfulness and how it relates to our relationships with Animals and each other.

Class Three: Cultivating Patience. We discuss how a practice of patience provides you with a powerful way to deal with overwhelming stress, anger, resentment, and other destructive emotions.

Class Four: Becoming Whole. How do we reconcile the damaging ways our species lives with reuniting with Nature? By healing and annealing the pieces inside.

Class Five: Compassion and Forgiveness. We explore how committed practices of compassion and forgiveness, even in the face of atrocities, are steps toward ending the cycle of violence.

Class Six: Grounding Your Life in Mindfulness. This class brings together the learning from previous sessions and talks about you practically craft an everyday life based on the values and qualities which Animals embody such as equanimity, compassion, lovingkindness, and acceptance.

INSTRUCTORS

Gay Bradshaw, PhD, PhD. Gay has been studying mindfulness and meditation since 2002 after leaving a tenured job as a research mathematician to devote her work to Nature…

Lauren Bailey. Lauren completed her bachelor’s degree in Animal Behavior at the University of Exeter, United Kingdom in 2018. Here, she describes her philosophy and path…

Gay Bradshaw, PhD, PhD
Executive Director

Gay has been studying mindfulness and meditation since 2002 after leaving a tenured job as a research mathematician to devote her work to Nature. Her founding of The Kerulos Center for Nonviolence non-profit was catalyzed by her discovery of Elephant Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Her work and the Center are dedicated to helping humans transform to Nature consciousness and supporting Animal dignity and self-determination. Gay is the author of Pulitzer Prize-nominated Elephants on the Edge: What Animals Teach Us about Humanity, Carnivore Minds: Who These Fearsome Beings Really Are (Yale, 2009; 2017)  and Talking with Bears: Conversations with Charlie Russell (Rocky Mountain Books, 2020). Gay holds doctorates in ecology and psychology and cares for over fifty Faculty Residents at The Tortoise and the Hare Sanctuary and neighboring Wildlife with whom she practices in seshin.

Lauren Bailey

Lauren Bailey completed her bachelor’s degree in Animal Behavior at the University of Exeter, United Kingdom in 2018. Here, she describes her philosophy and path. “I was drawn to the Kerulos internship after becoming by disheartened by the academic scientific world that objectifies Animals and sees them purely from a behavioral viewpoint. During the internship and practicum at Boon Lott’s Elephant Sanctuary in Thailand (BLES), I learned to take the time to see beyond outer form and behavior and understand that all other Animals think and feel like us and are their own individual person.” Lauren has been a vegan since childhood. She has completed her Reiki Practitioner course and will be continuing to obtain Reiki Master certification while obtaining her primary school teaching certificate. Lauren is also the host and guide for the Kerulos podcast Series Being Sanctuary.