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We offer a variety of educational opportunities that combine the online experience with hands-on learning.

Our online Kerulos Learning Institute (KLI) offers a variety of courses, internships, mentoring, and career and educational consultations tailored to meet the needs of individuals and to support a path of transformation for healing and revitalizing all of Earth’s beings. Our “schooling for Nature” is grounded in the understanding that all beings are equal, all life is sacred, and we are one with all life. Offerings follow a four-step path of discovery designed to bring our species into resonance and unity with Nature:

  • Awaken – Recognize Nature and humans as one
  • Understand – Learn principles that give rise to Nature’s coherence and beauty
  • Ground – Cultivate practices that revitalize deep connection to all of life
  • Act – Live this understanding

Explore our courses below, or for more information contact us at info@kerulos.org. You may also sign up for one-on-one mentoring sessions with Dr. Bradshaw in support of your journey, as you align work, life, and studies to be who Animals need us to be.

“I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.”

Henry David Thoreau
GROUND

Nature Mindfulness–Meditation Practice for Animal Activists, Rescue, and Care

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 self-paced, 12-session 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.

Visit the Nature Mindfulness page.

AWAKEN

Beyond Zoochosis–Healing Our Shared Captivity

Beyond Zoochosis explores ecopsychology, zoochosis, and the ecotherapeutic interventions used to treat captive Animals and humans. We will examine the theoretical underpinnings and learn to craft our own ecotherapies to help us, our families, and our nonhuman companions live our best lives. What we can learn from captive Animals may be the key to unlocking our own cages. Visit the Beyond Zoochosis page.

UNDERSTAND

How Understanding Bears Can Save the Planet: The Transformative Work of Charlie Russell and the Bears

This six-part online course builds on Gay Bradshaw’s  Talking with Bears: Conversations with Charlie Russell, and delves deeply into the lives and minds of Bears through the lens of Russell’s experiences. Through lessons from the Bears, we hear voices of other teachers who advocate for the embrace of a new, but ancient, way of being—what Richard Rohr refers to as nondual thinking, Eckhart Tolle, presence, Thich Nhat Hanh, loving kindness, and quantum physicist David Bohm, wholeness. Visit the Understanding Bears page.

ACT

Less Heeling, More Healing–Helping the Dogs in Our Lives Feel Safe, Secure & Whole

This nine-week course is designed to help the Dogs in our lives (and in our world) feel safe, secure, and whole by shifting from a typical hierarchical relationship to one of equal friendship. Unlike  traditional “Dog training,” Less Heeling, More Healing delves into the inner and outer lives of Dogs and discusses how living with Dogs on an equitable level  creates mutual understanding and deep friendships with “our best friend.” Instead of focusing on control or manipulation, which often lead to exploitation, objectification, and commodification,  this course invites you to learn how to become a lifelong advocate and friend with your Dog.  You learn that much like throwing a “pebble in a pond,” cultivating a relationship based on mutual respect and understanding, ripples of friendship  create a way of being and living where Dogs are not just here for us, we are here with them…together. Visit the Less Heeling, More Healing page.

AWAKEN

Living One–Life in the Absence of Animal Exploitation

Living One is a free webinar series produced by The Kerulos Center for Nonviolence focusing on how culture and life will look in the absence of Animal exploitation, when humans and other Animals live as one community in peace and wellness. Visit the Living One page.

AWAKEN

Creative Beings

Through a combination of discussion of the course material, art making, collaboration, and artwork critique, participants will develop creative and critical thinking and discussion skills. They will experiment, using creative approaches to learning and knowing. Visit the Creative Beings page.

AWAKEN

Animal Being I & II

This course is a fundamental component of the Animal Being Internship experience. It 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.

UNDERSTAND

Trauma-informed Care for Animals I & II

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.

UNDERSTAND

Takin' It to the Feet - Nonhuman Nature Research Methods

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.

UNDERSTAND

Lessons from the Elephants–A Webinar Series by Carol Buckley

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.

ACT

Greening Your Practice–Bringing Nature into Mental Health Service

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.

ACT

S.E.L.F.– A Trauma-Informed Psychoeducational Curriculum

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.

ACT

Living Beyond Difference–Concepts and Practices of Accompaniment

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.