Integrative Grief Counseling Certificate

A deeply embodied training in integrative grief counseling, where neuroscience, somatic practice, ritual, and relational healing weave together into a transformative approach that empowers practitioners to guide profound healing.

Live via ZoomNovember 3 - December 17, 2026
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Grief is not a problem to be solved. It is something to be witnessed, moved through, and carried together - in the body, and in community.

A map for grief that honours the whole person

About this Program

Most practitioners encounter grief daily: in their clients' stories of loss, in the spaces where people sit with what cannot be undone. And yet most clinical training leaves grief almost entirely unaddressed.

We're taught to normalize it. To refer out. To make space, but not to truly move through it with another person. We leave training knowing grief exists, but without the neuroscience, the somatic tools, or the philosophical grounding to actually meet it.

This program was built to close that gap. Completely and unflinchingly.

The Integrative Grief Counseling Certificate is a 12-module, 30-hour live training that builds a complete, embodied approach to integrative grief counseling. Led by Megan Devine, Dr. Kate Truitt, Dr. Scott Lyons, Dr. Albert Wong, Dr. Rachel Natvig, and Nkem Ndefo, this program weaves together applied neuroscience, somatic skills, therapeutic dialogue, ritual, and meaning-making into one coherent arc.

Sessions move with deliberate intention: establishing the paradigm shift in how we understand grief, building neurological and somatic fluency, developing clinical tools, and landing in sustainable, embodied practice. You won't leave with isolated techniques. You'll leave with a complete map.

Whether you work with grief directly or encounter it as part of your broader practice, this program will change how you show up and how your clients experience their own healing.

Become the practitioner people trust in the hardest moments of their life

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12 Sessions. One Deliberate Arc.

The Curriculum

From philosophical foundations through applied neuroscience, somatic skills, special populations, ritual, and integration — every session builds on the last, toward a complete embodied practice.

Level 01

Foundations & Paradigm Shift

Module 01 November 3 The Philosophy, Landscape & Taxonomy of Grief With Megan Devine & Dr. Scott Lyons
Every practitioner carries assumptions about grief — about timelines, expression, and what "moving on" should look like. This opening session dismantles those assumptions and replaces them with a humanistic, body-centered philosophy of grief that anchors everything that follows. You'll map the full landscape of loss — from acute and anticipatory grief to traumatic, disenfranchised, and ambiguous loss — and explore the conceptual frameworks that actually serve the grieving: Continuing Bonds Theory, the Dual Process Model, and Meaning-Making as an integrative practice. You'll also receive a critical examination of the models you were probably taught — and why they were never designed for the bereaved.
Module 02 November 5 The Body Keeps the Grief Score: Neuroscience, the Brain & Grief Assessment With Dr. Kate Truitt
Grief is not just an emotional experience — it is a neurological one. This session gives practitioners a neuroscience-informed lens for understanding what happens inside the grieving brain and body — how grief affects attention, memory, emotion regulation, and nervous system function. You'll learn to use that understanding to normalize your clients' experience, reduce shame, and structure clinical intake with precision and care. The iCASE assessment framework gives you a practical, repeatable tool for mapping how grief shows up across body, thought, emotion, nervous system, and sensory experience.
Module 03 November 10 Foundations Part 1: Grief Dialogue Skills, The Therapeutic Relationship & the Pain/Suffering Framework With Dr. Albert Wong & Megan Devine
The words we use in the presence of grief either open or close something in the person across from us. This session teaches the language of presence — what to say, what never to say, and why the difference lands somatically before it lands cognitively. You'll explore the Pain/Suffering Framework: a deceptively simple clinical distinction that changes everything — pain (the irreversible reality of the loss) is supported; suffering (the adjustable layers that accumulate around it) is worked with. The session grounds practitioners in therapeutic dialogue — the structured entry points, the healing pause, and the somatic use of your own nervous system as an instrument of contact.
Module 04 November 12 Foundations Part 2: Somatic Grief Work, Co-Regulation & Building the Skills To Ride The Waves of Grief With Dr. Scott Lyons & Dr. Albert Wong
Grief lives in the body before the mind has words for it. This session builds the somatic foundation of the entire program — the core skills that allow practitioners to work with grief at the level of sensation, movement, breath, and nervous system. You'll learn pendulation, titration, and the window of tolerance in grief work — what it means when a client feels unmoored in their own body, and how to help them return. The session extends into felt sense work, somatic tracking, co-regulation, and how to use your own body as the primary clinical instrument.
Level 02

Deepening Clinical Skills

Module 05 November 17 Harnessing Neuroplasticity to Support Grief Integration With Dr. Kate Truitt
The grieving brain is not broken — it is adapting. And with the right conditions, it can reorganize in ways that support integration rather than perpetuate suffering. This session teaches practitioners to harness self-directed neuroplasticity through the CASE pathways — applying CT fiber activation, cognitive engagement, and interoceptive tracking to support clients in moving from fragmented activation toward adaptive coherence. You'll learn when and how to use these tools across prolonged grief, traumatic grief, and complicated presentations, and how psychoeducation itself becomes a neuroplastic intervention — dissolving shame and building agency in the chaos of loss.
Module 06 November 19 Somatic & Narrative Grief Processing: Body, Story & Yearning With Dr. Scott Lyons & Dr. Kate Truitt
Grief has a physiology — a geography in the body, a set of inflammatory and neurological processes that shape the entire grieving experience. This session maps that terrain: the somatic signatures of acute loss, the body's search behavior, the freeze impulse, and the breath patterns that are direct gateways into the grief-altered nervous system. You'll learn to work with the grief wave somatically — titrating contact, supporting movement-based processing, and helping clients land safely after intense activation. The session also addresses narrative integration: how telling the story of loss in the right conditions facilitates memory reconsolidation. At the center is yearning — the profound longing that is the clinical heart of grief — and the somatic and narrative tools for helping clients inhabit and metabolize it rather than bypass it.
Module 07 December 1 Attachment, Temporal Bridging, and Advanced Grief Dialogue Practices With Dr. Scott Lyons & Dr. Albert Wong
How a client grieves is profoundly shaped by how they learned to attach. This session brings attachment theory into the body — exploring the somatic signatures of each attachment style in grief, and the physiology of attachment rupture: the visceral experience of relational loss that no amount of cognitive knowing can reach. You'll learn to navigate rupture and repair in the therapeutic relationship, what it means to be a new attachment figure for a grieving client, and how to hold the moments when you don't know what to do. The session closes with continuing bonds in practice — chair work, imaginal conversation, and letter writing as somatic and relational tools for maintaining connection with what has been lost.
Module 08 December 3 Rituals, Ceremony & Creating Containers for Grief With Dr. Rachel Natvig
Grief has always been metabolized through ritual — and yet modern clinical practice has largely abandoned ceremony as a therapeutic tool. This session restores it to its full clinical dignity, teaching a complete taxonomy of grief ritual: commemorative, transitional, daily, releasing, and communal. You'll explore the neuroscience of ritual — why repetitive, intentional action calms the threat-detection system and creates predictability in an unpredictable grief landscape — and learn how to move from prescribing ritual to co-creating it with clients. The session also addresses temporal complexity: how to help clients survive the "firsts," what research shows about anticipatory dread versus lived experience, and how to navigate grief ritual in the digital age.
Level 03

Integration & Sustainable Practice

Module 09 December 8 Meaning, Learning, Existential & Temporal Integration With Dr. Kate Truitt
Grief reorganizes time. The body tracks loss more granularly and persistently than the conscious mind — and this session teaches practitioners to work with that temporal dimension: the anniversary rhythms, the seasonal patterns, the countdown phenomenon of the first year, and the way the body often knows grief is coming before the mind does. The session then moves into the existential and phenomenological territory grief opens: how loss dismantles a person's sense of meaning, identity, and orientation toward the future — and how practitioners can support clients in rebuilding a livable world from the inside out. Drawing on phenomenological and existential frameworks, you'll learn to help clients move from the collapsed present of acute grief toward an embodied, open relationship with what comes next — not by resolving the loss, but by finding new ground to stand on within it.
Module 10 December 10 Special Populations, Complex Loss, Survivor's Guilt & Ambiguous Loss With Megan Devine & Dr. Kate Truitt
Some losses make practitioners freeze. This session names them directly and builds the clinical fluency to meet them: suicide loss, violent death, reproductive and perinatal grief, child loss across the lifespan, and grief within the legal system. You'll learn to navigate clinical complexity — when grief and trauma are completely fused, when stabilization must precede grief processing, and when to refer. The session brings a neuropsychological lens to survivor's guilt — why the brain develops this response and the specific clinical pathway for unhooking the guilt loop. Ambiguous and disenfranchised loss receive their full due: the losses society does not recognize, and the compound suffering that invisibility creates.
Module 11 December 15 Collective, Ancestral & Intergenerational Grief With Megan Devine & Nkem Ndefo
Grief is never only personal. This session expands the clinical frame to hold what is carried collectively — in bodies, in lineages, in communities, and in the land itself. You'll explore collective and societal grief: political loss, climate grief, the intersection of personal loss with systemic harm, and how to provide grief care without colluding with systems that cause it. The session brings a somatic abolitionist lens to ancestral and intergenerational grief — what is carried in the body across generations through epigenetic transmission and embodied inheritance, and how to work with it clinically and collectively. The session includes community grief facilitation tools, and closes with a practice for honoring what practitioners carry from their clients, their lineages, and their own losses.
Module 12 December 17 The Arc of the Process, Integration, Psychedelics & Sustainable Practice With All Faculty
The final session brings the full arc into view. You'll receive a complete map of what a somatic grief counseling session actually looks like — how to open and close, how to pace, how to read which of the five clinical pathways a client is working in, and how to move between them within a single session. The session addresses resilience and integration: the difference between grief resolution and grief integration, and what the research shows about clients who are genuinely transformed by loss. You'll also receive an introduction to what practitioners need to know about psychedelics and grief integration — not to administer, but to hold and support. The program closes with a whole-faculty conversation about sustainable practice, self-care for the grief professional, and what each graduate is carrying into the world.

Watch the Preview Event Replay

Taught by leaders in their fields

Meet the Faculty

Six faculty. Six distinct and deeply complementary lineages.
One coherent, co-created curriculum; not a summit, but a sustained collaboration.

Megan Devine

Megan Devine

Grief Advocate, Therapist & Author of It's OK That You're Not OK Leads the program's philosophical foundations, grief language, therapeutic dialogue, and clinical work with complex and disenfranchised loss, including suicide, reproductive grief, and violent death.

Dr. Kate Truitt

Dr. Kate Truitt

Clinical Psychologist, Neuroscientist & Author Brings the program's neuroscience backbone through her NeuroTriad Model, Brain Partnership framework, and CASE pathways, translating brain science into compassionate clinical tools for grief practitioners.

Dr. Scott Lyons

Dr. Scott Lyons

Psychologist, Somatic Therapist & Founder of The Embody Lab Anchors somatic practice throughout, teaching pendulation, titration, the physiology of grief, attachment through a body-centered lens, and the complete arc of a somatic grief counseling session.

Dr. Albert Wong

Dr. Albert Wong

Somatic Therapist & Relational Dialogue Practitioner Teaches therapeutic dialogue, the therapeutic container, felt sense work, co-regulation, and the relational-attachment dimensions of grief, bringing a uniquely warm, embodied precision to clinical practice.

Dr. Rachel Natvig

Dr. Rachel Natvig

Ritual Practitioner & Grief Ceremony Specialist Leads the session on ritual, ceremony, and creating containers for grief, teaching practitioners how to co-create personalized, client-centered ritual as a clinical and somatic tool for grief integration.

Nkem Ndefo

Nkem Ndefo

Somatic Abolitionist Practitioner & Community Healer Brings a somatic abolitionist lens to collective, ancestral, and intergenerational grief, centering liberation, community healing, and the embodied inheritance we carry from our lineages.

Program?

Why This Program?

There are many trainings that mention grief. Few are built entirely around it with the depth, the neuroscience, and the somatic grounding to truly prepare practitioners to meet it.

01

Built on a paradigm shift, not just new tools

This program begins by dismantling the cultural myths and clinical misunderstandings about grief, then rebuilds from a humanistic, somatic foundation. You won't just learn techniques; you'll be changed in how you see grief itself.

02

Neuroscience-informed throughout

Dr. Kate Truitt's Brain Partnership model and NeuroTriad framework thread through the program, giving practitioners (and their clients) language for what is happening neurologically in grief. Understanding the grieving brain dissolves shame and restores agency.

03

Somatic from the ground up

Grief lives in the body before language can reach it. Somatic skills (titration, pendulation, felt sense work, co-regulation) are the primary clinical language here, not add-ons.

04

A complete arc, not a collection of modules

Every session is designed in deliberate sequence: paradigm → neuroscience → somatic foundations → special populations → ritual → integration. Faculty are in dialogue with each other across the program. Each module builds on the last.

05

Rare faculty, taught together

Six faculty. Six distinct and deeply complementary lineages. This is not a summit format — these are colleagues co-creating a single coherent curriculum with care and intention.

06

Honors the full landscape of loss

Death, yes, but also ambiguous loss, reproductive grief, suicide loss, collective and ancestral grief, intergenerational trauma, and the grief practitioners carry themselves.

"Grief is not linear. It is not a single wound. It moves through the body, the brain, creative expression, our relationships, and our sense of meaning — often all at once."

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Clinical Framework

The Five Pathways to Grief Healing

Skilled practitioners learn to recognize which pathway a client is working in, how to meet them there, and move between them. Grief rarely stays in one lane.

Integrative Grief Work

An embodied, relational, creative and neuroscience-informed approach to healing.

Somatic Pathway

Grief lives in the body before language can reach it.

The nervous system encodes loss as physical reality: heaviness, contraction, numbness, the visceral absence of the person. Somatic grief work accesses and moves grief through sensation, breath, movement, and embodied presence.

Neuroscience Pathway

Understanding the grieving brain restores agency.

The NeuroTriad Model and iCASE framework give practitioners and clients language for what is happening neurologically, dissolving shame and building partnership with the brain as it adapts to loss.

Creative & Ritual Pathway

Grief needs a container, a shape, and a place to live.

Grief has been metabolized through ceremony, art, and ritual for as long as humans have mourned. This pathway accesses healing through intentional symbolic action, expressive arts, and crafted ceremony.

Relational Attachment Pathway

We grieve in the same patterns we learned to love.

Loss activates our deepest attachment blueprints. Healing happens in and through relationship — with the practitioner, the deceased, and the community.

Learning & Integration Pathway

Meaning is not found; it is made, slowly, in the living.

Grief ultimately asks us to reorganize identity and worldview around the permanent reality of loss. Integration is not closure; it is learning to carry the loss differently, and discovering we are changed by it.

Built for practitioners ready to meet grief fully.

Who Is This For?

If you encounter grief in your work, even occasionally, this program will change how you understand it, how you sit with it, and how you guide clients through it.

You do not need to specialize in grief to be transformed by this training.

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Therapists, psychologists, counselors, and social workers who want a deeper clinical framework for grief work

Somatic practitioners seeking the neuroscience and dialogue tools to deepen their grief practice

Coaches, chaplains, and spiritual care providers who sit with loss and need greater clinical fluency

Bodyworkers, yoga therapists, and movement practitioners working with people carrying grief in their bodies

Practitioners who work with trauma and want to extend their skills into grief: a closely related but distinct territory

Any helping professional who feels underprepared when grief enters their work

What you'll be able to do

The Outcomes

What you'll be able to do

  • Navigate the full landscape of grief from acute loss to ambiguous, ancestral, and collective grief
  • Track and work with grief at the level of the body; somatically, skillfully, without overwhelm
  • Understand what the grieving brain is doing and use that understanding clinically
  • Use language that honors pain rather than minimizing or prematurely resolving it
  • Hold the therapeutic container through intense grief activation, dissociation, and shutdown
  • Support clients through the most complex loss presentations: suicide, ambiguous loss, survivor's guilt, and collective grief
  • Co-create ritual and ceremony as a clinical tool for grief integration
  • Know which of the five pathways a client is working in and how to move between them
  • Sustain yourself as a practitioner across a career of sitting with loss

Live, Online via Zoom

Tuesdays from 5:00-7:30PM ET

Thursdays from 2:00-4:30PM ET

12 Sessions

November 3 - December 17, 2026

Lifetime Access

To all recordings

12.5 CE Hours

Available for health professionals

Apply for CEs

Certificate

Upon program completion

Your Next Step

Grief deserves a practitioner who is truly prepared to meet it.

This program doesn't just add grief to your skillset. It gives you a complete, embodied approach — grounded in the body, the brain, and the depth of human loss — that will shape how you practice for the rest of your career.

Program Pricing

Best Value

Member Price

$557 USD

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Non-Member Price

$597 USD

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Membership Sign-up

Become an Embody Lab Member today and receive a 7-DAY FREE Trial.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What are the dates, schedule, and time commitment for the Grief Counseling Certificate?

This 30-hour certificate program runs live from November 3rd to December 17th, 2026, and includes 12 modules offered over 7 weeks (with a break the week of November 24th for Thanksgiving). Classes are held on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

All live sessions are recorded so students can watch in their own time. Here is the schedule:

WEEKLY CLASSES

  • Tue Nov 3 — 5–7:30pm ET
  • Thu Nov 5 — 2–4:30pm ET
  • Tue Nov 10 — 5–7:30pm ET
  • Thu Nov 12 — 2–4:30pm ET
  • Tue Nov 17 — 5–7:30pm ET
  • Thu Nov 19 — 2–4:30pm ET
  • Tue Dec 1 — 5–7:30pm ET
  • Thu Dec 3 — 2–4:30pm ET
  • Tue Dec 8 — 5–7:30pm ET
  • Thu Dec 10 — 2–4:30pm ET
  • Tue Dec 15 — 5–7:30pm ET
  • Thu Dec 17 — 2–4:30pm ET
Who is this program designed for?

This program is designed for therapists, psychologists, counselors, social workers, somatic practitioners, coaches, chaplains and spiritual care providers, bodyworkers, yoga therapists, movement practitioners, trauma practitioners, hospice and palliative care professionals, grief support group facilitators, and any helping professional who works with loss and wants greater clinical fluency.

This is an education program and not a licensure program.

How can I interact with the instructors? Will I receive guidance?

During each of the live sessions, the instructors will have a Q&A period where you may ask questions. A private online community forum will be provided for the certificate.

Do you offer refunds?

We offer a Registration Guarantee which means that if you register but decide the course isn't right for you, we'll refund your course fee — no questions asked — up to 48 hours before the course start date.

How can I access the online course and recordings?

Once you register, you'll receive access to our online learning platform, including detailed schedules, instructions for joining live sessions via Zoom, recordings uploaded within 48 hours of each live session, and supporting materials from your instructors. You'll have lifetime access to the content, and can watch online or download video/audio. Live captioning and English transcripts are provided.

Is this a summit?

No. This is an integrated curriculum co-created by the faculty — six colleagues building one coherent, sequenced arc (paradigm → neuroscience → somatic foundations → special populations → ritual → integration), not a series of standalone talks.

Is this a theoretical or practical (experiential) program?

While grounded in neuroscience and clinical frameworks, the primary focus is experiential — giving practitioners hands-on somatic and relational tools they can use immediately.

Will I receive a certificate?

You'll receive a certificate of completion once you have completed attending the live sessions or watching the recordings, and full payment has been received.

Will Continuing Education hours (CEs) be offered?

In support of improving patient care, this activity has been planned and implemented by The Embody Lab and Pinnacle Conference, LLC. Pinnacle Conference, LLC is jointly accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC) to provide continuing education for the healthcare team.

Approved CE Accreditation Categories

This activity is accredited for 12.5 CE hours, as applicable to the individual program, with the following institutions:

  • Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education, AMA PRA Category 1™
  • Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education, ACPE CPE
  • American Nurses Credentialing Center, ANCC NCPD (CNE)
  • American Academy of PAs, AAPA Category 1
  • American Psychological Association, APA CE
  • Association of Social Work Boards, ASWB-ACE
  • Commission on Dietetic Registration, CDR CPE
  • Board of Certification for the Athletic Trainer, BOC CEUs

Fill out this form to apply for CEs: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Ymw_OL7rhpFP8tFDqfiv4dF1ejUow9ySP3w4GVFGSMI/viewform

From a different state or country?

Health professionals from any state or country need to check with their licensing boards as to whether or not they accept continuing education accredited by Pinnacle Conference, LLC under the accreditation categories listed above.

Different credential?

If your credential is not listed in the accreditation categories above, please check with your licensing board as to whether or not they accept continuing education accredited by Pinnacle Conference, LLC.

Pinnacle Conference, LLC and The Embody Lab are not able to determine your eligibility.

Are there scholarship opportunities for the Grief Counseling Certificate?

The scholarship application is due by 11:59pm ET on Monday, October 12, 2026.

Scholarship results will be communicated by end of day Tuesday, October 20, 2026.

For every 200 enrolled students, we are able to offer:

  • 10 Full Scholarships (100%)
  • 10 Partial Scholarships (50%)