At the Threshold: Exploring Death, Dying, and Compassion
A Residential Post-Graduate seminar for Craniosacral therapists at Karuna Dartmoor
with Tanya Desfontaines and Sarah Parker
An opportunity for deep immersion in the field of Craniosacral Biodynamics,
set within the wild beauty of Dartmoor.
This residential seminar offers an immersive space for personal reflection, professional development and embodied learning. Over four days, we will explore the final life transition—death—as a reflection of birth and a return to Source.
Together, we will study the physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual dimensions of dying, while gently meeting our own experiences of loss and grief, and the beliefs, hopes and fears that arise as we approach this profound threshold.
Through meditation, movement, experiential and relational practices, group dialogue, ceremony and Biodynamic table work, we will cultivate a deeper understanding of death as a teacher. We will discover how to accompany the dying process with presence, compassion and embodied awareness, while developing the perceptual and relational skills needed to meet this final transition with sensitivity and curiosity.
The seminar also offers an opportunity to meet our own embodied history and protective patterns, supporting greater coherence, resilience and wholeness. Rooted in the principles of Craniosacral Biodynamics, we will continually orient towards the inherent health and intelligence of the living system—even in the midst of profound challenge and transition.
We will be held within the magnificent landscape of Dartmoor National Park, with opportunities to spend time outdoors and allow the moss, rocks, trees and open landscape to become part of our practice. The natural environment offers a powerful invitation into presence, awareness, rest and connection.
This is an opportunity to slow down, listen deeply and enter into a more intimate relationship with one of life’s most universal and transformative experiences.
Learning Outcomes:
By the end of this seminar, participants will be able to:
Explore death as a natural life transition through physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual perspectives.
Reflect on their own experiences of loss, grief, mortality, and impermanence, and recognise how these shape their personal and professional practice.
Cultivate a grounded, embodied presence when engaging with themes of death, dying, and bereavement.
Develop greater awareness of the relational, emotional, and spiritual needs of those approaching the end of life.
Deepen their capacity to accompany the dying process with compassion, sensitivity, and non-judgemental presence.
Recognise the parallels between birth, death, and the cycles of life as they relate to biodynamic and embodied approaches to healing.
Integrate meditation, experiential practices, biodynamic table work, ceremony, and reflective inquiry into their understanding of death and dying.
Identify ways in which an informed and embodied relationship with mortality can support personal growth, resilience, and compassionate professional practice
Tanya Desfontaines
I am a mother and grandmother, living and working from my home in beautiful South Devon, UK. Of mixed Irish and Mauritian ancestry, I travelled extensively before settling with my family in Devon.
My career began in the late 1980s at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, where I lived and worked for four years alongside medical and nursing staff, gaining experience across many London teaching hospitals and access to the medical school library and anatomy labs. These formative years inspired a lifelong fascination with the human body and its mysteries. I went on to explore many traditions of holistic health while working as a physiotherapist in the NHS across a range of clinical disciplines, before retraining in Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy at the Karuna Institute in 2007.
I studied extensively with Franklyn Sills and Katherine Ukleja, and later had the privilege of assisting, teaching and being mentored by these elders in the field of BCST. I co-ordinated and led the BCST foundation training at Karuna Dartmoor, culminating in the graduation of our final cohort in June 2020. My love of travel has taken me to teach across Europe, the USA and South America.
My personal journey—including motherhood, relocation to Devon, illness, bereavement and shamanic apprenticeship—has deeply informed my understanding of healing and embodiment. I love creating spaces of potential, weaving together heart-centred presence, mindful awareness and a deep appreciation of the Intelligent forces and processes of Life.
I maintain a small, vibrant clinical practice when I am not travelling, which—along with my three grandchildren—keeps me grounded and nourishes my heart. At this stage of my life, I am deeply grateful for my teachers and love to share what I have embodied through my journey so far. I continue to learn through collaboration and through the group fields we co-create. When I am not working, I enjoy reading, walking in nature and making things with clay.
Sarah Parker
I am a mother, a death doula, a grief tender and a craniosacral therapist. In my twenties I studied Medicine at UCL in London, then worked as a junior doctor in Torbay hospital, down here in Devon. I left the profession in my foundation years as a hospital doctor, as I had become disillusioned and felt unable to connect with patients the way I wanted to, within the medical system. I longed for a more holistic approach to wellness and health that I couldn’t offer at the time. I went on to manage a Holistic Health Centre and then, in 2008 I trained in Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy at Karuna Institute.
A decade and a half later, I underwent a huge initiation with the death and dying of my father. He endured intolerable pain with pancreatic cancer. As I sat alongside him in his dying, my capacity and resilience to not turn away from suffering but to stay present, open-hearted and connected became clear. My father meant the world to me, and I knew that if I could stay in connection with that degree of pain and suffering, with the person I loved so much, then my place was with those who are in their dying. I had become an “Amicus Mortis – a friend in death.” I went on to complete Living Well Dying Well’s Death Doula Training, and now I primarily work in the community as a death doula. As well as offering one to one support for people facing the end of their life, and their death, I run monthly death cafes and grief tending spaces, understanding the importance of normalizing death and dying and bringing it back into the community where it belongs, as well as holding this Threshold as Sacred. I am the founder and director of Dying with Grace CIC, which offers community events, weaving together knowledge, wisdom and creativity. I love to walk and swim in wild nature, connecting to these lands and seas, and to spend time with my family, friends and the community I live in.
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At the Threshold: Exploring Death, Dying, and Compassion
DATES: Wednesday 29 September - Sunday 3 October 2027
VENUE: Karuna Dartmoor, TQ13 7TR
TUTOR: Tanya Desfontaines and Sarah Parker
COSTS: £880 (with a deposit of £280)
Deposit is payable within 7 days of acceptance onto the course.
We may be able to offer payment plans to spread the cost of the course over a longer time, as long as the final payment of any payment plan is 8 weeks before the start date of the course. If this is something you would be interested in discussing, please let us know once you’re accepted onto the course.
All residential retreats and training will include shared bedroom accommodation. They also include lunch and dinner, prepared by a local chef. There will be a self-serve breakfast. This is all included in the cost.
Karuna offers vegetarian meals. We can provide wheat-free and dairy-free or vegan options, but please inform us as soon as possible before your stay. If you have very specific dietary needs, consider bringing any items you might need to supplement the provided meals.
Please note that Karuna Dartmoor is alcohol-free and does not allow non-prescribed drugs.