compassionate living with animal kin

making all places sanctuary



Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.     —Mother Teresa

COURSES

Ken at home
Being Sanctuary provides a step-by-step guide for cultivating healthy, compassionate living with animals, and how to transform your home and community into sanctuary.

Creating Home Sanctuary

Our introductory course, Creating Home Sanctuary, explores ten core Principles of Sanctuary. These principles are a careful distillation of ancient knowledge and the latest scientific perspective on sanctuary practice and psychological well-being. Drawn from the fields of trauma recovery and conflict resolution, the principles are the building blocks for creating sanctuary in your home.

Each principle is taught using personal narratives drawn from around the world—photographs, background information, self-study exercises, practical methods, supplemental references, and outside resources. Narratives provide insights from sanctuary professionals and the animals they have saved, from elephants to emus, moon bears, mice, chimpanzees, koalas, and kangaroos.

As a succesful graduate of the Creating Home Sanctuary course, you will receive a certficiate of completion. Graduates can join our online community to network and share with others who are changing their lives for animals. You will also receive e-newsletters, educational updates, announcements of new webinars, and can participate in other Being Sanctuary activities.

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Advanced Sanctuary Training

Once you have completed the online course, you can apply for and receive training in the Advanced Sanctuary Training course. This course is also open and useful for sanctuary, shelter, and other animal care professionals.

Here, we delve more deeply into the principles of Sanctuary, concepts and methods of trauma recovery and trans-species psychology. In addition to the course, there is a hands-on internship and practicum with one of our participating sanctuaries. This will provide an opportunity to experience the principles of sanctuary at work in a formal large-scale sanctuary.

Contact Us

About the Instructor

Gay Bradshaw
Gay Bradshaw, PhD, PhD

Gay is Executive Director of The Kerulos Center. She holds doctorate degrees in ecology and psychology, and has published, taught, and lectured widely in these fields both in the U.S. and internationally.

She is the author of Elephants on the Edge: What Animals Teach Us about Humanity, published by Yale University Press, an in-depth psychological portrait of elephants in captivity and in the wild.

Dr. Bradshaw established the new field of trans-species psychology upon which the work and principles of The Kerulos Center and Being Sanctuary are based. Her research expertise includes the effects of violence on and trauma recovery of elephants, grizzly bears, chimpanzees, and parrots, and other species in captivity.

butterfly

Creating Home Sanctuary

The Creating Home Sanctuary curriculum consists of twelve modules comprised of webinars, readings, and exercises that relate to Principles of Sanctuary. Each principle is made up of two dimensions for cultivating home sanctuary: (1) what you can do for your animal family member, and (2) what you do for yourself. Each lesson includes specific Being Sanctuary Practices, activities you can use to translate your home to sanctuary.

You can sample some online content from the second lesson, Principle 1. SAFETY: Is Forever Enough?

  • Introduction: Shelter From the Storm
  • Principle 1. SAFETY: Is Forever Enough?
  • Principle 2. KNOWING: Through the Eyes of Love
  • Principle 3. ASSURANCE: Will You Still Feed Me?
  • Principle 4. BELONGING: Being Welcome
  • Principle 5. PARITY: Share and Share Alike
  • Principle 6. BEING HEARD: Talking with Animals
  • Principle 7. SELF-DETERMINATION: Who is inside?
  • Principle 8. ACCEPTANCE: Getting to Know You
  • Principle 9. SUPPORT: The Same Difference
  • Principle 10. TRUST: Compassion Unbounded
  • Completion: Implementing Sanctuary
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The Science Behind the Courses: Trans-species Psychology

turtle eats strawberry

Animals can think and feel like we do and also use language. Bonobos and parrots learn how to use symbols and sounds to communicate to us complex and sophisticated concepts such as basic rights and law. In recent years, research in the neurosciences and other fields have support our intuitive notions about human and animal comparability. The following article and books provide recent publications and research on trans-species psychology.