Course Description

What does it mean to be in right relationship as someone holding space for transformation?

When those who trust you are in some of their most vulnerable moments? This four-day intensive explores the essential skills of embodied attunement and ethical discernment that ministers need when holding sacred space. We will explore power dynamics unique to expanded states and inherent in the ministerial relationship. Moving beyond traditional bioethics, we integrate wisdom from ecophilosophy, phenomenology, and the more than human world to develop authentic ethical practices grounded in somatic and intuitive knowledge.

Through direct engagement with one another and the beings of the ecosystem, students practice ancestral and contemporary ways of being human that inform ministerial practice. Plants, animals, and fungi become teachers in understanding reciprocal relationship and embodied ethics, offering sophisticated tools for navigating the complex relational terrain of sacred space holding.

Learning Objectives
Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

  1. Evaluate and apply embodied attunement practices to navigate verbal and non-verbal consent in ministerial relationships
  2. Analyze and respond to openness and tenderness with proportionate care and ethical discernment
  3. Integrate somatic and intuitive knowledge into ethical decision-making frameworks for ministerial practice
  4. Synthesize wisdom from ecophilosophy, phenomenology, and bioethics to address complex relational dynamics
  5. Demonstrate practical skills for maintaining right relationship across power differentials in sacred space
  6. Apply teachings from plant and animal communities to develop reciprocal relationship practices
  7. Create personal frameworks for ethical discernment that honor both professional standards and the sacred nature of ministerial work

Format
The core of this course is a four day in-person non-residential intensive in the San Francisco Bay Area. Lunch will be provided. Participants traveling for the intensive will be responsible for finding housing. There will be two live virtual meetings to support orientation and integration, one before and one after the in-person session.

Tuition

The 2-unit January intensive is $2000, with a $50 discount for payment in full.

Earn the full Relational Ethics Certificate (10 units: both intensives + both full-semester courses) for a bundled rate of $6000.

An enrollment link will be sent upon acceptance.

January 2027 Schedule  

Preparation and Integration, Online, Wednesdays, January 13 and January 27, 1:30-3:30 PM PT/4:30-6:30 PM ET

In-person Intensive, Thursday, January 21—Sunday, January 24, 2027

Application

This course requires a brief application, with the exception of CSP ministers and students. Expect a response within two weeks of applying.

CSP Ministry Students and Ministers: Select a Pricing Option to Enroll


Meet Your Instructor

Andi Chatburn, DO, MA, HEC-C (they/she) is a Hospice and Palliative Care physician, bioethicist, and ordained ceremonialist. With over 25 years of experience facilitating spiritual ritual and ceremony, Dr. Chatburn accompanies people at the threshold of life's most profound transitions. An apprentice to death since childhood, Andi brings an intimate understanding of the relational nature of being human within an animate ecosystem of life. Through their own surrender to mystery, they know spiritual transformation affects entire ecosystems of relationships with both human and more than human relations.

Throughout a decade-long career at Providence Health and Services, Chatburn served as Senior Director for Ethics at Providence Health in Washington and Montana, where they chaired and led over a dozen ethics committees and taught ethics to interdisciplinary groups of healthcare professionals, spanning topics from pediatric ethics to end-of-life care. Their academic experience includes Clinical Instructor positions in Biomedical Ethics at Washington State University's Elson S. Floyd School of Medicine, Pacific Northwest University School of Osteopathic Medicine, and the University of Washington/Gonzaga School of Medicine. Andi also served as a spiritual director for fellow healthcare executives through Leadership Formation, and as a board member and instructor for Providence's Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) Program for healthcare chaplains.

Dr. Chatburn completed a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine and Master of Arts in Bioethics from Kansas City University (2010), holds a certificate in Spiritual Direction from the Companioning Center (2022), and holds a Master of Arts in Philosophy with an emphasis in Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion from California Institute for Integral Studies (2026). This unique combination brings unprecedented interdisciplinary depth to bioethics education and practice.

Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Andi finds restoration through dancing, swimming in wild waters, and wandering in nature's fierce embrace.