The Animal-Human Bond: Integrating Animals Into Spiritual Care
Explore the profound role of the animal-human bond, particularly in palliative and hospice care. This webinar will highlight the benefits of animal-assisted chaplaincy, including emotional comfort, spiritual support, and stress reduction for patients and families. We will also examine the chaplain’s role in companioning individuals through pet separation and loss in hospital environments, offering compassionate presence and ritual guidance.
Join us to learn how integrating animals (physically or mentally) into spiritual care can provide solace, deepen connections, and support holistic healing in times of transition and grief–and what to do when people of any age or health challenge are separated from their furry sources of support. Ideal for chaplains, spiritual caregivers, and healthcare professionals.
We thank the Compassion Consortium for their support of this event. Learn more here.
This event is for Subscriber and Innovator level users of the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab, who may register here. If you’d like to join the Lab and gain access to this webinar and much more, you can do so right here.
We’ll be joined by:
Rev. Sarah Bowen is the founder and executive director of Animal Chaplaincy Training at Compassion Consortium, a 501(c)3 nonprofit providing education, support, and fellowship for people concerned with interspecies issues in faith-based and secular contexts. She is the award-winning author of Sacred Sendoffs: An Animal Chaplain’s Advice for Surviving Animal Loss, Making Life Meaningful, & Trying to Heal the Planet (Monkfish Publishing). Bowen’s work has also appeared in Parabola, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Religion Dispatches, Psychology Today, Spirituality & Health, and Animal Culture Magazine. A passionate speaker and teacher, Bowen has presented on interspecies spirituality and care for the United Nations World Interfaith Harmony Week, Parliament of the World’s Religions, Spiritual Directors International, Hartford International University for Religion and Peace, Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, Humane Society of the United States, Omega Institute for Holistic Studies, and the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab. Bowen is also an academic dean at One Spirit Interfaith Seminary, where she encourages emerging clergy to align their spiritual values with animal and planetary welfare. Her research focuses on spiritual care for the moral injury experienced by animal-centered professionals, including veterinarians, conservationists, animal control officers, animal shelter staff, and sanctuary workers.
This event is sponsored by the Compassion Consortium. Learn more here.
The Compassion Consortium is a non-sectarian support center. We offer well-being resources, spiritual guidance, support, and community fellowship to Vegans, Vegetarians, animal rights activists, shelter/sanctuary workers, animal lovers, and all humans who care about and advocate for animals, habitats and the planet as a whole.