Selah Carefarm

The Selah Carefarm  is the residential seat of Rev. Dr. Joanne Kyouji Cacciatore and her extraordinary mission to provide compassionate care to individuals and families who have suffered a traumatic death. (Current literature recognizes traumatic grief as the death of a baby or child, violent death, suicide, homicide, and untimely deaths.) Kyouji is priest and member of the Board of Directors and the Teachers’ Circle in The Zen Garland Order. She is a professor at Arizona State University who has established a world-wide reputation in traumatic grief through her more than 70 research papers, teaching and revered popular book, Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief.

Selah Carefarm also houses the Selah Family House of the MISS Foundation, a multi-service organization founded in 1996 by Kyouji that both supports grieving individuals and families who have suffered a traumatic death and provides specialized clinical training in this work for professionals and clergy.

A bereaved mother herself, a life-long vegan and a Zen Garland priest, Kyouji has created a unique environment just outside Sedona where the traumatically bereaved have the necessary space to fully inhabit their grief through the natural beauty of the Arizona high desert landscape, interbeing with animals rescued from abuse, as well as the care of counselors trained her therapeutic practice of Compassionate Bereavement Care™. The animal inhabitants of Selah Carefarm include horses, donkeys, alpacas, sheep, goats, pigs, dogs and cats.

Zen Internship in Compassionate Bereavement Care

This program combines training in psychotherapy and counseling for trauma and advanced training in Zen. The internship is open to experienced Zen students who are recommended by their Zen teachers and hold a professional license as a medical doctor, nurse, social worker, clinical counselor, or ordained clergy.

Following an application process, accepted Interns will first complete a six-week course online in Zen Focusing Relational Psychotherapy. This includes a two-hour class and a one-hour practice session each week plus Zen dialogue in dokusan. This is followed by a one-month residency at the Selah Carefarm, a vegan animal sanctuary for the traumatically bereaved, founded and directed by Rev. Dr. Joanne Kyouji Cacciatore; and Zen practice and studies at Desert Bone Hermitage with Roshi Paul Genki Kahn and Roshi Monika Genmitsu Kahn, founders of The Zen Garland Order. The residency is followed by one month of online, weekly clinical supervision and weekly Zen dialogue with Roshi. We offer this program in the spring and fall and currently only accept two interns per 3-month session.

The Selah Carefarm Zen Internship is coordinated and directed by Roshi Monika Genmitsu Kahn who serves as a program assistant for the MISS Foundation and a grief counselor at the Carefarm. Roshi Genmitsu taught farming in Switzerland in a government sponsored program for twelve years and served another twelve years as residential director for a semi-private, not-for-profit vocational training program, supported by the Swiss government.