Death Midwifery:
once an inherited wisdom, now a radical act of reclaiming life
in a world that is presently fearing its own fate.
“Nine Keys opens portals. It opens possibilities. It opens hearts.”
-Luz (Nine Keys Alum)
Nine Keys
Death Midwifery
Apprenticeship
Accepting applications for the July 2025 cohort.
Nine Keys is a living, breathing chrysalis.
It is otherworldly. It’s a place for self-transformation.
It’s a path to embodied death work.
And yet, it’s soft-business development and a matriarchal learning space.
It’s new paradigm death care. It’s for collective healing.
If you are looking for a quick death midwifery training program,
Nine Keys might not be the best choice for you.
Nine Keys is the deep dive into this work.
Come as you are, but do be prepared to be rearranged.
We don’t ‘do’ death work, we ‘live’ death work.
Nine Keys is the death midwifery training course for creative thinkers and artists,
for folks who dare to blur the status quos, and who are aspiring death workers that are in touch with the soul of all.
It’s a death arts school. It’s the path of the death midwifery for the mystic.*
*one who serves humanity through their relationship with the divine
Ready to apply for Nine Keys?
Schedule an application appointment!
*During scheduling, you will see the application with a $40 non-refundable application fee.
Maybe you hear a calling to death work but don’t know exactly what that means.
Maybe your calling to death work feels untouchable, like a gossamer vision.
It’s almost as if the calling to your death work is ancient, something that came before you, but something that is knocking on a sacred door near you now. This calling is the foundation of your death work.
Nine Keys helps you to unlock this calling. The Keys move the abstract whispers of our calling into recognizable forms.
But don’t just take my word for it…
Listen to this chat with Nine Keys Alum Melissa Word about how she followed the calling and how it shifted life, death, and everything-in-between.
“This is not “Narinder Elizabeth Bazen’s” ™ death midwifery. The Nine Keys apprenticeship is old wisdom that would normally have been passed to you through your family and community. With those ties having been severed for four generations, Bazen’s Nine Keys re-weaves previously broken threads of death work back together. Nine Keys invites us to pick up the threads of death work that should have always been ours to inherit.
Nine Keys is the most comprehensive Death Midwifery course offering the unique balance of practical, need-to-know factual information while also recognizing the importance of the spiritual needs of the dying, their families, and that of the death workers involved at end of life.
Bazen’s Nine Keys is not a drive-through weekend course (though those have their place). This is the deep-dive. This thorough course is a guide, a map, back to your Self, your community, and your death work. This work is vital, now more than ever, to prepare those who have been called to serve their families and communities in helping navigate the challenges of end-of-life in contra to systems that are death-averse. The result is stronger communities better prepared to meet the challenges at end-of-life through education and strengthened relationships with our own mortality.
The Nine Keys Death Midwifery Apprenticeship provides powerful, preparative lessons for those who have been called to this work so that they may repair broken ancestral threads and carry them on, unbroken, into a future focused on holistic death care.” - Juliarose Triebes
The Nine Keys Death Midwives feel confident in their work.
They are prepared, supported, and prosperous.
The Four Core Principles of Death Work:
by Narinder Bazen
1. Death is the teacher.
2. Letting Go is the art we aim to master.
3. The lessons taught by Uncertainty far outweigh any other lesson.
4. The Calling to the work lays the work out for us. It is through developing a sound relationship with the Calling that we learn our unique style of Death Midwifery.
Nine Keys Apprentices say…
”Nine Keys is the most thorough death midwifery training program.”
”I feel more in touch with my art because of Nine Keys than
I did in grad school getting an art degree.”
”Nine Keys is real magic.”
”We leave Nine Keys as embodied death workers.”
”I love how Narinder sprinkles business mentorship throughout Nine Keys. Not many training programs help their students build businesses.”
”Nine Keys has reignited my love for making art!”
“Nine Keys opens portals. It opens possibilities. It opens hearts.”
“Nine Keys rearranged me. It brought me back to life.”
full testimonials below
Key Topics
The magic of Death Midwifery
Connecting with the spirit of your death work practice
The history/her-story of death midwifery and how we honor that
Self-care as community care for death workers
Maintaining a relationship with the spiritual touchstone of your death care practice
How to be sensitive to and honor cultures other than our own
Creating and maintaining sacred spaces
Post Capitalist / Matriarchal Business Building / Midwifing New Economics
Comfort care and therapeutic touch
The reality of current death care options in the US and Canada and imagining new paradigm death care - thinking way outside the box
How to take that urgent call
How to create and lead death ed and grief care events in your community
How to hold multiple truths at one time
Talking with those who are dying or with those who are loving someone who is dying
Showing up prepared and supported for your first clients.
Advanced planning and other ducks in a row
Creating sacred pauses for intentions
Bringing death home / Home Funeral Guidance
Caring for the deceased’s body and sitting vigil with the body
Laws concerning home funerals
Codes of Ethics
Green Burials
Defining your work
How to bring your death midwifery basket to the market / educating your community
Getting the word out about your work
Taking urgent calls and being an anchor for those who lose a loved one to trauma
Building your business, making your prosperity baskets, with a vision for sustainable holistic death care
Rewriting the patriarchal norms for caregivers
About the Apprenticeship
The course is divided into Nine Keys. The apprenticeship is completed in 9 months.
Keys 1-8 open doors to the calling that is death midwifery, through study, meditation, self-reflection, and art.
Each key consists of:
*1 monthly required group class via an online platform.
*An average of six assignments (reading, meditations, research, art activities, writing, listening to podcasts, watching documentaries and films.)
*A one-on-one call with Narinder each month.
Combining my work as a Death Midwife and Intuitive Counselor and artist, I am able to help each apprentice bring form to their death work,
from what may have felt like an abstract calling. I am there for my apprentices when they themselves navigate the underworld, the darker parts of their psyche, as they unravel their death anxieties. I am there when they get their first clients. Nine Keys is available to people who would like to learn the art of death midwifery, as guided by the Great Primordial Mother, for their families and their communities, joining the web of death workers serving the midwifing of culture and bringing grief literacy to society. This is truly an intimate apprenticeship. It’s as old-world as I can make it, in the age of rapid and besieging technology. - Narinder Bazen
The Ninth Key is an initiatory ritual and a Blessingway.
This is not a self-paced course. Assignments are given at the beginning of each month and are due by the last day of each month.
“Nine Keys is a rare, thin place, where the tea of the divine is steeped. Chances are if you are looking here, you were led here.
Each Key held up a different mirror to where I needed to acknowledge, accept and nurture my gifts and authenticity. Narinder is a Death Auntie for those who need to create, experience, play, and rest to learn. Nine Keys is a space for those that know humanity needs the Artists, Seer's, Poets, and Truth Tellers now more than ever.”
~Kat Courant
The Investment
The fee for the Nine Keys Death Midwifery Apprenticeship is $3,300.
This fee breaks down to $366 a month for Narinder.
The non-refundable payment for the apprenticeship is paid electronically.
Due to the intimate nature of the program and Narinder’s petite business, there are no monthly payment plan options.
“To partake in Nine Keys is to enter nine specific portals through which you will alchemize yourself into a death guide beyond your expectations. Narinder is an extremely knowledgeable, present, and creative teacher who will help you explore your relationship to death in ways you never would have imagined prior. I am infinitely grateful for the work I was able to do with her in the Nine Keys apprenticeship and will carry these lessons with me throughout not just my work, but my life.”
— Oliver V
“Thank you so much Narinder for your patience, your guidance and your willingness to share. I really feel like I apprenticed with you rather than just taking a class taught by you. Your gentle redirections and respect for my uniqueness made me feel valued and capable. You made me feel seen. Nine Keys was informative, reflective and spacious. I appreciated having the time to digest and learn at my own pace, but to also receive guidance and have real human connection with others who are on the same path. This is the first training where I feel fully ready to do the work. I have enough to step into my role as a Death Midwife for my community.”
— Miinkay Yu
“As a hospice nurse, I found Nine Keys to be an opportunity to touch so deeply into what I had been searching for, for so long in this work. While I loved hospice work, I realized how limiting the corporate world was with death care. I had small experiences where I went outside the lines of my “job description”, but I wanted more. I wanted more soul to soul, spirit, magic, stories, sacredness and time to spend with my patients! I wanted to bring back the death midwives, the rituals, the traditions, I wanted to weave, grieve and cherish each person in their uniqueness. To bring back the medicine women and the old ways. That’s when I found Narinder and her Nine Keys apprenticeship. It was everything and more that I was looking and hoping for! She brought me back to the magic and helped me to see that sacred death care is possible outside of hospice. I have been taking time off work, due to burnout, and it has enlivened a deep passion in me to make a transition into being a death midwife in-lieu of my hospice RN role. Before Nine Keys, it was only but a dream, I never really new could be a possibility. Now I am creating this dream and bringing it into reality! I will forever be grateful to Narinder and the magic she brought back into my life.”
-Stevie N
“Narinder said she would be there for us after Nine Keys and she absolutely is. When I had my first person ask if I would be their death doula, I felt some initial nerves and inevitable “what ifs.” Narinder guided me through questions I might want to ask for our initial visit and reminded me of my strengths as a death doula. I felt well supported and prepared for the next steps.”
— Maggie C.
“The way Narinder holds space and teaches is difficult to put into words - it's something you just have to experience. Despite whatever else was going on in my life, her teaching always guided me back onto sacred ground. Nine Keys was both a steady and surprising path. It took me to meet my grief; to ancient mountain caves with fires burning; to a cemetery being taken in tenderly by the rainforest; to my ancestors. Your trip will be just as magnificent, and equally your own. You might find the path of Nine Keys will lead you home to yourself, and what is more important than that?”
— CoCo
“When I got my first call, I was filled with purpose but also nervous. Having trained in Narinder’s Nine Keys Death Midwifery Apprenticeship, I felt more than prepared to serve my client and their family. Yet there were still some jitters, as I readied myself to step into the reality of my work for the first time. However – true to her word – Narinder was there for me, right away. I knew we could talk on the phone or text for urgent questions, and after each conversation, I once again felt grounded, centered in the heart and soul of my work, and empowered to hold space for my client. I cannot emphasize enough how much it means to have Narinder’s support.”
“Narinder’s presence and willingness when sharing her way of spinning the thread gives a creative and playful twist to stepping into The Great Mother’s Business realm. This energy helped ease my resistance and take heart led actions to help to begin to cultivate a clear container for my offerings. Narinder’s prompts help me to weave the ‘baskets’ from the willows that are my ideas, in a way that is not only clear for me, but my awaiting dream clients too, in service for it to be fruitful for all! Narinder helps to make something conceptual become tangible and real with her imaginative way of teaching and guiding.”
-Luna Slipp