Compassionate Guidance Through Every Step
Meet the dedicated professionals committed to supporting you with their expertise through both in-person and online care.
Bob Chiang
Unified Mindfulness Trainer/Teacher
End of Life Doula
Death Cafe facilitator
Bob Chiang brings experience in end-of-life care, offering compassionate support and practical guidance to individuals and families navigating life’s final stages. Through mindfulness practice and open conversation, he helps create safe spaces where people can explore death, dying, and impermanence with honesty, dignity, and care.
Drawing on his background in mindfulness coaching and contemplative practice, Bob supports people in developing greater acceptance of life’s natural cycles while deepening appreciation for what truly matters. His approach emphasises presence, compassion, and mindful awareness as ways to meet life’s most profound transitions.
He is a member of End of Life Doula UK (EOLDUK) and serves as a mentor, supporting other doulas within the organisation.
Location: Buxton, UK
Brendalyn Batchelor
Certified UM Trainer/Teacher
I live in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I enjoy supporting, nourishing and inspiring others to be all they can be in whatever circumstances they find themselves. In addition to being a Unified Mindfulness Teacher/Trainer, I am a spiritual director/companion, pastoral and licensed professional counselor, HeartMath Coach, and ordained interspiritual minister who embraces universal spiritual practices and teachings.
I offer a compassionate, grounded presence during the threshold between life and death. I support individuals and loved ones through this sacred terrain with deep listening, care, and processes that address personal needs. Creating a safe and sacred space, I invite open exploration of grief, fear, meaning, and mystery —honoring each person’s unique path. Through mindfulness and heart-centered awareness, I gently midwife individuals in this birth we call death with dignity and presence, knowing that even in the midst of loss, there can be connection, insight, peace, and even joy.
I do my utmost to mindfully live, deepen, and express my spirituality “where the rubber meets the road.” I believe it doesn’t matter so much what anyone believes or says; what matters is how we walk our talk in everything we think, say and do.
Location: Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
Choshin Blackburn
Unified Mindfulness Coach
Thana/Death Doula
Death Cafe facilitator
Chôshin managed retreats (residential and virtual) for Shinzen Young for 30+ years. Although Shinzen’s work has shifted to research, Chôshin is still managing Vipassana Support International (VSI’s) operational functions and is working on launching the VSI Store to offer Shinzen’s recordings – past and new. She also manages the monthly Home Practice Program weekend retreats under the Unified Mindfulness umbrella as cultivated and designed by Shinzen Young.
Her interest in end-of-life care was shaped through supporting both her grandmother and mother during their dying processes, as well as attending local Death Cafés. This led her to further study in Thanatology and End-of-Life care, which she now integrates with mindfulness meditation in her work as a Thana Doula.
Alongside her professional work, Chôshin is an avid gardener, music and cat lover, a voracious reader, and enjoys dancing, with family always first.
Location: Ontario, Canada
Sharon Barb O’Connor
Certified UM Trainer/Teacher
I’m located in the Midwest and live in the greater Kansas City area. I’ve felt drawn to end-of-life care from teen years, then work at my home town nursing home while a student in nursing school. And, with work as a nurse… those years of critical care nursing-where issues of life and death were at hand much of the time – also, I was a direct source of support to the person and the family. And, in the years as a psychologist, with work with children and families facing all sorts of hardships, a resource available for support and tender care. And, today’s work at an outflow clinic with folks facing uncertainty, not knowing and living with long term health challenges, I offer support and classes/topics that combine my backgrounds in nursing, psychology and mindfulness, as a Certified UM Trainer.
I approach these transitions you are facing with care, reverence, space for sorrow, love and meaning, just as they are. I offer an openness, welcoming space, warmth and gentleness.Together we can explore what supports you in endings, meaningful connections, dignity and moments of peace.
In our time together, I draw heavily from mindfulness practice as a conduit to ease suffering, in facing death, loss and transitions in life.
Outside professional work, I love singing, am a member of The Kansas City Medical Arts Symphony Chorus, all things Spanish and my Spanish classwork-always looking for chances to use it, Irish ballads and gardening, which I eat out of from May through November.
Location: Kansas City, Missouri, USA