Online Learning
Self-paced courses built from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's own books, charts, recordings and workshops, taught by her Foundation and by people who worked beside her. Available worldwide, with lifetime access.
On Death and Dying
The book that changed how the world talks about dying, taught chapter by chapter. What Elisabeth's patients taught her in their own words, what they wanted from their doctors, the full picture the summaries left out, and how it holds up against the challenges of today's medicine. For clinicians, chaplains, nurses, death doulas, students and readers of the book.
Elisabeth's Core Teaching
The models and ideas she is known for, from her own work and in her own words.
The Kübler-Ross Change Curve®
Loss and change from Elisabeth's original model, not the boardroom version: what each response looks like in practice, the kinds of denial, acceptance versus resignation, and why explaining change better tends to backfire. Two tracks: leading others through change, and facing it yourself.
The Five Stages of Grief®
Most people think they already know the Five Stages. Go back to the source: each response in the words of the people she interviewed, the ten overlapping responses on her 1969 chart, why they were never a sequence, hope as the thread through all of it, and why five became the number the world remembered.
The Universal Laws of Kübler-Ross
The thirteen universal laws Elisabeth taught in her Life, Death and Transition workshops, the natural emotions and what happens when each one is distorted. Her laws, as she taught them, with the sources. Not a self-help course.
The 4 Quadrants
Her map of the whole person: physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual. See where a patient or mourner is being cared for and where they are being missed, and bring all four into balance in your own life too.
At the Bedside
Elisabeth's work with the dying: what her patients taught her, and how to listen and respond.
Kübler-Ross: The Patient as the Teacher
Her simple, radical principle: the patient is the teacher. What dying patients taught her about hope and unfinished business, and how to listen as a learner, not an expert. For doulas, hospice volunteers, nurses and chaplains.
Kübler-Ross on Symbolic Language: The Verbal Language of the Dying
When dying patients cannot say it plainly, they say it another way. Learn to recognize symbolic language and answer inside the symbol, from the children of Majdanek to her Chicago seminars, including a real exchange in her own words from 1974.
Kübler-Ross on Symbolic Language: The Nonverbal Language of the Dying
What the dying and children show us when they cannot say it directly: through the body, silence, objects, play and drawings, and how to respond without forcing meaning onto what you see.
Grief and Loss
Regret and loss across a lifetime, from childhood on.
Unfinished Business
The concept she returned to more than any other: the unspoken words, unresolved conflicts and regrets behind "If only I had…", and how to help people complete them while there is still time. Six case scenarios: the dying, the bereaved, a child, a family and a nurse.
Grief and Bereavement in Childhood
How children understand death at each age, common misconceptions about how they grieve, and family-centered support matched to a child's age, at home, at school and in care settings.
For Funeral and Bereavement Professionals
Elisabeth's teaching for those who serve families at the time of a death and after.
Kübler-Ross for Funeral and Cemetery Professionals
Understanding the family in front of you, at one of the most intense moments of their lives: anticipatory grief and sudden death, the Five Stages of Grief® as families actually show them, unfinished business and divided families, without a formula or checklist.
Aftercare: Kübler-Ross for Bereavement Follow-Up
How to stay with families after the service, when grief often deepens and others step away: follow-up around the real calendar of grief, including the second year, remembrance programs for every faith and tradition, and knowing the limits.
Kübler-Ross on Caring for the Caregiver
Why Elisabeth turned to the caregivers, from her Life, Death and Transition workshops: keeping your own balance, grief piled on grief, numbness and burnout, the professional persona, and the trap of the caretaker's role. Daily tools, including her 15-second rule.
Coming Soon
Introduction to Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Her life and work, in true timeline order, told with firsthand recollections from her family and the people who worked beside her.
To be notified when it opens, email .
Free Live Events
The Foundation also hosts free live events on grief, loss and Elisabeth's work, led by Susan Barber, our Community Outreach Manager: Death Cafés, author talks, films, panels and writing classes, open to everyone.
See upcoming eventsRooted in Elisabeth's Original Work
Our online courses are created from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's own books, charts, recordings and workshops, and taught by the Foundation, her colleagues, and people who worked directly with her.