The Natural Death Handbook - Contents

[PLEASE NOTE: The following is taken from the VERY OLD 1993 edition.

For the CURRENT UP-TO-DATE VERSION of this book, plus update sheets, please see The Natural Death Handbook 4th ed.]

• CHAPTER 1: The Natural Death Movement
  
  • The idea that launched theNatural Death Centre
    
  • The cult of youth-at-all-costs
    
  • The medicalisation of society
    
  • Neighbours no longer share the loss
    
  • Natural childbirth leads to natural death
    
  • Death as a goal in old age
    
  • 'Begin the preparation for your death'
    
  • Death as graduation
    
  • American perspective
    

• CHAPTER 2: Brave and 'conscious' deaths
  
• Ancient Models
  
  • Death of Zen master Taji
    
  • Death of the Buddha
    
  • Amr Ibn Al-As
    
  • Himalayan yogis
    
  • Sun Bear on the Native American way of dying
    
  • Death of St Francis
    
  • Death of Socrates
    
• The seamless death
  
  • Death of George Washington
    
  • Death of Thomas Jefferson
    
  • Death of Scottish philosopher David Hume
    
  • Johnson
    
  • Keats
    
  • Thoreau
    
  • Death of Osceola, an American Indian, byWhitman
    
  • Armstrong - a struggle for death withdignity
    
• Modern and natural
  
  • Hypnotic suggestions and thedeath of Maria Huxley
    
  • Aldous Huxley death and awareness
    
  • Nearing - 'death like a leaf falling froma tree'
    
  • Einstein refusing surgery
    
  • Death of Swami Vivekananda
    
  • Old man dying at a Dalai Lama talk
    
  • Death former abbot of Dalai Lama monastery
    
  • Twitchell and the art of consciousnesswithdrawal
    
  • Death of Graham, 'who organised his deathat home'
    
  • Joyce, a nurse, in hospital
    
  • A good hospital death
    
  • Sophie in a hospice
    
  • Mrs Thayler and the 'labour pains' of dying
    
  • Old Sarah in the Arctic - and her sense oftiming
    
  • Lee - 'dolphin therapy' for a dying15-year-old
    
• Remarkable models
  
  • Walker - a gentle death byfasting
    
  • Melnyk at home
    

• CHAPTER 3: Near-Death Experiences
  
• Accounts from past centuries
  
  • An eighth century account
    
  • Pleasure in letting go
    
  • Review of life during fall
    
  • A fall in the mountains
    
• NDE investigators
  
  • The 'typical' NDE
    
  • 35,540 death-bed observations
    
• Varieties of NDE
  
  • The Japanese find death adepressing experience
    
  • Hanging on, in agony, to life
    
• From negative to positive
  
  • Confronting symbolic death
    
  • From terror to fearlessness
    
• The after-effects of NDEs
  
  • Kübler-Ross visited bya dead patient
    
  • Letting the universe take charge
    
  • God is about joy
    
  • NDE after a suicide attempt
    
  • Accepting others and showing feelings
    
  • Insight into others
    
• Mysticism and the NDE
  
  • The necessity of ego death
    
  • Die to live in God
    
  • All creatures one in essence
    
  • Characteristics of a mystical experience
    
  • Zen meditation banishing fear of death
    
• Children's NDEs
  
  • A nine-year-old tours heaven
    
  • Out of the body experience of an11-year-old
    
• The sceptic's view of the NDE
  
  • The brain a transmitter ofconsciousness not its source
    
  • The reluctant mystic - an NDE that didn'tgo away
    

• CHAPTER 4: Training for Dying
  
  • Fear of living
    
• Courses and workshops
  
  • Open University - Death andDying
    
  • Death and Immortality Course
    
  • Living with Dying
    
• Anxiety dying
  
  • Death-Related Anxiety Scale
    
  • Da Free John
    
  • Birth, love, courage and death
    
  • Death without fear or pain
    
• Death Weeks
  
• 'Rehearsing death'
  
  • D-i-y obituary
    
  • Meditating on dying
    
  • Shining true being
    
  • Visualising death
    
  • The death bed imagined
    
  • Life is precious for the 'already-dead'
    
• Death in Mexico
  
  • Death as a favouriteplaything
    
  • Day of the Dead
    
• Making your will
  
  • Will for a married man andtwo children
    
  • Pitfalls of d-i-y wills
    
  • Enduring Power of Attorney
    
• A pre-death information dossier
  
  • Registering a death - details needed
    
• Simplifying your affairs before death
  
• Living Wills
  
  • Living Wills
    
  • Living Will (The Natural Death Centre'sadaptation)
    
  • Natural Death Instructions
    
• Choosing the attitude
  
  • Choice of attidude - theultimate freedom
    
  • A death plan
    
• Dying wishes
  
  • Imaginative send-offs
    
  • Taping my own funeral
    
  • Rehearsing last goodbyes
    
• 'I didn't know what to say . . . '
  
• Our wider community
  

• CHAPTER 5: Practical Care for the Dying
  
• Facts and figures
  
• Hospital attitudes
  
  • Television in hospital
    
  • A dying nurse
    
  • Doctors withdrawing from the dying
    
  • Orderly death
    
  • Nurses too busy
    
  • Dedication despite distractions
    
• Hospice facilities
  
• Dying at home - the legal situation
  
  • Very elderly patients facingmajor operations
    
• Making the decision
  
  • Mother Teresa on being'wanted'
    
  • Easier to adjust at home
    
  • Sharing the bed at home
    
  • Dying amidst familiar chaos
    
• Support structures and outside help
  
  • Checklist of possibleassistance locally
    
  • We need the dying in our neighbourhoodsand lives
    
  • Guilt feelings in children
    
  • Comfort for the dying from a dog
    
• Carer's needs
  
  • Carer's resentment...
    
  • ...and anger
    
  • My source of stress is...
    
  • Enjoy yourself
    
• Preparation and equipment
  
  • A bed downstairs?
    
  • Practical equipment list
    
• Bed and bedding
  
  • A hospital bed
    
  • Bedding and comfort
    
• Moving
  
  • Turning in bed
    
  • Sitting upright
    
  • Moving to a chair or commode
    
  • Changing sheets with the person in bed
    
• Accidents
  
• Eating
  
• IVs and dehydration
  
• Washing and hygiene
  
  • Bathing
    
  • Mouth care
    
  • Hair care
    
• Bedsores and skincare
  
• Bowel management
  
  • Constipation
    
  • Incontinence
    
• Insomnia
  
• Depression/anxiety
  
• Relaxation
  
• Massage
  
  • Scalp massage
    
• Contact
  
• Pain management
  
  • Guided pain meditation:
    
• Music
  
  • Musical midwifery for thedying
    
• Arts
  
  • Hospice Arts
    
  • Memory Boxes
    

• CHAPTER 6: Green, Cheap & 'D-i-y' Funerals
  
  • Personal involvement infunerals
    
  • The recycled coffin
    
  • Which is Greener, burial or cremation?
    
  • Undertaken with Love
    
  • Composting bodies
    
• Keeping the body at home
  
  • Keeping the body cool
    
  • Why keep the body at home?
    
  • The need to hold one's dead child
    
  • Seeing and touching the body
    
  • Fear of being buried alive
    
• Laying out the body
  
• Forms and procedures
  
  • Going to the Registry Office
    
  • Moving the body
    
• Burial on private land
  
  • Mary Jane's funeral
    
  • Fruit tree planted over body
    
  • Planning permission for private burial?
    
  • Requirements for burial on private land
    
• Burial grounds as nature reserves
  
  • Memorial groves
    
  • Green, no-frills burial ground
    
  • Carlisle woodland burial
    
  • Burial ground as nature reserve
    
• Making the coffin
  
  • Jed Kesey's funeral
    
  • The Huelin d-i-y coffins
    
  • A simple burial box
    
  • A birch coffin
    
  • Re-usable coffin design
    
  • Coffins for cremation - avoiding pollution
    
  • Instructions from the Federation ofBritish Cremation Authorities
    
  • In memory of Dorothy Miller - a simplefuneral
    
  • Dorothy Miller's coffin
    
• Burial at sea
  
• Non-assembly line funerals
  
  • A grave lines with moss andleaves like a bird's nest
    
  • Letting off helium balloons at thegraveside
    
  • Cortège in 250 mile pub crawl
    
  • The funeral of King Charles I
    
  • The Hindu rites of death
    
  • A pagan death
    
• Public memorial
  
  • A table of objects tocommemorate the person
    
  • Memorials by Artists
    
  • Alternative urns
    
• Probate
  

• CHAPTER 7: A la carte professional help with funerals
  
• Natural Death Handbook Awards
  
• Good undertakers
  
  • A funeral director helpingwith his father's funeral
    
• Good coffins
  
• Coffin makers
  
• Transport
  
• Cold storage
  
• Embalming
  
• Complete services
  
  • A very independent funeraldirector
    
  • Cheap funerals for council residents
    
  • Memorial Societies
    
  • Free funerals
    
  • Donating the body
    
  • Give my sight to the man who has neverseen a sunrise
    
  • Pre-paid funerals
    
• Crematoria
  
• Cemeteries
  
• Woodland burial grounds - description of all 120+ sites existing and planned, and how to set up a woodland burial ground. Not in the 1993 edition, but available in the published New Natural Death Handbook - you may if you wish place a secure online order for this printed edition to be sent to you.
  

• CHAPTER 7a: Directory of Funeral Directors (this section is updated regularly)
  
  • The North West
    
  • The North East
    
  • Wales
    
  • West Midlands
    
  • East Midlands
    
  • East Anglia
    
  • The South West
    
  • The South
    
  • London region
    
  • Scotland
    
  • Eire & Northern Ireland
    
  
  

• CHAPTER 7b: Directory of Crematoria and Cemeteries
  
  • The North West
    
  • The North East
    
  • Wales
    
  • West Midlands
    
  • East Midlands
    
  • East Anglia
    
  • The South West
    
  • The South
    
  • London region
    
  • Scotland
    
  • Eire & Northern Ireland
    

• CHAPTER 8: 'Improving' Grieving
  
  • Debilitating grief
    
  • Picking up the threads
    
  • How long till grief is 'overcome'?
    
  • A tentative 'map' of grieving
    
• Suicide
  
  • Feeling responsible for asuicide
    
• The bereaved parent
  
  • The loss of a stillborn child
    
  • Befriending
    
• A child's understanding of death
  
  • Coming to terms with amother's death
    
  • 'Remembering Mum' book
    
• Private grief
  
  • Listen and be compassionate
    
• Consolations
  
  • Keening
    
  • Help from the spirit world?
    
  • Living in God
    
  • Fierce journey towards freedom
    

• CHAPTER 9: A Manifesto for the Dying
  
  • Rights of the Person Dying atHome
    
• Policy changes needed
  
  • Education
    
  • National Health Service and the community
    
  • Spirituality
    
  • Hospital
    
  • Euthanasia and suicide
    
  • Funerals
    

• CHAPTER 10: Useful Resources
  
• Booklist
  
• Tapes and videos
  
• Useful organisations and individuals
  

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Published online by the Natural Death Centre.

Order Natural Death Centre books in print form, including The Natural Death Handbook, 4th edition, with updates, which replaces this very old online edition. Orders may be placed with a credit or debit card via our sister website, the Global Ideas Bank.

Both the Natural Death Centre and the Global Ideas Bank are projects of the educational charity The Nicholas Albery Foundation (regsitered charity number, 1091396).