Becoming Psychopomps
An invitation to rediscover accompaniment and learn how ordinary people can bear witness during the final 72 hours of life.
Speaking engagements
Conversations that make room for what matters.
Daniel DeLoma speaks with clinical, academic, faith, and community audiences about what it means to accompany another person toward death and how presence can be practiced in the final hours of life.
Signature topics
Grounded at the bedside. Open to the human mystery.
Each engagement is adapted to the audience, setting, and time available. Talks may be delivered as a keynote, conference session, grand rounds, panel contribution, adult forum, retreat, or community conversation.
The Final 72 Hours
What patients, families, professionals, and communities need when the focus shifts from striving to accompaniment.
The Middle of the Story
How we live faithfully when the ending is unknown, drawing wisdom from hospice for every season of uncertainty.
When Words Are No Longer Enough
Presence, ritual, touch, silence, and other forms of connection when language and cognition begin to change.
Listening to the Heart
An introduction to MHbT and the clinical-spiritual possibilities of rhythm, breath, and presence in hospice care.
For the Greater Glory of Love
A faith-sensitive reflection on vocation, service, and the question that remains at the end: how did we love?
Featured presentation
Experience Daniel’s teaching.
Meditative Heartbeat Therapy at End of Life, presented for End of Life Psychedelic Care.
This long-form webinar offers planners and collaborators a direct sense of Daniel’s calm, experiential approach to teaching about the final chapter of life.
Watch on YouTube
About Daniel
A chaplain, educator, and companion at the threshold.
Daniel DeLoma, M.Th., MSPC, is a medical theologian, hospice and palliative care chaplain, author, and educator whose work focuses on accompaniment during the final 72 hours of life.
For more than a decade, he has walked alongside individuals and families facing serious illness, grief, and life’s final transition, helping them navigate those sacred hours with dignity, meaning, and compassion. Drawing upon hospice practice, contemplative spirituality, theology, and global palliative care, he understands dying not simply as a medical event, but as a profound human and spiritual journey.
Daniel describes this work through the ancient image of the psychopomp: one who accompanies another person toward the threshold without trying to control the crossing. That philosophy takes practical form in final-72-hour vigil doula care and in the simple human practices of listening, silence, ritual, breath, voice, and touch.
Daniel developed Meditative Heartbeat Therapy (MHbT), an integrative contemplative method that may use a patient’s own heartbeat as a focal point for reflection, connection, and meaning-making at the end of life. He is the author of Meditative Heartbeat Therapy: A Contemplative Guide to Presence, Rhythm, and Care at End of Life (Apocryphile Press). He will speak at TEDxHartford in December 2026, exploring how ordinary people can learn to accompany the dying through the final 72 hours of life.
A certified Reiki Master and end-of-life doula, Daniel serves in spiritual care, bereavement, volunteer services, and hospice leadership with Waveny LifeCare Network and Visiting Nurse & Hospice of Fairfield County. He completed advanced fellowship training in palliative care through St. Christopher’s Hospice in London and the Institute of Palliative Medicine in India. Whether at the bedside, in the classroom, or through his writing, Daniel remains devoted to helping people rediscover how to accompany one another through the final journey.
Invite Daniel
Tell me about the room you are gathering.
Share the audience, possible date, location, format, and what you hope people will carry with them. A conversation is often the best place to begin.
Speaking and workshop inquiries
danieldeloma@gmail.comAvailable for travel and virtual engagements
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