No Quick Fix
Coping with grief when we have lost a loved one, or suffered a serious loss of another kind may seem like an impossible task. Few words bring comfort, and there is no quick fix for a broken heart. In addition to overwhelming sadness, many of us feel stuck and unsure of how to proceed with life.
It is normal to feel disoriented, and many of us might wonder if we are coping with grief in the “right way”. One way to look at grief is like an umbrella – beneath it we find physical, mental and emotional elements, to name a few. We may find it less overwhelming to break down coping with grief into a few manageable components, all of them utilizing mindfulness.
The Physical Body
Everyone experiences the physical symptoms of grief in their own way, but the most common ones include hollowness in your stomach, tight heart and chest area, aching arms, shortness of breath, low energy, dry mouth, muscle weakness, nausea, and even loss of coordination. Can we allow ourselves to experience these sensations, to let them just be?
Though it seems almost too simple to be effective, our breath is a powerful antidote to mental and physical suffering, as it anchors us to body. Ever noticed your breath becoming shallower? Shallow breathing keeps our body in a state of fight or flight, and can lead to physical tension, digestive problems, and fatigue.
You can access your breath right now. Stop for a moment, close your eyes and take a few full breaths. Feel your inhale expand your belly and your lungs. Notice the release that happens on the exhale.
Working with Ruminating Thoughts
“I can’t turn off my thoughts” is a common experience reported during early days of grief. This is normal. The first step in managing ruminations, fears, worries and other discursive thoughts associated with grief is to remember we are not our thoughts. They come, they go, and learning to let them do just that without taking ownership is invaluable, especially when we are obsessing and buying into a story.
We can bring our attention to our breath, and when thoughts arise just gently note them without judgment, and return to our breath. We do this again and again watching this arising and passing of mental states, noting their impermanence. The point of meditation is not to get rid of our thoughts, but to transform how we relate to them. Can we observe them with gentle curiosity, kindness, compassion? This transformation, in turn, will help our body feel better so we can cope with grief and our life after loss.
Managing Grief Emotions
Most of us experience difficult emotions as a mixed bag of physical sensations and thoughts, usually in the form of a story we tell ourselves over and over. It is easy to get stuck in the cycle, but ruminating is rarely helpful. Eventually, we may want to explore our difficult emotions mindfully in order to reduce our suffering and gain insight.
To get unstuck, widen your scope of awareness beyond the story itself to your whole experience. What physical sensations are you feeling in your body? Drop the storyline, and dive into direct contact with your physical body. Where does this difficult emotion reside? In your belly, your heart, somewhere else? How big is it, what is its temperature, its shape, its texture? Once we isolate the physical manifestation of an emotion, we can use our breath as an anchor to the present, recognizing we are feeling these sensations right now, not in the past or the future.
Trust the Natural Intelligence
Releasing the grief we carry is a long, tear-filled process. Yet it follows the natural intelligence of the body and heart. Trust it, trust the unfolding. Along with meditation, some of your grief will want to be written, to be cried out, to be sung, to be danced. Let the timeless wisdom within you carry you through grief to an open heart.
Here is How Breathing Practices Help Here is How Somatic Mindfulness Meditation Helps
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