Outsmart Your Pain by Christiane Wolf

Author:Christiane Wolf
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Experiment
Published: 2021-04-05T18:58:25+00:00

* * *

The following meditation will help you when your grief is showing up more strongly. This practice is about being with the grief and allowing it to happen. Remember that grief is an emotion and it’s not permanent, even though it might feel that way at times. Grief moves in waves. The more familiar you are with the patterns of your grief, the easier it becomes to stay afloat in the wave.

Meditation

Being with grief

* * *

Find a posture that supports your body in this moment, maybe sitting or lying down. If you like, close your eyes and do a brief check-in to see if there is any tension you might be able to release.

Pause.

Connect with the breath wherever you feel it most prominently right now. Try taking a few long, deep breaths. Throughout this meditation, you can always return to the breath. The breath is an anchor for stability and support.

Pause.

Just breathe. Allow whatever feelings are here to be here. There might be sadness or frustration or the sense of grief. Or something else altogether.

There are no right or wrong feelings—just feelings. With strong feelings, sometimes it can be helpful to think of them as if they were someone else’s feelings that you are keeping company for a while. Can you be with the feelings without trying to make them go away or turn them into something else?

Pause.

Can you name an emotion you are feeling right now? Softly naming the emotion to yourself can help you stay with the emotion. For instance, “sadness, this is sadness” or “grief, this is what grief feels like.”

Pause.

How big are these feelings? As big as your chest? Do they fill the entire body? Even bigger?

Can you make space within you for whatever feelings need to be here in this moment? If at any point this feels too overwhelming, take a couple of deep breaths or open your eyes for a moment and look around. Emotions can be intense. Be kind to yourself and find the right balance between allowing the feelings and not being too overwhelmed.

Take your time.

Pause.

It’s often helpful to put a hand (or both hands) on your chest when dealing with strong emotions, especially with sadness or grief. This signals support and connection to the body and helps to anchor and ground you.

Pause.

If tears come, that’s OK, too. The body has its own language for feelings. Let it happen as best as you can and breathe with it.

In and out.

Allow whatever reactions show up to be here and to move through. Remember the image of the wave. It rises, it crests, and it falls. Surrender to this with awareness and with kindness.

You have a human body, and human bodies have emotions. Even feelings that seem as big as the universe will eventually change.

They rise, they crest, they fall. They are changing.

Grieving now doesn’t say anything about how we will feel in the future. Right now, we can be with this pain, one moment at a time. We feel pain because we care.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.