How to Practice Grief Daily: 3 Simple Practices for Emotional Healing
This might sound counter intuitive, but practicing grieving daily allows us to expand our capacity for love, while surrendering to the law of the universe that nothing stays the same.
Many people are holding on to grief and carrying every loss unconsciously in the body, I see this everywhere I go.
Wondering where all of those aches and pains are sprouting from? When was the last time you acknowledged a loss? And I’m not just talking about the loss of a loved one or a beloved pet. We face many losses, fairly regularly, but most of us were never taught how to sit with it.
Losses that we often overlook:
an identity shift (ex: becoming sober, changing your diet, moving)
maiden into motherhood,
motherhood into elder hood (ex: empty nest, perimenopause/menopause),
knowing that the career you worked so hard for no longer fits,
outgrowing a relationship or friendship,
last year, last month, last week, yesterday.
Every kind of loss is significant and leaves residue if unacknowledged. Grief likes company just as much as misery. We can move through the river of grief more swiftly and graciously the more we practice it.
Scott Davis, a beloved teacher of mine and who I learned the foundations of TCM from, would insist that grief needs to be a daily practice for us to live thriving lives. It’s very important for the quality of our QI (life force energy). Otherwise, we become stuck carrying around deadweight with us (pun intended) having it hold us back, and frankly, keep us sick (in one way or another).
Making grief a daily practice gives us small, intentional places to acknowledge change instead of waiting until the accumulation becomes overwhelming and destabilizing. It offers us the space to become more intimate with impermanence, honest about what hurts, available for what is, and willing to let life flow and change us for the better.
3 Simple Grieving Practices:
1) Morning Pages
á la Julia Cameron, from the book: The Artist’s Way (highly recommend it!)
First thing in the morning, fill three pages with whatever is moving through you.
It can be beautiful, boring, repetitive, angry or make absolutely no sense. There is no right thing or way to write.
The practice is about putting pen to paper and staying curious about what emerges. What are you thinking about before you’ve had a chance to edit yourself?
You might be surprised by what your body and subconscious already know.
2) CRY
If you’ve experienced Somatic Breathwork with me or been to our Soul Soup Sunday retreats you have heard me say this before: tears are healing, tears are medicine.
Try your best to cry once a day. Watch a movie, listen to a song, laugh so hard, think of someone you love and why you are grateful for them. Tears of joy, tears of gratitude, tears of sadness, or tears from laughing are all welcome and encouraged.
Crying allows the body to move through emotional activation rather than continually containing it. Holding that unprocessed grief can manifest as pain, illness, addictions, or other reactive behaviours.
There is wisdom in EVERY emotion. Allow them to flow and be curious about them, rather than clinging to a particular state.
When was the last time you cried?
Let the tears come.
3) Be With Water
Water is one of my favourite teachers when it comes to grief.
Go to a river
Sit beside a stream
Walk in the rain
Swim in a lake/ocean
Take a bath
Stand under the shower
And actually be there. Be fully present. Notice the temperature, movement, sounds, sensations against your skin.
As you shower or bathe, imagine the water washing what needs to go and what you are no longer willing to carry around with you.
Thank the water.
Allow the water to remind you that life is always flowing.
Like any practice give it time and put in the reps. Try one of these for 30 days. Doing these once, isn’t going to create the transformational experience you’re hoping for.
Try it for a few days/weeks and let me know what insights you gain through this process.