I’ve been working with something a few incredible matriarchs call “grief practice”.
The concept is to let yourself feel big emotions and to practice being present with them. To titrate into feeling the sensations while building the skills in your nervous system to hold it, move it, and be opened by it.
You can replace the word grief with any emotion: rage, joy, pleasure, etc.
It’s been a big piece of my own personal practice and it’s also been an honor to support others in this.
The idea is simple yet radical: instead of pushing away our emotions, can we let them run through, feeling them fully and allowing them to teach us?
Resistance to this arises and it’s often an automatic nervous system and physiological response. We don’t want to feel pain and usually, past traumas and experiences have trained our systems to respond in this way. Closing and shutting down for protection.
So naturally, it takes practice to create a new response, to create new pathways. Having the capacity to hold ourselves through these moments can call forth a level of self-responsibility and autonomy. Self-responsibility that is equally balanced with support systems and tools.
As I’ve been practicing, sometimes frustration comes up. Other times I try to force it to get it over with. Sometimes I want to ignore it.
A few months ago, I was feeling myself in the tight grip of grief. Having experienced loss in a set of three, which felt like rapid fire, I could feel the pain bubbling up each day. I wasn’t always able to tend to it because sometimes you just have to shove it aside to push through your day. Life keeps moving and you have to show up.
But this is where the practice is key. It’s life-saving because if we don’t have an outlet, those shoved-down emotions get stuck in the body. So when I felt like I was about to burst, I dragged myself into practice. I put on a song and began to breathe.
I soon felt the wave arise and found myself on my knees. Crying so hard. The kind of cry where your face hurts, snot and tears are everywhere, and you almost can’t breathe. So I encouraged the breath and leaned in deeper.
I started to feel a sensation in my chest. A pain right in the center.
I wanted to stop because it hurt but I felt it expanding. It kept growing. Sharp pain and also a gaping open wound that was aching. I clutched my chest and wondered what was happening. It hurt more and more and I began to cry harder.
I realized I was feeling the physical sensation of my heart breaking. It continued and I felt myself gripping. Gripping onto the story in my mind accompanying this sensation, the worry arising, wondering if it’ll ever feel better. It hurt so bad and I was scared. I felt myself going to a place that I felt like I wouldn’t be able to return from.
And then… I let go.
I took a big deep breath and I felt it break open. The energy was released and I felt my heart expand. My heart broke open.
I was still crying and the pain was still present but it also felt pleasurable. Like I had reached a new limit of feeling. Of being alive. I was feeling it all and also observing myself and cheering myself on.
I’m not sure how much time had passed but when my eyes ran out of tears, I made my way to my back. I gently stretched and drank a lot of water. I slept so deeply that night.
If you’ve ever sat with plant medicine, it felt like that. But it was just me and my grief. I felt like I had gone to the edge and back and I haven’t felt the same sense.
I realized I felt the physical sensation of grief as love. Grief is love and it broke my heart open.
I am still in practice every day. Building the capacity to let myself feel every emotion in its fullness.
Following that experience, this poem came through.
When your heart is cracking, breaking, and stretching,
You want to put it back to how it was.
But it’s like a rubber band that stretches until it snaps.
All the energy releases and ripples out.
No possible way to gather it up and put back what you feel like you lost.
Wanting to organize it - make it neat and tidy,
But it’s explosive and chaotic like a supernova.
Beautiful, yet radioactive.
The paradox of life
The birthplace of creation
Found in the depths of death,
I now know that there can be pleasure in our pain. Love in our grief. Joy in our sorrow. The gateway to healing is found in the paradox.
Sending love to your heart and sending the hope that this brings some inspiration for you to lean in a bit deeper. I’d love to hear your thoughts below.
Do you have a story on life, loss, and transition to share?
Email me at belovedgateway@gmail.com to schedule a no-cost story session. I am here to witness you in your process and in your power.
My gift to you. <3