Hi,
Welcome back to eMotion's Prescription to Feel series.
My name is Lynn,
Felix's mom,
And I'm moving with the eMotion community today as we consider the concept of pace.
Early on in my grief journey,
I wanted to outpace the pain and discomfort.
I threw myself into doing grief rather than being with it.
I thought if I did grief really well,
The pain would end.
Now more than two years in,
I'm learning to pace myself,
Focusing on rituals that keep me moving with my grief and present evidence that the love I have for my son has no end.
Before we get moving,
Let's take a moment to ground ourselves in this space and time together.
Find yourself a comforting place to be still for a few moments,
Keeping your eyes open or gently closing them.
Now take a deep inhale through the nose and a long exhale through the mouth.
Feel your breath float down to your feet as we remind ourselves to be where our feet are.
Let's do that together three times.
Prescription to Feel means that this space is one that welcomes and honors all of our feelings.
Let's tap our hearts twice to invite our feelings to join us as we move today.
Pace can easily become about perfection with a rigid focus on meeting a personal or external goal.
In a success-oriented culture,
Becoming healed often seems like the end goal after loss instead of the more open-ended concept of integrating loss into our lives.
Let's stretch our arms out wide,
Loosening plans and expectations for the next step,
The next mile ahead.
Now bring your arms back together with a hug for yourself and the loved one you're moving with.
When you're ready,
Let's get moving.
However you're moving with me today,
Find a starting pace that feels right for you in this moment.
I'm going to pause for a few seconds as we find our stride.
Today's session centers around the word pace.
Pace is a noun and it means the speed at which something happens.
We pay attention to pace as a way of recognizing when we are out of sync or in sync with ourselves and our needs.
We can notice when we are moving too quickly or too slowly.
It's a word we can come back to when we're trying to find our way in a world after loss that can feel unfamiliar and new.
Adjusting and playing with pace helps us to best take care of ourselves.
If we can keep pace with what our hearts need,
Then we are not getting ahead of ourselves or selling ourselves short either.
Ultimately,
Embracing our own pace is an act of compassion.
It's a way of connecting with our own reality right now rather than comparing our pace of life to someone else's or even our own at a different time.
Tuning into our pace is a way to stay attuned to the energy we need to just be and to be okay.
Pace comes from the Latin word passus,
Meaning a step,
And sometimes taking just one step is a massive feat.
My friend Katie shared about the unity of opposites in her session on honoring all feelings.
We can also find the unity of opposites when we think about pace.
We find it in the relationship between exertion and recuperation.
Exertion is the force we put forward.
It's activating and mobilizing.
We use exertion to speed up,
To push harder,
To generate.
Recuperation is what we give back to ourselves.
We recuperate when we rest,
Slow down,
Reflect.
Balancing exertion and recuperation means being mindful of what our body needs in a given moment.
Paying attention to these opposite forces and the way they show up in our bodies can help us find a steady pace that keeps us moving forward one step at a time.
The unity of opposites tells us that these forces are not mutually exclusive.
It is not that you only exert or only recuperate.
We learn to do both at the same time.
We exert by moving faster,
But we can recuperate at the same time by noticing which parts of our bodies we need to exert and relaxing the rest.
Spring is my season of grieving.
I know to give myself more time and space during the month of April.
In year one,
After my son's death,
I needed to close my curtains to the sunlight and find lots of solitude.
In year two,
I desired to take in the energy and beauty of the outdoors,
Feeling the sunlight on my face,
Watching the spring flowers bloom.
Exertion each year.
I ask family and friends to participate in a meaningful act during my son's birth month and spend extra time in the places I connect to him.
In recuperation,
I receive the gifts of my loving community and reflect on special signs from my son.
As we find our pace today,
Let's try to play with a balance between exertion and recuperation.
Tune in to what your body is telling you it needs at any given moment rather than maintaining the same pace the whole time.
After the bell chimes,
We're going to take some time for quiet movement.
During this time,
Let's turn our attention to our pace,
Focusing on the relationship between exertion and recuperation.
I'll get us started and then leave you to listen in quiet to what your body needs.
Move just enough that you are exerting energy,
Pushing your body forward and feeling moderately stressed.
Be mindful not to exert so much that you do not have energy to move from this moment to the next.
Maintain the power of recuperation.
Slow down if you need.
Try to focus on using only the muscles you need for movement and noticing and relaxing the muscles that are tense from the stress,
But not helping you move forward.
Release the tension in your face,
Your shoulders,
Your feet.
Feel your body relax just enough and breathe a little easier.
Find a pace you feel you can sustain for as long as you need.
Adjust your pace as your body needs.
Let go of what you think this pace should be and instead notice the moments of balance between your exertion and recuperation.
Here we go.
Welcome back.
Let's explore what came up for us around pace and how this connects to why we are here moving together.
How do the words exertion and recuperation relate to your grief?
Which is easier for you to embody?
Which is harder?
What are the ways you can find balance between them?
As you reflect on these questions,
Start to find a pace that readies you for the end of our time together.
For me,
That's a steady,
Gentle,
But purposeful walk.
To close,
I want to share a quote by Buddhist nun,
Pema Chodron.
She writes,
Ordinarily,
We are swept away by habitual momentum.
We don't interrupt our patterns even slightly.
With practice,
However,
We learn to stay with a broken heart,
With a nameless fear,
With the desire for revenge.
Sticking with uncertainty is how we learn to relax in the midst of chaos,
How we learn to be cool when the ground beneath us suddenly disappears.
Learn to stay with a broken heart.
I love that line.
Thank you for taking time to move with us today.
This is Prescription to Feel,
And I'm Lynn,
Felix's mom.
We'll see you next time.
Prescription to Feel is a series created by Emotion,
An organization on a mission to change the way the world relates to grief and loss.
Learn more at emotion-mc.
Org or find emotion on Instagram at we are underscore emotion.
Thanks for moving with us.
