This meditation was designed for grieving hearts.
Find a comfortable seat,
Lie down,
Or even just listen along.
Close your eyes if it feels okay.
Otherwise you can keep them open and find something to gaze upon.
Start by taking a deep breath in through the nose and sigh it out of the mouth.
If it feels right to you,
Take your hands to your heart.
If you're in the middle of a grieving experience,
You know that this is where we feel a lot of emotions and perhaps even tension,
Heaviness,
Fluttering.
Take a moment here if it feels okay to notice what sensation is presenting itself in this area of your being,
In the space of the heart.
It's okay if it makes you feel emotional or if you want to let tears flow.
Come back to noticing the sensation.
Can you choose a word to describe it?
Heavy.
Light.
Fluttery.
Anything that comes to mind.
And start to just gently deepen your breath in a really,
Really doable way.
No excess strain.
Take some time to really tap into that rest that your body might be craving.
Even if you're feeling agitated or anxious.
Inhale through the nose and exhale out of the nose if possible.
Otherwise inhaling through the nose and exhaling out of the mouth really slow.
On the inhale,
You're breathing in.
And on the exhale,
You're breathing out.
When we're deep in grief,
Sometimes that's all we can reach for.
Just this breath in and just this breath out.
Stay for the inhale.
Stay for the exhale.
And as you're breathing in and out,
You can keep your hands at your heart or you can release your hands and keep them wherever is comfortable.
I'll start to guide you to notice the natural pauses at the top of the inhalation and the natural pause at the bottom of the exhalation.
These happen without us having to do anything.
As you breathe in,
There's a natural pause at the top where the breath is still in the lungs.
And breathe out.
As you breathe out and your breath is out completely,
There's a natural pause at the very bottom of the exhalation.
Breathing in,
There's a pause with the breath in at the very top.
Breathing out,
There's a natural pause with the breath out of the body before we let it back in.
These little moments of in-between.
Of a pause where nothing is happening just yet.
Where time perhaps does not exist.
And if you're grieving the loss of a loved one,
Time might start to become a different experience for you.
Memories become really important.
You might be wondering how the experience of time is unfolding for them now.
And it takes absolutely no time for our loved ones to come to us in the other world.
Like a text message or a phone call,
Every time we think of them,
They have the option to answer.
I'll invite you to do a visualization practice now.
Breathing in the color pink or green,
These are the colors of the heart chakra.
The natural emotion of our heart center is love,
Unconditional love.
Love as the only true and real force of the universe.
Love as the binds,
The cords that keep us connected long after we leave our bodies.
Grief also sits in the heart center.
So let's do our best to fill up with this unconditional love.
So that we can learn to hold both simultaneously.
Love and grief.
As you breathe in,
Imagine the color pink or green flooding your heart space.
At the chest,
At the space between the shoulder blades,
Around the physical and emotional heart.
And as you breathe out,
The air leaves but that color,
That energy stays.
As you breathe in,
The color pink or green,
Whichever resonates most with you,
Flushes and floods through the heart space,
The chest cavity,
And the space between the shoulder blades,
The heart chakra.
And as you breathe out,
That energy,
That color stays with you,
But the breath just leaves for now.
And like this,
Just a little bit longer,
Breathing in and breathing out.
Inhaling that color pink or green into the heart space.
Exhaling,
That energy stays and you breathe out.
And you can let go of that visualization now.
And just take a few more deep breaths in and out.
Maybe an inhale through the nose and a sigh out of the mouth once again.
And when you're ready,
Open your eyes if they aren't already.
If that's now you'd like to journal,
Go take a slow walk,
A nap,
Or go back into your day.
Please be gentle with yourself,
Sending love your way.
