How To Endure Loss

Loss is a reality. It can be very painful when the loss is so integral to your happiness, way of life, and existence that it is hard to find the courage or reason to go on. Learn where to find the strength and what you can do to empower yourself to "pick up your life" and go on.

Transcript

Hi,

Welcome back.

It's Ed.

And today we're going to be dealing with how do we endure a loss,

A loss of someone dear to us,

The loss of a relationship,

The loss of some work,

Something precious.

You know,

Loss is all around us.

And there is no perfect way for everyone to go on and endure loss.

In this meditation,

We're going to learn how to identify the beliefs that we have about what loss means.

We're going to identify the fears that we have around loss.

We're going to experience what our mind and what our mind contributes to the pain of loss.

And we're also going to learn how to contact that deep,

Subtle awareness which is at the basis of all of our beingness that would allow us to gain strength in order to not be lost in our loss,

But experience it for what it is without preventing us from moving through it and continuing our lives in as much happiness as we possibly can create.

Let's begin.

So for this meditation,

I'd like you to sit comfortably.

If you're comfortable in the cross-legged position,

Fine.

But if not,

Put your feet on the floor,

Your hands in your lap,

Close your eyes and allow yourself to go within.

Take a nice deep breath,

Breathing in through your nose,

Exhaling through the mouth.

One more.

With every breath in,

Feel like there's light and energy coming into your body.

And with every exhale,

You let go of the stress or strain and you seem to go into a deeper,

Quieter place.

Good.

And now just become aware of your breath,

Your normal breath.

Notice how wonderful it is to breathe,

Taking in oxygen,

Filling the body with energy and light.

And as you go within,

Become aware of the quiet consciousness that is within you.

The consciousness that supports all of your thoughts,

All of your desires,

All of your wishes and all of your fears.

Allow yourself just to expand.

Find the spaces between the thoughts.

And I'd have you now just do this for a couple of minutes.

If a thought comes,

Don't fight it.

Just say,

Oh,

There's a thought.

I'll just come back to my breath now.

I won't fight the thought.

Push it away.

No matter what the content of the thought is,

I'll just come back and put my attention on my breath.

Easy and effortless is the modus operandi here.

Good.

Great.

Right.

Now in this calm place,

I'd like you to gently bring to mind while you're staying in this nice easy calm place,

Just gently remember or think about the loss that you're experiencing right now.

You can even use a loss that you might have experienced in the past.

Recall who it is,

Recall how much you love them,

You can recall what happened to them and as you do that you will feel a reaction,

Maybe a flood of more thoughts coming in and a flood of emotions coming in.

And what I would ask you to do is first look at your thoughts,

What are you thinking,

What are you,

What belief system,

What beliefs must you have about what happened in this loss that upset,

That's causing you to think these thoughts.

I'll give you an example,

I'll give you an example,

My husband passed away,

I'm feeling lonely,

I must have a belief that I will now be alone for the rest of my life or I won't ever find love like that again or I wish I would have told him that I loved him more.

So long those ideas bring those beliefs up so long those ideas bring those beliefs up.

Good.

Now ask yourself,

Ask yourself,

Is this belief true?

You might hear yourself say yes,

But then again ask yourself,

Is it really true?

This belief that I should have when you probably did,

You'll realize that that belief is not true.

Just make a note of that.

Should I continue to believe should I continue to believe these thoughts when they're based on a belief that isn't true?

I loved my husband,

He loved me,

I told him that I loved him.

Could I have made a difference?

Could I have really saved him?

Whatever it is,

Realize that it's just your mind,

It's not really true.

It's not really true.

And now I would ask you to put your attention on your body,

Scan your body.

You might notice that there's a part of your body that's tense or tight,

A bowling ball in your stomach,

An ache in your back.

I want you to feel that sensation because that sensation is connected to the beliefs,

They're tied together.

So scan the body,

Find something,

Find that sensation.

It doesn't have to be unpleasant,

It could be a tingling,

It could be a tightness or it could actually be physical pain.

And once you've located it,

I want you to put all of your attention on that sensation.

Good.

And I want you to say to it,

There you are sensation,

There you are,

The physical depository of the stress that I incurred from whatever my mind or the world did.

Here it is,

And I invite you to release,

I invite you to unwind.

And what you will find is three things can happen.

The sensation will begin to like a spring just unwind in your body and leave you.

It's a healing.

Or it can intensify because now you've encouraged it to come out.

It's been sitting there for years,

Maybe decades,

Locked in that vault you haven't felt.

So it will intensify,

Be courageous and continue to invite it to release and it will eventually subside.

And with repeated meditations you can eventually release it completely.

The third situation is that it can move in your body.

So it may move from your heart to your shoulder to your neck to your head.

Because this stress could be in multiple places.

Go,

Okay,

You're moving now,

I'm going to move with you.

Now you're in my shoulder,

Now I want you to release and you feel that area in your shoulder and encourage it to release.

And then it will either release,

Get stronger and then release.

And in this way you release the anchor.

It's like an anchor,

Your body is like an anchor.

That holds the mind's negative thinking in place.

And when you release the anchor you free the mind to let go of these thoughts,

Let go of these blames,

Let go of these worries.

You will not let go of the loss,

The person is gone.

But you will let go of the fear of it.

You will let go of the inability to mitigate it and heal it.

You will let go of the lack of control that you have about it.

And you will find a peaceful place without strain,

Judgment,

Fear.

Beautiful.

So maybe something else is coming up to your mind.

Let's go ahead,

If you found another belief,

I want to give you a couple of minutes to go through this.

Recognizing the belief,

Realizing that it's not true and then finding the sensation that's related to it and allowing it and inviting it to release and I'll give you a couple of minutes to do that.

Good.

Remember that if you find yourself thinking thoughts rather than doing the release work,

Just come back to the release work without fighting the thoughts.

The mind might want to get in the way here.

To release the sensation,

You're going to put your attention on the physical sensation in your body,

Meg.

When you put your awareness on the sensation,

You then with your intent,

Invite it to release and it will.

Just by feeling it,

It will start to unwind.

What you put your attention on grows.

I might note here that there's a real difference between sensation and feeling.

A feeling is,

I kind of feel upset.

A sensation is a physical sensation in the body.

They may be related but they're different for sake of this exercise.

Great.

So when you repeat this meditation on your own,

You will continue to release the physical sensations that are holding the mental fears.

Beliefs,

Thoughts of loss,

Thoughts of all kinds of emotions,

Regret,

Shame,

Whatever it may be.

Good.

So now I'd like you to come back to your body.

Let yourself come up,

Feel yourself sitting in the chair.

Don't open your eyes immediately.

You've been deep for quite some time.

Wiggle your hands and your toes.

Move your body,

Stretch your shoulders,

Come back to your body before opening your eyes.

And know that this state of deep awareness can follow you out as you open your eyes so don't jump up and start walking or running.

Move slowly back into your world,

Your life,

Wherever you are,

Whatever you're doing.

And know that you just allowed healing to occur on a very,

Very deep level.

Good.

Reviews

I lost my son. My mind is completely still. There is darkness behind my eyes that tries to takes me over every day I let it be untill it disappeares but it scares me very much. I want to go on living. This meditation was very helpfull. It made me less scared. He is gone. Thank you.

Ed provided a very gentle, tolerable guided practice to let go of stored grief. The prompts were very helpful. Much appreciated.

Thank you for this meditation. I recently lost both my parents and although I knew their loss affected me, I didn’t realize how their loss wasn’t allowing me to move forward. This meditation helped me locate and work through some of my grief. I will be coming back to this meditation again.

That was a beautiful and healing experience. I lost my husband of 35 years, 14 months ago. I will return to this meditation as it helps to continue my grieving process. thank you 💔❤️‍🩹♥️💔❤️‍🩹♥️