Welcome.
Today's meditation is an invitation to our grief.
Grief can be such a painful experience,
Feeling as though we are in the middle of a dark stormy ocean with no oar,
No motor,
Can be so lonely.
And yet it is often the doorway to healing and to make sure we remain connected with those that we love even when they're not present in our life anymore.
Today we'll be exploring that.
So find a comfortable spot for your body.
You can be seated or lying down.
Take an extra few moments to make sure you are as comfortable as you can be.
Find your pillows,
Your blankets,
Anything that you need so that the body can fully surrender and you can travel inward.
Once you've found your position,
Close the eyes,
Release the jaw,
Start to bring your awareness to the breath.
Follow the breath as it moves in and out of the body,
Letting anything that is constricting the breath or getting in the way of it being full to melt away.
Imagine that you are breathing from the toes all the way up through the crown of the head,
And that the exhale is being pulled from the heavens all the way down into the souls of the feet,
Like your entire body was one big lung.
Let each inhale be an invitation to move deeper into our awareness,
And each exhale be an opportunity to release anything that is taking away from our stillness or our presence.
Now we will come into contact with our grief,
And we can begin just by getting curious and looking for where the grief is living in the body.
You might feel it directly in the heart,
Maybe in the belly,
Might be the tension living in your shoulders.
If we've been resisting grief,
If we've been hiding,
Distracting from it,
It might show up as a constriction somewhere,
A no-fly zone,
A place where energy is not allowed to move through freely.
Just see what comes into our consciousness when we ask the question,
Where is the grief living?
And when you find it,
Or you have an inkling as to where it might be,
Visualize going to sit down next to it.
Put your arm around it and ask it how it's doing today,
What hurts today,
What feels like the biggest loss today,
And see what arises,
Knowing that whatever is there,
It's important for us to know,
And that with this information,
We can understand how to nourish the pain we are feeling,
How to care for it lovingly.
If you feel a swell of sadness,
Of loss,
Of pain,
Welcome it.
Let this wave rise inside of you.
Allow yourself to swim in all that you are feeling.
Let yourself experience the fullness of the emotion.
Give yourself permission to be here with it,
And let it last for as long as it needs to last,
Knowing that on the other side of this is a deep well of love.
That grief itself is an expression of love,
That when we lose something,
Someone,
That we care for,
The grief will match the love,
And that denying our grief,
Hiding from it,
Not sharing it,
Is also a way of disconnecting ourselves from the immense love we felt for someone.
Our grief is a way of honoring and also remaining connected to that love.
And you will find,
As grief crests within,
It will recede,
And there will be an immense amount of love as well.
You may find other things here,
Anger,
Resentment,
Worry.
It is all part of the experience,
All a worthy journey to be had.
You are welcome to come back here as often as you would like.
The more often we do,
The more skilled we become at being able to navigate and ride these intense emotions that we experience,
And then be able to cross over to the other side to bathe in the love.
When you feel ready,
You can begin to deepen the breath,
Feeling it too ripple through you like a wave,
Coming and going.
You can open your eyes,
Placing one hand on the heart,
Honoring the experience you had.
Thank you.
