Allow your body to arrive in whatever way arrival is possible today.
Grief often makes the body feel foreign,
Too heavy,
Too tight,
Too empty.
So you do not have to search for comfort.
You only need to find a position that the body can tolerate,
Even if it feels imperfect,
Even if it feels like you are borrowing a posture that you used to know.
If lying down feels too exposed,
Let yourself prop up.
If stillness makes your chest ache,
Bend the knees or place a hand on the belly.
If your heart feels like a room with no furniture left inside,
Cover yourself with a blanket.
You do not have to feel okay to rest.
You only have to be willing to pause inside your own ache.
Let that pause be enough.
If it feels safe enough,
Soften the eyes or close them halfway,
Allowing the world to dim,
Not in a way that erases anything,
But in a way that softens the sharpness of everything.
Imagine dusk settling across a quiet field,
Slow and blue and gentle,
Inevitable.
Notice the weight of the body meeting the surface beneath you,
And then allow gravity to take what's been holding you up alone,
The memories you've carried in silence,
The losses that have been pressed into your ribs,
The stories that end too soon or never at all.
Let your body be a little heavier than usual,
A little more surrendered,
Even if surrender feels impossible.
Grief is not light.
Grief settles like sediment.
Let your bones sink into the earth like stones returning to riverbed.
Then notice how the breath moves in a grieving body,
Not the breath that you want,
Not the breath you think you should have,
But the breath that exists here,
Now,
In the aftermath of all that has changed.
The inhale may feel shallow,
Broken,
Hesitant.
The exhale may feel incomplete,
Like it's trying to release a story that has no end.
Let the breath be exactly as it is.
Don't coax it,
Don't deepen it,
Don't shape it.
Just witness it the way you'd watch a candle flicker in a draft,
Delicately,
Respectfully,
Allow it to be fragile.
And as you breathe,
Imagine your ribs like the boards of an old wooden boat.
Some are warped,
Some are weathered,
Some are bearing the weight of storms that they were never built for.
Let the breath wash between them like water moving under the dock,
Slow and cold,
Yet honest.
And then bring awareness to the body as if you are walking through a home you once lived in but have not visited since everything changed.
Bring awareness to the right hand,
The knuckles,
The palm,
The space between each finger.
Let the hand be tired and empty.
Let the hand be full of longing.
Move up the wrist,
Into the forearm,
Into the elbow,
Into the upper arm,
And into the shoulder,
Each part holding its own version of grief.
The reaching grief.
The collapsing grief.
The grief that feels like holding on and the grief that feels like letting go.
Move to the left hand.
It may feel different,
Numb,
Resistant,
Tender,
Unrecognizable.
Trace the left arm slowly as if touching the ghost of a memory.
Move the awareness then into the face,
The jaw that has clenched through your sobs that time has not had time to heal,
The mouth shaped by goodbyes you never got to say,
The eyes heavy with nights you haven't slept,
The forehead marked by tension of holding it all together.
Loosen the jaw by one grain of softness.
Let the tongue rest from its vigilance.
Let the brow smooth like silk pulled gently between two fingers.
Drop awareness into the throat,
A narrow place swollen with unsent words.
Let breath move through the throat like wind passing through the hollow trunk of a fallen tree,
Slow,
Echoing,
Mournful,
Soft.
Let awareness fall into the chest like a chamber of echoes,
A place where grief sits like an anchor,
A place where emptiness has weight,
A place where love used to expand without effort.
You do not have to open this space.
You only have to notice what is there,
Pressure,
Ache,
Burning,
Numbness,
Hollowness,
Heaviness,
Nothingness,
Not as a problem but as evidence of love.
Move down into the belly,
The soft animal that senses grief before the mind does.
Notice how it rises and falls,
How it tightens and loosens,
How it curls inward to protect the heart.
Drop into the pelvis,
A basin where sorrow collects like rainwater,
A place that holds what the mind cannot,
A place that remembers all the times you steadied yourself,
All the times you kept going when stopping felt like breaking.
Let awareness move through the legs,
Down the thighs,
Across the knees,
Down the shins,
Into the ankles and into the feet,
Feet that have walked away from moments you wanted to stay in,
Feet that have walked towards moments you were afraid to face,
Feet that have stood in the aftermath of loss.
Let the whole body be held in one wide field of awareness.
It's like a valley surrounded by mountains.
It is quiet,
Protected,
Suspended.
And now invite in heaviness,
The heaviness of grief that can't be solved,
The heaviness that sits in your bones like winter.
Let it spread through you not as a burden but as a truth,
A truth that something or someone mattered.
Let heaviness settle like snow falling in slow motion.
And then invite in lightness,
Not joy,
Not release,
Just a little air,
A little space around the throat,
A little warmth behind the heart,
A single beam of sunlight breaking through the clouds.
Lightness.
Heaviness returns.
Lightness returns.
Heaviness returns.
Lightness returns.
You are not choosing between them.
You are learning to hold both.
Now invite in ease,
Not ease from grief,
But ease around grief like moss growing on stone.
Tension.
Ease.
And then we notice tension,
The instinctive tightening around what hurts.
Tension.
Ease.
Tension.
Ease.
Tension.
Your emotional body is remembering that it can move without shattering.
Return to the breath.
Let it wash through you like tide smoothing the edges of broken shells.
Each inhale is cool like a wave you are pulling in and each exhale is warm like a wave receding.
Imagine a landscape shaped by your grief.
Maybe it is a forest in early spring where fallen leaves cover the soil but small green shoots are pushing through.
Maybe a coastline at twilight with waves whispering truths the world rarely speaks aloud.
Maybe a field of tall grass in late autumn where everything is golden and dying and beautiful all at once.
Let that landscape reveal itself without force.
Your grief knows where it belongs.
Resting in that landscape,
Imagine a soft,
Warm light above you.
It's like the glow of a lantern carried by someone you miss,
Someone whose presence once softened your edges.
Let that light descend slowly across the crown of the head,
Warming the scalp,
Melting tension along the forehead.
Let it move across the eyes as though it were acknowledging every moment your tears stayed inside because there was no safe place for them to fall.
Let it drift down the cheeks,
Over the mouth,
Into the jaw.
Let the warmth descend into the throat,
Loosening the knot that grief has tied there long ago.
Let it move into the chest,
A place that has known love deeply and loss deeply.
Let the light hold the hollow,
The ache,
The absence.
Let it move into the heart,
Not to close a wound but to remind the wound that it is not void.
It is an altar.
Let the warmth travel down the arms,
Over the hands,
Through the belly into the pelvis.
Imagine your fascia unwinding,
The tissue softening,
The armor loosening,
The body trusting in this moment by one fragile degree.
Let the warmth drift down the legs,
Into the ankles,
Into the feet.
You are not being healed.
You are being witnessed.
Let your thoughts drift the way fog drifts across the lake at dawn,
Slow,
Unhurried,
Dissolving at the edges.
Let the breath soften into the background.
Let the body settle and sink and float.
Let yourself fall into that quiet place beneath grief,
Not away from it but inside the part of you that can still hold it without drowning because you are not losing yourself.
You are finding the self that survived.
Begin your return like the tide sliding back towards the shore.
Feel the breath grow fuller,
The body grow heavier,
And the room grow clearer.
Wiggle the fingers or the toes.
Let movement weave itself back into your shape.
Maybe roll gently to one side,
The side body shape that mimics both surrender and rebirth.
When you are ready,
Rise slowly as if lifting yourself out of this deep water.
Sitting upright,
Invite in one breath through the nose,
Parsing the lips,
Exhale,
Let it go.
Our practice is now complete.
