Grief is, unfortunately, something that we all experience at some point in life, and is something we all need better skills to cope with, especially with the unprecedented toll Covid-19 has taken on our lives. Today, 633,000 lives have been lost by COVID here in the United States. That is 633,000 families changed. Consider for a moment the reverberations of grief through our country alone and consider as well the global grief that is being felt and shared globally. The heavy blanket of grief is draped over the world and resides in the body, mind, and spirit in many.
Grief presents in a spectrum of heaviness. Sometimes absolutely overwhelming and sometimes manageable but present. Grief challenges our capacity to meet the demands of our external life and requires that we tend to our inner life instead. We interviewed Amelia Vogler, grounding expert and energy medicine specialist to find out more on how mindfulness can help with grief. Keep reading for more!
Need Help Coping With Grief? Grounding and Mindfulness Can Help
Mindfulness and grounding are two practices that build resilience and help you grow an inner sense of wellbeing and peace. Regardless of where you are in the grieving process, creating a relationship with your felt sense of safety, inherent stability, and genuine goodness helps you to meet moments with more stability. Mindfulness and grounding practices help these relationships and while also growing your inner awareness. Vogler shares these ways that incorporating mindfulness and grounding practices into your daily routine can help the grieving process.
1) Refocus Your Attention
Mindfulness and grounding practices can move your attention through the haze and heaviness of grief to help you connect to your own needs. The energy of grief, when you feel it in the energy system, feels like a heavy, wet wool blanket draped over and within the body. It is heavy and, at times, suffocating. Mindfulness and grounding can support the momentary lifting of this heaviness and allow you a moment of just being with yourself. These moments of reconnection slowly help you return to your own space and move through the overwhelm.
2) Regain Access to Your Heart and Self-Love
Mindfulness and grounding practices help you access your heart and self-love. Many times grief is so painful, we avoid feelings or situations where our feelings may feel overwhelming. These practices lead you to compassion, to self-love, and help to cultivate the small voice within that gives you permission to just “be.”
3) Know How To Ask For Help
Mindfulness and grounding practices help you know how to ask for help. Grief, in my experience, teaches us to ask for help. Sometimes it is too big for one person to bear alone, and these practices help us understand when we need help and when we can do things independently. Integrity in the grieving process is not about standing firmly on the island of your experience but in the ability to be vulnerable and reach out if you need help. Knowing what to ask for can be challenging, and these practices can bring clarity to your request.
4) Improves Physical Energy
Mindfulness and grounding practices help your physical energy. Your vitality takes a hit during times of grief. Your energetic resources are incredibly drained in the process (and often, you aren’t sleeping well). These practices help you restore the well of energy in your body and connect to something more significant – whether it be through traditional earthing practices of being outside or more modern grounding meditations.
5) Improves Focus and Productivity
Mindfulness and grounding practices help your focus and productivity. These practices help to quiet the mind and soften anxiety so that you can reach a clear thought. Anyone who has honored the grieving process understands that it takes a while to think clearly. The body, heart, and Spirit literally must find a new way of being after a loss or trauma, and this reorganization can be very disorienting. These practices will help you return to your home yourself and restore more rational and linear thinking.
Need a tip for grieving? Vogler says it’s important to dedicate some time to sit with your sorrow, then get back to your life. One of Vogler’s suggestions for grieving is to set a timer. Grief can overwhelm a day, and at some point, you must return to living your life. First, pick a time of day where you can dedicate 2 hours to your grief. If your feelings start overtaking you, say to yourself, ”Okay, sadness, I have two hours with you tonight at 6 pm. I will be with you then.” This is not stuffing your grief within or dismissing it. It is saying, “I see you. Let’s be together soon.” Spend your two hours wailing, crying, screaming at a pillow, pleading, or whatever other healthy expression of emotion comes through.
When your timer goes off, tell your grief you will be with it again tomorrow. Slowly, over time, begin to lessen the amount of time you spend with your grief each day. Perhaps it is 2 hours for a month or so, then 1 hour, then 30 mins and so on. This will help you balance your time and life while honoring your grief’s needs as well.
