Grief is a powerful emotion that needs to be respected. But we can learn to be with grief without getting overwhelmed by it if we remember to be mindful. If we fail to be mindful, grief fills up our being and dominates us. If we remember to be mindful, grief waxes and wanes as it needs to within the space of awareness. In other words, it doesn't become our entire world. The mindful attitudes we need to cultivate to navigate the dark clouds of grief include beginner's mind, acceptance, non-judging, patience, non-striving, acknowledgment, and letting be.

Yes, grief is painful, and can be a terribly lonely feeling, but if we start investigating its properties with an open heart we will come to see that even though we are grieving, that grief is taking place within a much larger context: the part of us that knows experience without being lost in it. If we allow our grief to be known and intentionally held in awareness, the grief ebbs and flows and we see this -- we allow ourselves to feel sad when the grief is there, but we also notice those moments when the grief is no longer there. Perhaps the most important thing about grief is simply to acknowledge its arising.

The following story from my own life illustrates the use of mindfulness as a tool applied to grief.

One Thursday I began feeling anxious — it presented itself in my mind as a sense of unease, of things not being right. It presented itself in my body as a tightness in my chest and shortness of breath. I kept coming back to my body, letting the tightness be there and breathing with it, hoping the difficult sensations and the mind state of anxiety would soften, dissolve. But they didn’t. I kept feeling tense, anxious, tight in my chest. But my anxiety had no apparent object. It was confusing. I didn’t know why I was feeling this way. Throughout the day I would inquire about the cause of this nameless dis-ease. The first thing that always came to my mind was my former lover, from whom I had recently separated. But I always discarded the notion that she could be causing my anxiousness and shortness of breath. After all, I had recently experienced a deep grief over the ending of our relationship — a long crying jag — and I knew that the grief had done its thing. But if this anxiety wasn’t about that, then what was it about? My finances, perhaps? No, that didn’t seem right either. I made these inquiries throughout the day, whenever I acknowledged and met my anxiety head on. And each time my mind tossed up the same possibilities: my recent breakup, my finances. And each time I discarded them as the cause of my distress.

The next day it was the same. I woke up feeling tense and anxious. And my breathing was strained. During my morning meditation I made the same inquiries as to the cause. Where is this anxiety coming from? But nothing new presented itself. It was always the same possibilities. My breakup, my finances. It was all so unknown. So I just allowed myself to feel anxious and went about my activities.

Later that afternoon I was at a café doing some work. I was writing some notes down in a notebook when I noticed something. I was feeling sad. The sensation of sadness — a heavy warmth in my gut — had been trickling into my awareness for some moments. And now it was here, fully present, and known. I was sad about the ending of my relationship. It had created a huge void in my life and I was feeling the loss. I was surprised at this, because I felt that I had processed my grief already. But that wasn't the case. I still had more work to do, and as I sat there in the café letting the grief blossom and become fully known in my awareness, I knew that this working out of grief would take time.

Then I realized something else: as I noticed my grief and welcomed it into my awareness, I was no longer feeling anxious or distressed, and my breathing was now normal again. I quickly realized what had happened. After my crying jag I felt much better and had quickly gotten busy, putting my grief “behind me.” Basically I got so busy that the grief became submerged inside of me, forgotten. I was trying to “move on” even though the grief hadn’t. The result was that the grief, locked in my own depths, needed to be known again. The way it chose to signal me was by causing me anxiety and shortness of breath. It was telling me, “Hey, I’m not through being known by you! Wake up! I’m still here!”

Sitting in the café, I realized that pushing the grief down had just broken off a piece of myself, a vital piece, that I still needed to be with. Now that that piece was again with me, I was feeling whole, integrated and healthy.

There is no timeline on grieving, or on any other strong emotion. But by allowing these feelings to be there, and by continuing to make inquiries as to their cause, an answer presented itself to me, and my suffering was relieved.

Bill Scheinman

info@stressreductionatwork.com
(415) 820-1533