As seen in Thrive Global
It’s that pressure in the chest that wants to push out tears. It’s the trembling that stirs with sadness running as deep as the gut. This is grief asking to be released from the body, heart, mind, and soul.
We so often think of grief as related with death of loved ones or the loss of serious relationships, but it’s more than that.
It can arise from loss of a job, a certain standard of health, certain skills, or a role in particular communities or places. Grief can be felt in loss of comfort in what was once comfortable. We can grieve the time that we feel we “lost” through harm to ourselves or others, to not knowing then what we know now.
Grief is felt from the life we haven’t lived because of illness, dependencies, or harmful relationships.
It’s what we feel when we surpass those illnesses or relationships, and people don’t get that either — when our lives no longer hold something, even if it was harmful to us, we feel loss, and therefore, we experience grief.
Grief is the weight of the past that sits in the chest and gut, asking us to let it surface when it presents itself and be expressed as a form of love — love for ourselves through the process of change, and love for what or whom we’re learning to let go of and live without.
Honoring All of Our Emotions is an Act of Love
Just like any challenging emotions, many of modern cultures shy away from them and ask that we “just move on” or “get over it.” This expectation disrespects natural processes and feelings that keep us human, whole, and healthy. Avoiding feeling the wide range of emotions puts us at risk of numbing ourselves into dependency and illness, which for many of us, is a source of our grief to begin with.
The feeling of loss is natural, and the only way beyond our current life is to move and feel our way through the challenges, and triumphs, of change.
The nervous system also naturally protects us from feeling what we’re not yet ready to feel. We need to feel safe for difficult emotions to be expressed.
Because Jyllin.com focuses on the causes and symptoms of chronic stress, honoring the grieving process is crucial when changing lifestyle patterns that induce and attempt at medicating stress.
This means that when letting go of a habitual stress response, grief may arise and only asks that it be respected in its surfacing. When we suppress it, it only festers. It can backfire on us as other forms of self-sabotage or returning to what’s been harming us, even when we know that it’s harmful.
The feeling of loss is natural, and the only way beyond our current life is to move and feel our way through the challenges, and triumphs, of change.
Tears will rise. Shakiness will occur. Emptiness may be felt in the body, mind, and spirit. This is simply part of the process of letting go.
There are ways we can make this process easier. Here are some of them.
Holistic Tools to Ease the Process of Grief
👉🏼 Let yourself feel whatever arises without the need to enact upon the sensations and emotions. Can you ground into feeling what surfaces in your body? Use specific tools to ease chronic anger, fear and anxiety, and chronic stress provided in the links.
👉🏼 Be patient with yourself. Give yourself the time and space you need. Ask for it when necessary.
👉🏼 Reach out to a trusted source for support.
👉🏼 EFT tapping is a practice that connects the body-mind and is a powerful tool for releasing emotions and updating limiting beliefs that may accompany emotional pain and distress. Check here to learn more about the EFT practice, and there is a tapping practice guided specifically for grief relief in the Holistic Liberation Facebook group.
Breathing & Meditation
👉🏼 Consciously breathe. Use abdominal breathing to allow deep movement through the core of the body and lymphatic system to ground, center, and detoxify, to steady through emotions and keep toxins from compiling.
👉🏼 Practice mindfulness by holding space for whatever arises in the moment. Practice present awareness through meditation. Practice embodiment to ground and stabilize. Use safe breathing practices that aid all of the above. Use this ten-minute meditation to be guided through these practices.
Specific Yoga Practices
👉🏼 Utilize this 15-minute Yin Yoga practice designed specifically to open and release tension through the lung, heart, and intestine channels to ease any holding of grief and enhance self-love.
👉🏼 Open your chest. Do some backbends. Move your shoulders up, down, and around. Keep opening this space to protect the heart from prolonged closure and maintaining space for the lungs.
Food & Nutrition
👉🏼 Keep your gut healthy. Give your colon fermented foods and drinks or supplement with pre- and probiotics. Keeping the gut healthy supports overall health and houses the majority of serotonin and dopamine, supporting healthy moods.
👉🏼 Identify inflammatory foods, such as gluten, dairy, corn, sugar, alcohol, and processed foods by eliminating one at a time for at least three weeks and reintroducing into the diet to feel its effects. What is causing harm is then obvious and will need to be eliminated entirely to allow the body to heal. A plan and support through this process can be crucial!
Letting Go is the Only Way to Create Space for New
Letting go is necessary through every stage of life if we wish to expand, grow, and evolve throughout our lifetime.
Letting go is key to experiencing lightness and ease. Trust is its foundation.
When we give ourselves the time to process loss and change, we create space that allows new to enter our lives.
Can you trust that this space will fill with what you most need and desire? Can you rest into this trust by listening to your needs and giving yourself love and care?
Deep listening nurtures the trust we need to soften and allow the process of letting go, and growing, through grief.
If you’re ready to accept some guidance and support through lifestyle changes while embracing all of the emotions that arise through the process, check out the Holistic Liberation Program that provides exactly that.
Otherwise, reach out. Schedule a call with me to see what we can do to make things a little easier for you, or subscribe below to easily keep in touch.
Jyllin is an integrative health coach and creator of the Holistic Liberation Method that repatterns chronic stress in the body, mind, beliefs, emotions, and lifestyle. Learn more about Jyllin and The Holistic Liberation Programs.