Coping With Grief Through Meditation

Dealing with grief is one of the most devastating things in life that we must unfortunately experience. The finality of losing someone we love can cause us to feel angry, depressed, or anxious.

When dealing with grief, it may feel like you can’t move forward, or you don’t know how you can continue living in a world without your loved one in it.

To help deal with these intense and overwhelming emotions, turning to meditation can help. Meditation is a practice of calm and silence, where the frenetic thoughts and worries in your mind are quieted for a moment of reflection or mindfulness. Through meditation, you can begin to calm your emotions, assess your feelings, and come to a place of acceptance and peace.

A Meditation to Cope with Grief:

• Choose a quiet, comfortable space to sit where you can be alone for 15 to 20 minutes. Play some soft ambient music or put on some nature sounds if you like.
• Close your eyes and begin by taking slow, mindful, and natural (not forced) deep breaths: in through the nose, then slowly exhale.
• Try and focus on the physical sensation and rhythm of your breathing right now.  Letting your mind take a break from the thoughts or worries for a few moments.
• When you are centered and ready, think of the face of the person you’re missing, and imagine them before you. You can imagine that their spirit is there with you, or you can simply envision their face.
• Express anything you’d like to them. Focus on making the conversation loving and compassionate. If you’d like, you can bring up a memory of a time with your loved one and imagine experiencing everything in that moment.
• Thank your loved one for coming to visit you. Imagine a peaceful and gentle goodbye.
• Bring your awareness back to your breath and follow it through a few cycles to reconnect with your body and center yourself again.  Then, slowly bring your awareness back to the room.

Try this meditation any time you feel the need to do so.

There are apps you can download for your smart phone or tablet to help guide you through different meditations; just search for “meditation” in the App Store. You can also search YouTube for “meditations for grief” and try the guided meditations available there for free.

There is no one way to grieve; everyone grieves differently. There’s also no time-table or deadline. The journey of grief is a very personal one, and the only way to get through it is to deal with the emotions you’re experiencing as they come.

If you’re having trouble moving forward after losing someone you love and would like some help, please give me a call today so we can set up an appointment. I offer a free initial consultation session and I often use Mindfulness and meditation in my practice.