How My Body Can Heal My Grief

4 days ago

5 min read

In a life that's marked by beginnings and endings, grief is a silent companion on our journeys. Loosing something we cherished isn't just about people, pets, houses, jobs, or money, it's also about the hopes and dreams that never came true. The love stories that didn't happen, the career that never set off, the move that wasn't meant to be. The phases of life that suddently end, getting older, children moving out of the home, friends moving away. Life is studded with many endings.

Close-up of a woman in a black turtleneck, hand covering her mouth, against a plain white studio background, with a calm, intense gaze. She's not speaking out

In Chinese Medicine grief is associated with autumn and the metal element and it's so fitting. Doesn't autumn remind us about the fragile and ever changing nature of growth? There's a decay and death coming. Autumn confronts us with loss and can reawaken grief in us.

Grief, just like all the other emotions, is felt deeply in the body. It's a sinking movement, as if our heart falls down and a blanket covers our chest. It's an inward movement, just like the energy in nature in autumn.

Grief does ease with time but when we suppress or deny it, our body continues to hold it and it shows up in other ways: chronic inflammation, a weakened immune system, gut issues, muscle tensions, depression, and anxiety.

Grief is connected to the health of our lungs and large intestine and to the metal element and as it moves through the body and wants to be processed, there are ways how we can help those organs to feel, process and release our grief.

Here are some tips:

Crying

Weeping and crying is the expression of sadness, sorrow and grief. This is the natural response of our body to process loss. Nonetheless crying is often supressed in our society, particularly among boys and men. But crying is good, healthy and needed.

In Ireland there was a funerary practice called keening. This is wailing and crying together in community. This not just helped the people who just lost a loved one, it also helped the whole community to have an opportunity to cry and to process long lost loves, pets, opportunities, life situations.

Unfortunately we don't have these practices anymore but we can search out opportunities to cry in private.

Watching an emotional movie, musics that makes us cry ... anything that gets our tears rolling.

Journaling/Talking

Processing grief takes time. It can help to write down our thoughts and emotions. It also helps tremendously to talk to others about our loss may it be friends, family or during a counselling session.

Creative Expression

Writing a poem about our sorrow, painting it on canvas, processing the grief while knitting, creating art is a way of emotional therapy. The lung and large intestine meridians run along the arms into the hands, as we move our hands, we physically help the energy in those meridians to unblock and to process emotions. It is also an internal process involving our soul and heart to create out of loss. The most beautiful songs even written usually came out of heartbreak and searching again for hope and meaning.

Self-care

Grief belongs to the metal element, its mother is the Earth element. In my school of acupuncture we support the mother to help the child. Supporting your earth element means being your own best mother. Caring after yourself through the process of grief. Being held by someone else or yourself, eating nourishing foods, doing the things you love. Having a warm bath, putting on some candles, cooking your favourite meal, searching for comfort, crying out your heart to a friend.

Singing

Music is the most powerful way of healing and your own voice is the ultimate healer. Singing moves the energy in our meridians, it releases feel good chemicals like dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins. It activates our vagus nerve and lowers our heart rate and blood pressure. It helps with better breathing, which helps the lungs who process grief, it and it supports our immune system.

You can start with sad songs to get the tears rolling and then put on your favourite up-beat tunes to make you feel good.

Healing Herbs & Essential Oils

You can use lavender and rosemary essential oils to help your griefing process. Lavender is very calming and is great in the bedroom and in home made candles and bath salts. Rosemary is known to offer comfort, joy and even immortality. Ancient Egyptions used Rosemary in embalming practices and buried the dead with the herb to protect their soul in the journey to the afterlife. Rosemary is traditionally used at weddings as well as at funerals. You can use both herbs as essential oils in your acupressure massages of points.

Hawthorn is an incredible powerhouse to help with heart-break and grief. It is genearlly used to support heart related issues such as high blood pressure. But it also gives you the feeling of being snuggled up in love. You can use its berries, flowers, and leaves to make teas, tinctures and infused honeys.

Acupressure & Massage

Massaging ourselves and holding acupuncture points (acupressure) is an amazing way to help our muscles to release tension, open up our meridians and support the body in releasing stored emotions.

The following points and massages all help the meridians, connected to processing heart-break and grief. Take time for processing emotions after you engage with these points.

Lung Meridian Massage & Acupressure on Lung 1 and 2

This helps with tightness in the chest and removing congestion caused by the suppression of emotions. The meridian starts on the chest, near the shoulder and runs down the inside of the arm towards the thumb and ending at the outer corner of the thumbnail.

warm up your hands
Start the massage in the dip below the outer edge of your collarbone, near where it meets the shoulder
Lung 2 is just under the collarbone, and Lung 1 is directly below it, between the first and second ribs. Massage here for a while, the area might be tender.
Stroke down on the inside of your arm towards your thumb.
Massage your thumb.