By Marlisa McLaughlin
When we initially experience loss, our inner world feels as though it has come to a screeching halt, and on some level it actually has. In contrast, the rest of the world keeps on spinning as if nothing significant has happened. The impact of losing a loved one can be devastating and debilitating. How can we begin to live in the world with our grief, especially when we may have only enough strength to make it through a day?
Grieving can drain the life from us. In order to maintain our health, we must keep our own inner world spinning, so to speak. When we are able to keep our energy flowing, we are more likely to make supportive decisions that lead to more supportive decision making. Little by little, we begin to create enough supportive energy momentum to shift our sorrow and carry us towards a lighter way of being.
Adversely, non-supportive decision making creates less resilience and begets more sorrow. The risk of becoming isolated increases. Slowly, and sometimes unknowingly, we may begin to move in the direction of chronic, or prolonged grief which can lead to chronic illness. Grief is no longer an emotion that we are coping with or navigating. It becomes a detractor.
In order to avoid a lifelong battle with grief, we can awaken to the possibility that our supportive decision making can and will yield enough energy to support us as we begin to heal, build more resiliency, and live more fully. We become increasingly open to the possibility that we are capable and strong enough to actually merge life before loss with life after loss. As we integrate our grieving experiences, they become a vibrant part of who we are. Because in actuality, our grief embodies the love we hold for our loved one. Love is vibrant, it makes our hearts soar with an ever-expanding fullness and joy.
However, the idea of feeling vibrant while grieving may seem profane as well as impossible. Even moreso, it may feel like a betrayal to the memory of your loved one. When we perceive our emotions through the lens of science, we enter the realm of subtle energy where it is possible to transmute this heavy, dense emotion while remaining loyal to the memory of our loved one.
Having been an Integrative Health Professional specializing in Energy Dynamics for nearly three decades, I’ve approached grief as I have all other emotions: by understanding and treating them simply as a flow of subtle energy. I apply energy alignment techniques fused with wisdom from the Ancients to support the flow of vital life force energy as it moves–or does not move-throughout both the physical and the energy body.
I’ve also been deeply affected by grief since my formative years. My grieving experiences have played a major role in the state of my own health and well being. Grief has shaped and defined me and has greatly influenced how I interact with the world. Without question, it has helped me to discover a vibrant way to grieve.
Simply put, vibrant grieving means feeling the emotion of grief without blocking the flow of vital energy. Our bodies contract with stress. Contraction restricts flow. We keep our grief (vital energy) moving by using the breath to help sustain the flow and move the emotion through us until it passes. With support, explanation, and guidance, it is possible to move through surges of grief without becoming overwhelmed and depleted. By way of personal experience, I can attest that this is possible.
When my father was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia and was given up to a year to live, I decided to try and write a book about grief to help me cope with his passing. I’d hoped to publish it before he passed but he succumbed to death after four months. I continued to write. I eventually came to feel and understand my grief energetically by integrating the science I’d learned with my inner experiences. And then something remarkable happened. I found a way to transmute the depleting effects of my grief into a lighter, more vibrant way of being. My hypothesis proved true unexpectedly and here is the story to tell:
I was invited to the theater. Just before the lights went out, I noticed that my seat was in the very center of the house. It was that kind of noticing that had a harbinger feel to it. Then the lights went out. As the plot unfolded, a scene presented that could have been replicated from my own memory.
Under a spotlight to the side of the stage was an eight year old child kneeling on her bed. All alone in her room she longed to be in the presence of her deceased mother. Above “in the heavens” stood the girl’s mother, in her own spotlight, looking down on her daughter. The child couldn’t see or hear her, but she felt her mother’s presence. She knew that she was there.
This scene was all too familiar to me. I felt something eternally deep within begin to surge. It had been nearly fifty years since I had such a visceral recall of my mother. To be honest, I don’t recall having had any such recall ever. I’d felt disconnected from her long before she actually died. It was her wish at the onset of her twenty-four month battle with acute myeloid leukemia (yes, the same disease my father succumbed to fifty years later) that her two daughters would not be told about her illness. She wanted us to remember her in her fullest state of vitality. The sad part of that is that we couldn’t remember her at all.
I felt a burning, deep desire to follow the pain, feel that connection. I felt it so strongly that I just wanted to let go and wail at the top of my lungs. I didn’t want to have to shut it down again. I wanted to see it through. I wanted to feel fully connected to her again without any restrictions. But there I sat, in the middle of the theater, blocked in on both sides and in full sight of every single guest.
I thought for a moment and tried to justify such an outburst, but I knew that once I started to wail, I wouldn’t stop. I didn’t want to lose that connection to my mother. That feeling was right there. I didn’t even have time to try and make it to the aisle. My head swiveled to and fro in search of some other way out. No exits. I looked down in a blur at the top of the seat in front of me. I couldn’t look back up at that stage. And then that something remarkable happened. My internal voice shouted: Use the method! You know what to do! It hit me like a ton of bricks.
This all occurred within a microsecond. I shook my head. How did I not even consider that option?! The self-talk continued: Of course you didn’t think of it–you figured it out to try and help everyone else! And I shook my head again, this time with self-affection. A golden rule in the realm of helping others heal is to first find the way to help yourself, then you have all that it takes to truly guide them.
In that next sweet microsecond, I realized one more thing. I realized why I had felt so peculiar when I noticed my center seat location. I was as emotionally gridlocked within as I was gridlocked in my seat in that theater. With that, my body began to tremble and my heart tensed up so tightly that my chest caved in. I quickly straightened my spine and put both feet flat on the floor. And I remembered to breathe. I’d actually stopped breathing while all this was going on. I didn’t feel ready enough to reengage with that life-activating scene, so I continued to breath until it felt fluid.
I closed my eyes and opened my heart as I prepared to take the scene in again, more fully. There on the stage was my very own mother. I could see her and feel her warmth; almost hear her voice and smell her scent. My memory of her was more alive than I had ever imagined possible. I felt joyful and alive. All that buried and blocked pain was releasing and I was able to let it flow through me. I had to continuously remind myself to keep breathing with the intention of letting my grief flow.
Later, as I stood in line to exit, I felt eight feet tall. I was so light and elated. I found myself smiling when I realized that I had just had this incredibly intense grieving experience and not one single person in that theater had a clue as to what had gone on. It wasn’t until the next day when I began to write it down that I realized the breadth and depth of that experience. It brought such sacred value to my work.
These three things are important assets when trying to experience grief through the lens of subtle energy:
A willingness to feel the pain of loss as it shows up in the moment.
An openness to bear witness to the breath by paying attention to how the breath enters, moves through, and exits the body.
A readiness to learn a basic understanding of our subtle energy system. (There are simple ways to do this without feeling like you’re in a science class.)
There is no leap of faith involved. This is not meant to serve as a quick fix. This is all a matter of perspective and an openness to try and support our ongoing grieving experiences in a way that builds resilience and strengthens vitality. When we are vibrant, we are capable of making more supportive decisions that lead to living life more fully. I can’t imagine that our loved ones would want us living any other way.