Have you been tapped into the emotion of grief the past few weeks? Whether it’s re-connecting to a personal loss or feeling the collective sorrow of humanity, it’s all happening right on time. Grief and sorrow are quintessential metal element emotions in the metal element season of autumn.
I don’t know about you, but the last couple of weeks, I had a challenging time sitting with “what is” while also showing up and engaging with life. My Inner Mama Bear noticed numbness within. She convinced me to do some emotional and energetic “housekeeping” and told me to stop my doom scrolling. Now, I’m feeling more sadness but less numb and more present. Seems about right to me.
You see, as much as it can be hard to go through a personal or collective dark night of the soul or to process intense sorrow and grief, the way out is through. It is so important to sit with and tend to your emotions in support of their thorough digestion. That’s right, there’s a process that can help you metabolize emotions and experiences, uptake their nourishment, and allow them to enhance your life curriculum. AND, dare I say, excrete the heaviest, hardest parts. I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m saying it’s worth your intention and attention.
“What if it’s all just too much?”
IIf “it’s all just too much” then this is an invitation to sit down with someone who can help you. It can be hard to do it alone. This could be sitting with an emotionally available and resourced friend who is a good listener, this could be scheduling an acupuncture session and this could be working with a professional who is trained to do grief work. ( opens in a new windowCheck out this interview I did a few years ago with Marriage and Family Therapist, and Grief Recovery Specialist, Tina Kopko).
“What if I don’t have time to process my feelings? I’ll get to it later.”
Do you have time to be unwell? The concern is that unprocessed emotions can morph from subtle to more gross forms. Each season has a corresponding emotion and each season has corresponding physiological concerns. In the autumn, the lungs and large intestine can become easily imbalanced with concerns like chronic cough, allergies, bronchitis, diarrhea, constipation, the list goes on…. Dysfunctions of these organs may not necessarily have their root in emotion but unprocessed emotions CAN play a role, exacerbate them or be the impetus for them. If you have a long history of grief, it can be even more important for you to consider this.
Are you sitting with numbness or overwhelming grief at the moment? Are you struggling with lingering lung symptoms after COVID or flu? Would you like to schedule an acupuncture session in support of an emotional or physiological shift? You can do that opens in a new window::HERE::
Lastly, I love qigong for processing emotions. I wanted to share an easy qigong exercise that supports lung health and the work to process grief. Qigong involves a combination of body movement, breath pattern and an intention to move energy, much in the same way we do in an acupuncture session. If you’re struggling with grief, the intention to hold in this exercise is that healing energy is entering the lungs on the inhale and the heaviest, hardest most painful part of your grief and sorrow are exiting the lungs on the exhale.
