Old Friend
Grief is a funny animal. It can rear up on its hind legs and dance atop a small stool, demanding your attention at the least convenient times.
Grief is a funny animal, unpredictable in its myriad antics. Or maybe this characteristic makes it completely predictable. Just expect it to show up unannounced, after years of silence, tapping incessantly at the back door. It can barge through the window and steal away your breath. It can rear up on its hind legs and dance atop a small stool, demanding your attention at the least convenient times.
I am attempting an embodiment practice. I shouldn’t say attempt. That’s like saying try in acting. There is no try, only do, and you either fail or succeed. I guess I say attempt because I’m not exactly sure what this practice should be, or exactly how to do it. I hope I am moving in the right direction, that I’m in the proverbial ballpark. Of course, a ballpark is a very big place. One can be near a thing for some time before hitting the mark. So much of life is about practice and process. Happiness is a journey, not a destination. That sort of thing.
This is the first time I’ve articulated this idea, so I don’t know if I’ll get it right, but here goes. To embody is to give expression to an idea, feeling, or experience, to make tangible within the body something that is inherently intangible. To make the nonphysical physical.
I have heard that it takes only 90 seconds to integrate emotion into the body if you lean into the sensation. To lean in requires that you stop resisting, that you feel fully the emotion in your entire body, or wherever it shows up for you - your stomach, your heart center, your neck and shoulders. An emotion begins in the body and often becomes a feeling through translation of thought. It is energy first and foremost, and energy must always transfer, must be released so it can dissipate rather than take up residence in a tightened jaw, a clenched trapezius, a chronic tummy ache.
This can be a terrifying process. I always feel as though I will be swept away, either by tidal wave or tornado, that my physical body will crack beneath the violent sensation of drowning or blowing away. Feelings are powered by the mind, supercharged by the lens of our experiences and world view, and this is an important survival technique though not helpful in its overactivity. How lucky, and cursed, we are as human beings to be an animal with a somatic body that houses a mind capable of such force!
There are many ways to practice embodiment: dance, yoga, strolling through nature, singing in the shower, gardening, somatic shaking, hands-on bodywork, and many, many others. Almost anything that involves the body AND allows for a mind-body connection followed by release can be an embodiment practice.
My focus lately has been integration, a process of making the unconscious conscious. Whenever I feel an emotion, my goal is to honestly recognize and fully experience it before it becomes trapped as a feeling that can get stuck in any number of places, such as that dark, crowded little room at the back of my mind where rumination is celebrated. Yay for 3AM hamster wheels!
This happened to me yesterday. It was Father’s Day, and grief arrived unannounced, began howling on my doorstep in the middle of the afternoon like a hungry stray. I lay down on the hard floor of my office and wept. For a number of minutes I surrendered to the sensation, and my body really did physically hurt. I allowed my body to feel the full force of my heartbreak, the deep yearning and loss and pain that comes from missing someone who no longer shares this mortal plane. And there was a moment when my mind began to race frantically, tossing around all manner of judgments and distractions and desperate attempts to pull focus. Let’s go running! Let’s draw! Let’s eat some chocolate! Stop wallowing. He’d been dead almost 13 years. Real adults don’t lay on the ground and cry. This is stupid. You are wasting so much time. Get. The. F*ck. Up!
Oh, my dear mind. She really hates not being in charge.
Afterward I was spent, but I was also purged and restored in a way that I craved. It was scary (emotion) and extremely unpleasant (feeling). It was painful (emotion) and distressing (feeling). It was authentic and honest and my body did not crack. I did not drown or blow away. I stood up, whole and intact, and went downstairs to make a cake, drink a glass of wine, and listen to birds sing in my backyard.
I find that embodiment allows my inner antenna to recalibrate, to be a little more sensitive, sharp, and tuned in. It’s like a cleanse for your emotional palette. Everything feels a little brighter, clearer, fuller in depth of flavor.
When my antenna is bright and clear, I more often experience magic. I think I’m simply in a place to receive, and it’s a beautiful gift to be open. After calling my mom to tell her that I missed Daddy, that this Father’s Day was one of the hard ones, I went inside to check on the cake and heard NPR call out a local radio station from wherever Wait, Wait was broadcasting: DTM. My father’s initials! And moments later they had a whole conversation about Oreos, his favorite cookie! Synchronicities are/can be signs, like little hellos from the other side. Later that same evening, I saw “888” on the side of a van. To me it was the symbol for infinity in a triplet. A reminder that we are all connected, no matter how separate we so often feel (a thought about an emotion). In truth, we are all Love. We are all connected.
So often I worry that I am learning everything that really matters far too late in life, that I’ve wasted decades mired in doubt and terror. But then I remember that all I have is the present, and that life can only be lived in the now, not the yesterdays and not even in the tomorrows. Investing in the now is the best way to ensure that tomorrow, however many of them that we have, may be as bright and colorful and full of bliss as possible.
Grief can be a good reminder. I greet him at my door. I listen to what he has to say. I give him a snack, a scritch behind the ears, and watch his tail flick in contentment as he saunters off into the falling light.
Until next time, old friend. Until next time.
Today is Day 3 of #1000wordsofsummer, an annual shared practice currently being celebrated by 30K+ writers across the globe. Every day for 14 days we write for the joy of writing. The goal is 1,000 words, but really, the magic is in the practice not the product.
This is what I wrote today, and I’m sharing it with you in a somewhat raw, only very lightly edited state. I’m trying to - er, not trying - I’m not overthinking this. That’s the goal. To share with you what I have to say in this moment with the words I have access to in the most honest way I know how.
Do you have an embodiment practice? Or something you love to do that might be considered such? Let me know! I live for comments.
Thank you sharing this brave and lucid exploration. It gave me some peace. You have a wise and generous heart.