Grief and Mourning
The process of loss can leave an impact on your body, heart and mind
Loss can blindside us - an unexpected death, a break up, a friend moving away - and can have real effects on our physical bodies as well as on our hearts and minds.
Whether you’re mourning a death, the loss of a family member or friend, or grieving the end of an intimate relationship or the close of a period in your life, grief can be an unwelcome and lingering companion. Death, loss, change and sadness are a natural part of life - but a part of life that can be a challenge to our emotional and our physical health.
Have you ever felt sad and said, “My heart hurts,” or “I feel so heartsick”?
I’m sure you’ve heard of older couples about whom it’s said that within months of one partner’s passing, the other had “died of a broken heart.”
Sometimes pets can become so attached to each other or to their owners that they mope, refuse to eat, or even die when their owners or the best friend they were raised with passes on. Again, we say they’re “heartbroken” or that they died “of a broken heart.”
As discussed in previous articles, the words we use have the power to affect the shape of our lives, especially when it comes to feelings and their impact on physical health. Certainly, the connection between grief and the health of the heart seems clear.
The lungs are also affected by loss. In the emotional-physical correlations made in Traditional Chinese Medicine or “TCM”, the lung corresponds to grief. It is not uncommon for the surviving partner in a devoted couple to begin to experience lung problems within a year of their loved one’s death, if they haven’t dealt with the emotions of grief and released them from their energetic system. Celebrity Dana Reeve is an unfortunate example: She was diagnosed and died of lung cancer within a year and a half of her husband Christopher Reeve’s death. She was 44 years old and a non-smoker.
Grief and loss can leave ravages on your body if the emotions are suppressed instead of being dealt with. Our emotions, uplifting or depressing, have effects on our bodies in minor or major ways every day. Any feelings that are held over a period of time will have a more profound impact - because anything that is felt in the “heart” or the emotions, or carried over time, transcends from the aura and the energetic body to influence the physical body.
Tools like meditation, physical cleansing, psychotherapy, energy work (such as chakra clearing, energy psychology, Touch for Health, and Energy Medicine) and other types of emotional release work enable us to release the emotions of grief and loss from our energetic system so that they will not have a toxic impact on our bodies.
More information on what you can do to ease the burden of loss and grief on your body, mind and feelings.
