If you’ve recently suffered the loss of someone close to you, you’re probably doing the difficult work of planning for a funeral as well as grieving. All of this can be emotionally overwhelming, so it's important to take care of yourself physically and emotionally during this time. There are many different ways that people use to cope with grief. Today, we’ll talk about how meditation helps the grieving process. 

Losing someone close to us is a disruption to the way we perceive our lives. The sudden or unexpected loss of a person whose presence we’ve grown accustomed to can leave a large void that is difficult to fill.

Grieving is our way of making sense of loss and learning how to adjust to it. There is no one-size-fits-all grieving journey; some people grieve for years, while others adjust in weeks. Grieving is not forgetting the person or “moving on.” Rather, it’s a process that helps us come to terms with the person’s death. In other words, grieving is a type of emotional healing, and it takes time.

The grieving process can bring about many difficult emotions, like anger, shock, guilt, loneliness, and anxiety. Feeling any of these can lead to physical symptoms as our bodies try to cope with the emotional disruption. Loss of appetite/emotional eating, insomnia, fatigue, and nausea are physical symptoms that can often show up in grieving. 

Meditation is a practice that helps people recognize and approach their troubling emotions in a healthy way. Though many people assume that meditation is about controlling our thoughts and emotions, meditation actually focuses on allowing our emotions to present themselves for our observation. Instead of judging ourselves or the feelings we have, we can simply see and accept them without reaction. 

For a grieving person, meditation gives permission to let thoughts and feelings come and go without judgment. Instead of those emotions feeling like a personal attack, they now feel like welcome messengers of information. Further meditation can help the practitioner fully accept the new reality of living without the deceased.

As the mind heals from the overwhelming feelings of grief and loss, the body will exhibit fewer physical symptoms, which, in turn, helps with the overall healing process.

Meditation is an easy technique you can do on your own to process your grief, but don’t underestimate the power of external support. Support groups, individual counseling, friends, and family are great options that can help provide extra assistance with the mourning process.

Navigating the funeral planning process can be difficult, and finding time to appropriately grieve your loss can be a real challenge. Hamel-Lydon Chapel can help you plan funeral services near Boston, so you can focus your energy on mourning the loss of your loved one with meditation or counseling.