The Grief Practice - An Exploration & Explanation of Grief In The Body

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Our heads, the place where things make sense, can

The idea of healing can overwhelm us just like the

The idea of healing can overwhelm us just like the feeling of losing.
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If you’ve had this experience you should know there’s nothing wrong with you.
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If the idea of abundance or having more than enough (love, support, healing, care, or goodness) makes you contract or feel anxious, that’s normal too.
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Easing into both is what allows us to grow our capacity to hold everything that comes along with each - the sensations, images, emotions, thoughts, and actions that follow.
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This Range of Resilience (also known as our Window of Tolerance) is a beautiful mechanism that helps us feel safe and in control. It determines not how much we open (our hearts and lives.)
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As much as we are told we can think our way into or out of this deeply set patterning, the body and its subcognitive, ancient wiring is actually more in charge of this. Which is why things begin to shift when we speak to the body in the language it understands (not English!)
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Dipping a toe into what feels good (the sun on our face, feet in water or the feel of a soft blanket) and playing with how long we can hold that good feeling is a nice way to see how much good we can hold.
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Backing in and out of these simple, good feelings builds the framework for holding deeper relational goodness and safety; something many humans simultaneously crave and cringe from.
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What feels good or less bad today?
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Yours in the noticing xox-Monique
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#onwardcourageousheart #grief #griefinthebody #traumainformedyoga #yogaforgrief #griefyoga

Perhaps some little part of you is open to conside

Perhaps some little part of you is open to considering this possibility, that joy can wash over pain like water over rocks. The pain is not in the way at all.
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Instead of another thing to “do” when grieving, this is more of a not-doing. Not creating a dam when the good starts to flow. An acknowledgement that even in the midst or depth of pain there can also be joy, pleasure or hope.
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What happens inside as you hold that even the tiniest bit?
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I wonder if it’s okay to honor how that feels for you. Its bigness, smallness or in-between-ness. Any resistance (dam-building or god-damning) that is not ready to soften as well as any part of you that was just waiting for the invitation or permission to feel the flow of goodness through you.
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Perhaps, just for this moment, you can give yourself the gift of this possibility. You can always change your mind and go back to whatever feels more familiar or better.
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Yours in the possibility xox-Monique
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#onwardcourageousheart #grief #griefinthebody #hope #healing

For all the secret grief behind second-story open

For all the secret grief
behind second-story open windows
“another day in paradise,” says the tipsy neighbor walking his dog below
floating up into the ears of the pregnant mother whose brother just died
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one man’s paradise is another man’s hell
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For all the secreted grief
tucked behind sunglasses and wine glasses and passes on dinner invitations
the kind held in so long it starts to burst the seams of our sanity and tucks the corners of our soul into the fold of our knees, so small we think we have disappeared
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until the face in the mirror reminds us we are not the one that is gone
we are the one who is humaning on.
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untidily yours xox-Monique
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#onwardcourageousheart #grief #griefinthebody

Whether they were pulled from our lives without wa

Whether they were pulled from our lives without warning or literally pulled from our arms, being forced to let go of our loved one can change the way we hold on. To their memory, to our grief, to our still living loved ones.
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When we allow for how we lost them to shed light on how we miss them we can sometimes find missing pieces to the puzzle of our heart.
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The part of us that didn’t see it coming or couldn’t orient to what was happening, wasn’t able to stomach the diagnosis or didn’t have time to say goodbye, these are the parts that can haunt us whether we are crawling or flying through our grief.
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These were often rushed or skipped moments that got lost in the bigness and speed of losing them. Integrating them can allow us to hold our experience differently and have more clarity about the parts we want to hold on to and the parts that are holding on to us.
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It can allow us to separate the fear we felt losing them from the fear of losing again, giving us more access to peace in the face of the fragile and temporary nature of life, starting with our own.
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We human on with great love xox-Monique
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#onwardcourageousheart #grief #griefinthebody #traumaticgrief

I’m sitting on the train heading north to talk t

I’m sitting on the train heading north to talk to some teens about suicide and grief. I came up with this graphic, modeled off the @somaticexperiencingint S.C.O.P.E. stabilization and safety aid and based on my training two years into the program of what is the fastest, easiest, and most effective way to support an overwhelmed emotional or physical experience.
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As a teenager who suffered with major depression, had no therapy available and felt like no one understood, I made a promise to myself I’ve never forgotten. “Don’t ever forget what it’s like to be a kid.”
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Young people’s nervous systems are not fully developed. Changing hormones also impact the way the world seems and feels, especially during times of tremendous overwhelm - from loss, from Covid, from not having their needs met.
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Suicide impacts teens in many ways, from losing parents or friends this way to feeling it’s the only option to stop their own pain.
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What we sometimes forget is that mental health is not just top-down. It’s also very much bottom-up. In many instances mental health can only be helped by addressing the somatic (bodily) experience.
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There is no easy answer, but there are starting places. First steps, next breaths, and the humans who help us carry what we cannot alone hold.
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H.E.L.P.
🔹Hum
🔹Easy Does It
🔹Look
🔹People
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We human on xox-Monique
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#onwardcourageousheart #grief #griefinthebody #somaticexperiencing #suicide

In so many ways what changes the experience is res

Meditation + Traumatic Grief . (This post consider

Loss asks us to stretch ourselves and to hold stea

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