Grief is understated in our Australian Western society. This has certainly been my experience of grief. Grief occurs from experiencing loss.
I’ve had a lot of loss in my life. These losses include: my dog dying in my lap in my early teens, my Pop dying when I was 16 years old, dumped by my first love at 17 years old, my Aunty died when I was 23 years old, betrayed and dumped by my boyfriend who I loved to the core of my bones around 23 years old, my Great Uncle (who was like another grandfather to me) died, my Dad died in mine and my brother’s arms when I was 31 years old. I’ve had two other dogs die in my 30’s which I had since my mid teens, my dear Great Aunty (who was like a grandmother to me). All of my grandparents have died. I lost my first cat early at 6 1/2 years due to a heart condition he was born with.
The grief that often goes unnoticed is that of friendships as they move into other paths of life and moving on from primary school, high school, workplaces, university. Where ever friends are made and you come together for a short time and then part.
I endured the excruciating pain of loss until I read ‘Grief is love with nowhere to go’. In that moment I realised the extent of love I had and needed to give.
For many people another event of loss occurs before recovery can be achieved. This impacts overall wellbeing – emotional, mental and physical. When the social environment does not support recovery from these life events in a loving, understanding, supportive and gentle way. The related trauma can be increased and compounded and held in the body. Sometimes, new people are needed in your life to create the social environment for recovery to occur. Moving through grief with Reflexology positively supports your journey.
The Tibetan way of living and dying by Sogyal Rinpoche is a Buddhist perspective portraying a humane treatment of people throughout the phases of their life and provides an enlightened view that life is cyclic and continues to live on in different forms. How we view life and death is not necessarily indicative of how we will experience grief.
Grief is something to go through, not get over and time doesn’t heal grief. It’s a process which takes time, our own individual time and is needed to go through to be able to embrace living fully again and create a new future. Even though it can be difficult to accept that they are not coming with you into your future, they remain with you in your heart.
In Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s book on death and dying she formalised five stages of grief. Those stages are Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. It is important to note that these stages are NOT linear, may be revisited at any point in time and you may not experience one or more of these.
Grief can cause you to feel, sad, anger, hurt, confused, regret, guilt, shame, depressed, crazy, lonely, and anything else it brings up.
Because grief and emotions are stored in the body when not expressed, body work such as Reflexology at Heel to Heal will support and assist you through grief. I have helped clients move through their grief enabling them to move forward.
This may take one session or a series of sessions with me to assist you work through those deep seeded emotions. Moving through grief with Reflexology happens during treatment by way of stretching the lung reflex point and gently pressing other related points stimulating the expression of the locked emotion. This expression may be talking out what comes up through the session, sighs, crying, vibrational sensations throughout the body or other.
To book your session go to: https://calendly.com/heeltohealbookings
I look forward to seeing you at your next session at Heel to Heal.
In love and light