Transforming Loss & Grief
Self-Breema and the Nine Principles of Harmony
It had been a few years since the death of my sister and I thought the worst had ended, yet here I was again, in the throes of profound grief. So many reminders both joyful and sad often occur and here was the accompanying pain over this loss again. Some cheerful news had come my way about one of her daughters and yet I felt a crashing grip of sadness that my sister wasn’t here to celebrate the occasion. At first, I bottled up the feeling so as not to dampen the atmosphere of excitement. That night I slept poorly and in the morning I felt sick. In fact, I was sure I was coming down with the flu and felt dizzy, exhausted, and nauseous. I was scheduled to instruct a Self-Breema class online that morning, and although I wondered if I could make it through, I did.
During that half-hour class, I felt more organized inside myself after doing just a few Self-Breema. Tapping my upper body, brushing my arms, rocking my body side to side, palming my eyes, all with a gentle, relaxed assured touch, and no judgment, I became more centered and balanced. When I took a breath, connected to my body, the mind became receptive and I could experience my deeper feelings.
“I am willing to step up more and more each time and follow my heart, more than my fears and mind alone. ”
It didn’t take long. And once I saw my state, without trying to change it, there was a shift in me and an acceptance of how I was in that moment. A release of all that pent-up emotion spilled out and I was open to allowing it to happen. Fortunately, I was in a place and time where I could do that and all day I grieved as if for the first time.
I never tried to quell it or escape the pain. I just wanted to feel alive again, and not go through life like a robot or completely desensitized, afraid, or unable to fully experience myself, or care. The Breema principle of Full Participation was in my foreground and became my guide. I was able to let go of any ideas of how things or I should be.
I see how much I do things every day to distract me from the pain of so many events in life. From the minute daily losses to the big ones such as the loss of a loved one, or the tragic events happening to so many people all over the planet — in my city, country, humanity in general, and mother earth. I see how I can only “digest” these events in small doses and that it takes courage each time I do so. But, I am willing to step up more and more each time and follow my heart, more than my fears and mind alone. My wish is to live more and more with an open heart no matter what comes my way.
Self-Breema is a way I can “digest” the larger challenges of life, by bringing my attention to the activity of the body, or to what is going on inside me first. I have seen that over and over again, the more I recognize that I’m caught in random, negative, or judgmental thoughts — which usually influence my feelings and sensations — I can begin to see that all these reactions to outer events are related to my inner landscape. My faulty perception, unverified information, reactions, and conditioning, rather than my actual experience in the moment.
Self-Breema gives me a gentle way to become receptive and willing to see and experience what is going on with these three parts of myself…the body, the mind, and the feelings.
With this kind of seeing, I become less identified with my reactions and it can sometimes be as if I am looking at a movie on the screen, or as if I’m watching someone else’s life.
When that happens, I am closer to accepting whatever I see. I can just be in the moment, with all the pretty and not so pretty aspects of myself. But this takes practice. So I can rely on the body-mind connection and the Nine Principles of Harmony to steer me in the right direction. From there I can choose how to proceed. Towards unity, wholeness, and simplicity or fragmentation, separation, and complication.
Transformation happens when I raise my level of consciousness and my perspective and outlook on the events of life shift and I can accept myself as I am. When I objectively see things as they are, without trying to fix or change them. When I recognize the wholeness of existence and my place in it, then whatever arises, be it grief, sadness, fear, joy, excitement, or pleasure, I can digest it all and be in life.
Accepting life as it comes with an open heart.