(Read Grief Work Part One here.) This article first appeared in Acupuncture Today in August 2022 and is part two of a three part series.

The power of grief is the power of opening to the depth of the present moment and feel both its pain and its love and tenderness. Grieving is one of the strongest opportunities to feel the texture and touch of the ground of being that we are. That ground is not only our feelings but also the deep, aware presence of the heartmind at our core, our shen. Mindful awareness of the felt sense in the body is often a key to accessing this inner treasure and anchoring emerging wisdom in body and psyche.

The grieving process is different for each person. As we know from Elizabeth Kubler Ross’s work, there are many alternating stages and feelings that arise. When we help our clients face each one, it clears the feeling and the grace of the heartmind surfaces in the form of relaxation, relief, peace, acceptance, clarity, meaning, and even joy.

It’s important for us as humans to know that grief is not forever and that each day, each moment brings a mix of grief and joy. It’s a way to slowly help us realize that its ok to feel both grief and relief or happiness in the same day or in the same hour.

As practitioners, our presence, attention, and acknowledgement of both the emotions and the heartmind clarity stabilizes this resource for our patients. We need to be fully attentive to the ebb and flow of the emotional wave and the quiet clarity and imagery that follows it. Help patients stay with their experience in a felt way so that the wisdom contained in the emotions, images, thoughts, and sensations becomes clear to them. Have them notice where in the body they notice these energies. You will often find that the comfort emerges from the same place that the emptiness or loss was felt.

Take for example a patient of mine who was working through the grief of losing her intimate partner in a drowning accident. She came in and described a heavy and undulating feeling in her belly and pelvis. As I palpated, I asked her to tell me which points were most associated with the heavy, undulating feeling. She identified CV14, CV12, ST25 and CV6 as key places of discomfort. I suggested that I insert needles in these points as a way of knocking on the door of the undulating heaviness and tightness she experienced there and see what it had to tell us. She agreed and her curiosity was engaged.

After inserting the needles and adding St36 and SP6 as distal points, I asked her to gently put her attention on the sensations of the undulating heaviness and notice any mood that may be there. As she did, she found the grief she felt about losing her partner. “I see an image of he and I in a boat rocking on the sea.” Tears moistened her eyes, and I acknowledged her sadness and deep sense of loss. The feeling in the room was one of sacredness and respect as she shed tears of sorrow.

After the wave of sadness receded, I encouraged her to stay with her body and feel the rocking and flowing sensations in her belly as a way of being with her beloved in this moment. She found this very relaxing, and I left her to be with her experience and returned 15 minutes later. She was very relaxed, and when I removed the needles, I asked her to notice her belly again and see what sensations were there.

“My belly feels smooth and moving. It’s very different than when we started. This process helps me realize that I have been cut off from my pelvis and my sexuality since my lover died. It feels so good to reconnect again. I feel whole and integrated.”

“So as you feel these smooth, moving sensations you feel connected to both your lover and yourself,” I said as a way to affirm her experience and help her stay with it a little longer. She returned to her quiet reflection for a moment. I added, “From now on these sensations can remind you of your wholeness and the love you share with him.” She nodded in agreement. This last suggestion helps to anchor the experience in her body and psyche. She can come back to it as an inner resource when she wants to re-embody the gift of love and wholeness within her.

(Read Grief Work Part One here.)

In the first two parts of this series, I talked about how we can be mindful of the ebb and flow of the grieving process and help our patients work through the pain of grief and absorb and anchor the love and tenderness that can follow in its wake.   We do this by helping them create the space to grieve during their time with us and turning awareness towards their bodies. The same place in the body can hold the pain and be a portal for emerging wisdom and relaxation from deeper parts of the self. People learn to trust in their bodies and trust the process. It’s a learning investment for the future and a way to face all situations even to our own death.

In this article we will explore how mindful body awareness of physical symptoms can help patients realize how they distract or protect themselves from grief and how it impacts their physical and emotional health. Most of the time the person is not aware of the underlying process and comes into the office to get help with the physical symptoms. Once the deeper roots are discovered, the physical symptoms change, and we help our patients connect with their intuition and wholeness.

Self-protective parts often show up in the body as a tight neck, tight jaw, worry and thinking, hesitation, procrastination, inflammation, distraction, shallow breathing, tight diaphragm, insomnia, anger that persists and much more. It can be easy to treat symptoms without realizing their significance in the bigger picture of grief (or any other process).

In the following example, my patient came in talking about her problems with IBS. As a result of deeper self-awareness, she realized she was distracting herself from her grief and it was having an impact on her intestinal inflammation. She ultimately reconnected with her intuition through the symbol of a dragon which emerged in her awareness of her lower dantian.  I held strategic points in each of the three jiao and engaged her in mindful self-awareness. I find this technique very helpful for informing both of us about roots and the branches that are presenting in the present moment.

I held CV 17 and GV 11 as we explored the felt sense in her chest. She reported that it felt like molecules of energy were bouncing around in her chest in many directions. To further her mindfulness and discover her mood I asked, “if this entire room was filled with these molecules, how would we feel in it?” “We’d be pleasantly entertained,” she replied with a lighthearted smile.

Next, we explored her upper abdomen. I placed my hand above and below her body at CV 12 in front and GV 6 on her spine. She focused her awareness and said with a little surprise in her voice that it felt quite empty in comparison.  “It’s like a ghost town,” she said.  The walls were sore and pressing inward.  “It reminds me of how I have been trying so hard to force my intestines to move,” she said.

I asked Rachel to gently keep her attention focused on the empty feelings and sore walls and sense what mood was there. After a few moments she began to cry and told me that she was remembering the man she had broken up with a few months ago.  “It was the hardest thing I ever had to do,” she said.

With a gentle touch to her arm, I let Rachel know that I was present with her and let her cry. When the emotional wave subsided, I acknowledged,” So there is grief here too.” I asked her what she missed most about her former partner.  “He was able to deeply listen to me.  He would stay with me through a difficult process and be with me until we got through it.”

I suggested that we focus on the gift of deep listening he had given her as one that she still had and was in fact giving herself right now by being present with herself in this way. As she considered my suggestion, she felt calmer and complete in the moment.

Next, I moved my hands to her low abdomen, and put my palm over Cv 4 and behind on her sacrum. I asked her to describe what she noticed in that region. She said the walls were irritated and inflamed.  I asked her to stay with the awareness of her intestinal walls here and see if there was anything else she was aware of.  The image of a dragon came into Rachel’s awareness.  “I haven’t been aware of this dragon for a long time,” she said. “It’s my intuition and it wants to protect my best interests.” Intuitively she knew that even though there was a lot of love between herself and her former partner, the relationship was not sustainable over the long run. The presence of the dragon enlivened Rachel’s mood. We affirmed it as a message of inner wisdom emerging into her consciousness.

That part of the session took 15 minutes. I then put needles in Dr. Tan’s Tai-Yin/Yang Ming balance combination to address both the Lung and Large Intestine and encouraged Rachel to let the sore walls of her abdomen and belly soak in the presence of her dragon to soothe and comfort them. This is an important integrative step that anchors the image and its message in the body. She emerged from the session refreshed.

Before we ended, I asked her another integrating question, namely what she wanted to remember from this session. She said she wanted to remember that her busyness was a distraction from her grief and that she can be in touch with and trust her intuition to get her through life events. A few days later she reported that her elimination improved significantly.