Explore the coexistence of grief and joy through a gentle body scan and mindful breathing meditation.

Spirituality

Stress & Anxiety

Stress

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Guided meditation for grief and loss that covers the depths of what the mind needs to navigate grieving. Are you dealing with grief and loss? Looking to find some guided meditations for grief and loss or grief and healing? I'll guide you through a body scanning meditation through the chakras or energy points within the body to help bring your body some much-needed calm through your breath and awareness. In our grief we can start to disassociate from the body this practice will help you stay grounded.
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Celebrate While Grieving

 How to celebrate life when you're grieving? Grief and celebration seem a little bit contradictory, right? But they coexist and this is a beautiful complexity of the human existence. We feel what we dream as polarized emotions all at once. Although, aren't we really tempted to kind of just pick one to dwell in? What if we gave voice to both emotions without judgment, gave them air to breathe, space to feel, and room in our bones? Hey everyone, my name is Emi. I'm a yoga teacher and couples photographer here at Celebrate Again with my brand and I found this on the belief that life's too short not to celebrate all of it, the good, the hard, the bad, the dull, and everything in between. For my whole life I've really been sent on a mission to help people feel good inside and out and really this story starts with how I've already battled with grief. Hey Clem, thanks so much for joining me and all you joining me. And yeah, so before I begin sharing my story about grief I just want to ask you what does grief mean to you? You know, feel free to drop in the comments let me know what grief means to you. For me, grief means the loss of something I once had. But what does it mean to you? So, well, I was no stranger growing up to grief as this means of losing something I thought I once had and losing a loved one even. I lost my close cousin when I was in my teens and she died of pneumonia after battling cancer for a couple years and it was a huge loss to our whole family. And I know others have experienced this crazy amount of loss too. And it is so devastating to lose someone you love but those two, like myself, who battle chronic illnesses we really face a different kind of grief around losing a lifestyle, around losing a way of life that we once knew. So my story kind of begins with who I used to be before I got sick. I was a big adventurer. I enjoyed traveling. I've been to multiple different countries. I was literally climbing the rocks and the sides and the cliffs of mountains. I loved exploring. I loved just being outside and doing all the crazy adventurous things. Then at age 25 I got pregnant with my daughter and I started having a lot of really odd symptoms. And in hindsight, looking at my labor and delivery, I realized I almost died during delivery and had then a really hard infant growing up. And my first couple years with my daughter were very very challenging. She was a very challenging baby. But then into a couple years of her life I got really sick. I lost use of both my wrists. I was in full body rashes. I was in a wheelchair for one point in my life and I had to shut down my thriving photography business. For a whole year while I spent most of my time in doctor's offices, like four to five times a week in physical therapies offices just trying to fight to be functional. At one point just couldn't take care of my daughter myself. Had to have family and friends come help take care of her. And my life literally in a couple years turned upside down and grief just really really began to pile on. And like some days I couldn't button my own pants. I couldn't hold a mug. I couldn't walk across my own house. But you know in the midst of this I was fighting for life. I was fighting for hunger for more of life despite all the hardships that came my way with chronic illnesses and the loss of so much of my life of adventuring before this time. And I really wanted still to travel the world. I wanted to play with my daughter. Something that I at that time couldn't even do. I couldn't get up and just go run and play around the house with her. And I wanted to be a photographer again. So fast forward to today. I have my symptoms managed. I'm still very sick. I still want to go on these crazy adventures and live life to the fullest. To run and chase my daughter around the house playing what we call sillies. And yet my body really can't sustain this past a couple minutes of these like really super strenuous activities before my like symptoms start to scream louder than my heart's desire to do these fun activities. So with this grief heavy on my heart over the years it's like no wonder I became very very depressed. And I was unable to even show up to play which is a big part of my personality is play. And grief just just took over and I didn't want to deal with it. It was a very challenging thing to want to deal with this this feeling of grief. And so I feel like I kind of like locked my grief up in a closet. And I didn't realize that in locking my grief and my depression away I also locked away playfulness. But with the help of an amazing counselor I discovered that letting my joy and desire for better life coexist with my grief that I found playfulness could return. And you see we just don't really have to isolate these one emotions in into polarizing experiences into one face judgments. That we really can coexist with these complex contradict what we deem as contradictory emotions. And it's something that I'm passionate about is helping us have this emotional expression to have places in our lives where we can experience both both the grief and the joy. And so that's a big piece about my brand is this concept of celebrating again that no matter what life has going on that you can continue to celebrate. So you know a big piece with celebrate again is yoga. And so what I want to do is lead you all through a meditation about how to deal with grief through just a meditation. And if you don't have time for a meditation right now you can bookmark this for later, hop back on, maybe replay this before bed, midday when you need a little break. So I'd love to leave to you now through a time of meditation. And always with with my meditations I love to just encourage people to take a step back and find someplace cozy. This can be as simple as just laying down, leaning back in your chair, just finding some relaxation for your body. I know it can be super challenging to relax when you're sitting up. A lot of our a lot of our core strength unless you're super actively working on it, it's hard to keep our bodies upright. So I always encourage people in meditations to relax and get their spine in alignment to help that energy flow really be be there to support you through this process. So that little bit over get someplace cozy you can turn out the lights, you can grab a blanket, adding some textures into your meditation can always really help. And if you enjoy sitting up you can sit on a cushion or a blanket and that can help. So wherever you're at just come to close your eyes if that feels safe to you or just find a soft gaze in front of you. Then I just want you to notice your breath. I know a lot of us our breath just naturally is in our chest and we feel our shoulders kind of going up and down when we inhale and exhale. I encourage you to maybe even place your hands on your belly and just feel your hands expand as you inhale to your belly. And your ribs and shoulders may naturally move too and try not to judge that as doing anything wrong or right but just notice. This is a beautiful practice of yoga and meditation as we get a step into this role of the observer and what is happening inside of us and where we want to navigate, where we want to go. So just come to fill your belly up with air and slowly exhale. See if you can lengthen your inhales a little bit longer than you thought. And then exhale a little bit longer than you thought. Maybe just contracting your abdomen to let one extra breath out than you thought possible and inhale and exhale contracting out a little bit more breath than you thought and inhale expanding through your belly, expanding through all four corners of your ribs, feeling that air come through your throat and exhale back down through your spine feeling the air come out your chest and then your belly. Inhale in, exhale out, slowing your breath down, deepening it, tapping into our calming systems so we can step in awareness and presence. Now we're gonna do a little bit of a body scan. Starting at the crown of your head, just notice the top of your head. How does it feel? Do you feel any pain? Does it feel heavy or full? Just notice. Keep those deep belly breaths going. Inhale in, exhale out. Good and then let's notice our eyes and our brow. Do you feel like your eyebrows are scrunching together? You're trying to stay focused and you have a little bit of a headache there. Can you just notice it and acknowledge it? And with your next exhale can you just find some softness? Inhale in through your belly, exhale slow, deliberate through your nose or mouth. Okay and let's go down to our jaw. Is your tongue at the top of your mouth? Do you feel your teeth really close together? You just wiggle your jaw and just on an exhale let it rest. Drop the tongue to the bottom of your mouth. Inhale in slow, exhale out. Just notice your throat. You can even place your hands on your throat. Do you notice? Does it feel tight? Feel tender? Take a deep breath in and let it out. You place your hand on your heart. Notice it. Does it feel tight or heavy? Let me check in with your shoulders. They're just resting down. Can you take a deep breath in and relax out? Just moving down our spine here and just checking in with your center, your belly. Do you feel the deep need? Tighten it or have any pain in your belly? You can just place your hand on that area and just send some love there. This awareness and thanking all the amazing organs in our stomach area. Just all the hard work they do for us. It's acknowledging them, breathing life into them. Inhale in, exhale out. Just place your hands on your low, low belly and like above your just right on your hips. Just notice if you feel anything here. Deep breath in and exhale out. And then just do a little check in with your sits bones and your glutes around them. Are you squeezing them together? Can you relax them? Just relaxing through your legs, wiggling your toes, circling your ankles. Breathing deep into them. Exhale out. Take a deep breath in, exhale out. Just come back up to the top of your head. Are you still feeling anything in your head? Are you stuck or worrying about something? Feeling disconnected? Take some time to just quiet your mind. Let your spirit guide you. There's so much it wants to share with you. You're traveling down to your eyes. Take a deep breath in and let it out. Are you noticing any pain in your eyes? Are you feeling lost or unsure? Take some time to silence all the rights and wrongs and the shoulds and shouldn'ts and just listen. Take a deep breath in and let it out. Does your throat feel tight? Was there something you've wanted to say you haven't been able to? And you think about that and you feel that. Take a deep breath in and let it out. Does your chest feel heavy? Suppression can sit here, friends, or blocked emotions. Just take a deep breath in and raise our shoulders. Draw them back down. Drawing your shoulder blades together. Just letting your heart know it's okay. I see you. I see your pain. Take a deep breath in and let it out. Does your stomach hurt or feel heavy? Do you feel like you struggle with low self-esteem, confidence? Can you listen to why that is and remind yourself you are worthy? Inhaling, I am. Exhale, worthy. Are you feeling a tightness in your hips? Do you have emotions you're afraid to experience? Can you take time to listen to them? What do they have to say to you? Take a deep breath in and let it out. Do your sitz bones feel heavy, tight? Do you battle with any anxiety or fear? Can you remind yourself right now you are being helped by this beautiful thing we call gravity? You are being helped. Inhale, I am. Exhale, held. If there was any area that just really hit home for you, come back to that. Come back to the relaxation, the awareness, the mantra. Take a deep breath here and let it out. Stay in your meditation as long as you want. Turn my voice off and be giving air to these spaces our bodies holds for us. Trusting in the journey. Take a deep breath in and let it out. If you feel ready, you can wiggle your fingers and toes and open your eyes. Thank you so much for joining me friends. Feel free to share this with anyone who needs some deep relaxation, needs to hear that it is okay to want beautiful things and be holding a lot of grief at the same time. Drop a comment below. Let me know how you feel after. Share this with anyone else that you think might need it. If you enjoy today's meditation and you want to dive deeper into what it means to come on a self-awareness journey, a self-care journey, and a self-love journey, I'd love to have you join me in my membership. You can head to CelebrateAgain.org for forward slash membership to learn more about how I can help you along in this journey to use the tools of yoga and meditation to deepen your self-awareness and really come and have a safe place to process and be and explore. Alright, I hope you all have a lovely rest of your day and we'll see you again soon. Bye bye.