Grief, Meditation and Therapy

By the time of arriving here, at the well-tended front garden of Robert’s home near Vancouver, I have been intensely experiencing grief, arisen through the heat of intimate relationship, for the past ten months. I have been working with this grief in the context of contemplative practice, paying attention to what Trungpa Rinpoche called the ‘soft spot,’ the innately open, connected and empty reality of the heart. Trungpa characterized the soft-spot as being “sad-joy;” the joy of energetic, tender responsiveness to the world and the sadness of things always fading, changing and dying. It has been incredibly useful for me to be aware of this articulation and to be instructed that this experience doesn’t need altering but rather can become part of the display of what is during meditation, with no additional fabrication.

Through holding the dark, hot, glowing ember of tender-sad-joy in my heart with as much precision and care as I can, I have been noticing the ways in which I habitually contract. With either tightness in my body, energetic shutting down, familiar emotions such as anger or, more subtly, through placing a layer of thinking in between myself and the direct experience of my wounded-open being, I veil myself from the vividness of my heart. It’s been a rocky, unpredictable and wild journey characterized by the blossoming of an underlying sapling trust that I can return to and directly face my experience, however joyful, devastating or insulting that experience may be to my self-image or my ideas of how things should be.

A short while after ringing the doorbell I am greeted by Robert’s wife, Diane. Her grounded, glowingly centered warmth brings me further into the simplicity of the present as we say a brief hello, before I am shown where the room Robert works with clients is. I walk through the dimly lit corridor and feel like I am entering an underground treasure cave as I move through the doorway into a well contained space of simple richness and aesthetic resonance. 

Noticing two meditation cushions on the floor, near the wall on my right, I choose one and sit down. I intend to use the time before the session to create supportive conditions so that I am more receptive to and engaged in the work I am about to do. Taking my posture and beginning to breathe, I notice I am excited and slightly rigid, I’m not breathing as deeply as I could and am holding tension in my face, especially around the eyes. Through the meeting of an-Other, a thou that can help me brokenly dance in whatever direction needed, if only for a short time, I believe gates will be unlocked that I have found almost impossible to unlock in isolation. While I literally ache for deeper work I am also aware of a slight habitual guardedness to it, revealed to me by my tightness; the embodiment of somatically “holding myself together.”   

After settling into this awareness for a few minutes I hear the door open inwards. Standing and turning around I see Robert for the first time in the flesh and feel him as strong, stable, present and energetically big, with attentive sky blue eyes and a smile; we are both happy to see each other. We sit down, I on a tan brown leather couch and he on a matching chair opposite me, and I start to talk about how things have been going with the intimate relationship, which ended seven months ago.

I interact with Robert and various aspects of myself, guided by Robert’s intuitive direction, which I trust to usefully raft on the streams and eddies of emotion and meaning-making I am journeying with. Spontaneously arising ways of working, such as empathic, full person attention and awareness flavoured with dream analysis and sentence completion, act as a vanguard on the overgrown path to revealing what is already the case. The path reveals itself on a moment-by-moment basis in congruence with where my foot lands on the ground, which is shown not a moment sooner. As we organically and responsively attune to each new step, the structure of the session emerges in an organic flow, alive with freshness and discovery.

After what feels like one third of the ninety minute session, Robert shifts gears towards working with my body, my embodied reality of experience, with the words: “It’s really important to directly include the body with the emotional work we are doing. The way I work with the body is both physically and energetically done in a way that resonates intuitively and organically with the person I am working with. If things become too intense for you, you can say stop at any time.”

I feel so happy to hear that we are taking this direction and notice that part of me literally aches for a fuller, more deeply embodied resolution of the grief I’ve been attending to, quite mindfully, for nearly the last year. I need to feel the resolution not only in my mind but also right in the middle of my heart, so this inner ice-cube of sorrow can begin its thawing.

We both stand and move towards the other half of the room, which is spacious and clear of unnecessary objects, and then Robert moves a mattress from its horizontally upright position against the wall, placing it flat on the middle of the floor.  I lie down onto the mattress, feet facing the supportive leather couch I was sitting on moments before, and place my hands by my sides as I close my eyes and slowly breathe out a satisfying sigh. My body starts to give itself over to gravity and the sense of energetically containing myself starts to drain down into the earth.

Robert kneels down onto the floor beside me and places his hand softly onto my abdomen, one hands-width below my solar plexus. As soon as his hand connects I feel the hardness and internal grip within me warm and expand.  My grief wakes and rises upwards from my stomach, into my heart, as my eyes wet and my face contracts into a pained-sad expression. Before I know what’s happening, huge, sweet chest-sobs emerge from my body through the clear channel of my open throat in this spring-melt of grief. Tears alively make their way down the mountains and valleys of my face like wilderness waterfalls, accompanied by the flow and splash of my gulps and opening cries. 

I feel completely safe and accepted, even celebrated, to be crying this deeply, yet still I cover my face with my hands, as I have been conditioned to do. “I love you so much!” I say joltingly between respiratory convulsions, “I love you babe!” Having spoken what is true I continue to cry, my ordinary self naturally moving out of the way and allowing the releasing to do all the talking that is needed. My hands are eventually removed gently from my face by Robert as I openly and powerfully cry into the world.

As Robert taps his fingertips against my sternum I feel the tenderness of my heart highlighted by the guided rapping on its door, as if my broken-beautiful love is hiding inside an unlocked cage and is being called out further by a caring friend. This is followed by a firm pressing down and quick release on my chest, compressing and then rapidly expanding it, bringing with it an involuntarily sharp inhalation, as if surfacing from nearly too long underwater and taking in panic-breaths of fresh, needed, life-line air. As far as my heart is concerned, this is literally the case, emerging as it does from the tar-like wallows of seemingly choiceless fixation.

This work of embodiment is starting to go further energetically into my grief as Robert presses his fingers very deeply underneath my rib cage, into the tension held in those muscles and the diaphragm underneath. The accurate constriction of my breathing and intensity of sensation generated in my core muscles becomes very painful not only to my diaphragm but also my heart center.  Being instructed to allow sound to come through me, I start to open and vocalize an “aaaaaarrrhhhh,” which soon finds truer ground as more shaking and releasing of pain.  Surrendering very readily to the unlocking that is taking place in my pained chest, crying more and more deeply, with a corresponding current of celebration for the birthing of new life and lungs within me, I complete sentences such as “you hurt me the most when you . . .” with the first feeling or thought that comes to me. 

I can feel the knot of pain in my chest that I have been so faithfully paying attention to, resting with, allowing and opening to in long periods of seated meditation, releasing and noticeably pulsing out of me through my arms. It feels as if part of my subtle body has just been given a jump start back into life from its lock and flat-lining; with life-nourishing reverberations pulsing from my center and out through my limbs, making short, powerful wave-like voyages down somewhat atrophied internal channels. There is a noticeable wave of joy backdropped by a more expansive sense of connection to authenticity.

Resting after this work I roll over onto my side and gently make my way up and back to the couch, becoming present to Robert, who is seated once again opposite me, saying; “I can feel you rested more fully in Being now. Your eyes are a lot more balanced and clear.” I take a moment to feel my eyes and am joyously yet calmly amazed and touched that my direct experience, and how it has shifted, has been so perceptively seen and reflected, enabling me to see myself more accurately in who I am. I am so hungry for this kind of interaction.

Robert continues; “This kind of resting in Being comes very effortlessly right now, doesn’t it. It’s not needing effort or force as so often happens in meditation.” I agree, and I am not exactly sure what this means, as it is somewhat jarring to my previous experience and perspective on the role of “therapy” in spiritual practice. Perhaps this is because most therapists are not attuned or deeply oriented in the same way Robert is. The work we are doing acts to loosen embodied contractions in order that I can open into and rest more easefully in Being, rather than returning to Freud’s “ordinary unhappiness.” I do what any meditator would do, recognizing the discontinuity in my expectations of what ‘practice’ looks like and letting it exist, giving this non-conceptual insight space to unfold as it needs to, in its own time.

We talk some more and move towards closing the session by usefully framing the work we’ve done, in order that I can better understand what is taking place and integrate it into my being. I am going to see my ex-partner tomorrow and am now feeling like I will meet her from a very different space than I would have if I had not done this work; this session is a welcomed summit gained after days, weeks and months of conscious attention.

I am more aware of the boy in me who felt the need to be looked after by his beloved, not wanting her to leave at any cost. I am also very aware as the me that can relate to her and who at the same time is whole and complete within myself; in possession of healthy boundaries, able to know what is or is not right for me and sure enough to act on that realization.  Robert and I part a fond farewell as we say goodbye. Walking down the road, back towards the bus into Vancouver with an open and full heart, I rest in clear-perceiving mind, excited at what is and what will come, looking forward to returning for another session in two days time; enjoying every unexpected step into the next, new now.