When someone you love is taken away, emotional suffering is felt, often times overwhelmingly so. This feeling would be best categorised as grief, the natural response to loss. Though grieving is a highly individualised emotion and manifests differently for everyone, there are things you can do to create a stronger foundation to help cope.
Like with everything in life, TICM has a solution for everything in my opinion. We are told we may grieve for a partner up to 4 months and anyone else 3 days and there are very valid and important reasons for this if we choose to understand. Plus it is important to remember death often and realise, that the person we have lost whether a parent, child, sibling and so forth are only a test and trust to us, nothing more. Studying death and TICM in my opinion makes loss easy to overcome.
In TICM, certain emotions are correlated to particular organs in the body. Grief is associated with the Lung system. The Lung is responsible for bringing our energy, also known as our vital life energy, to every organ in order to nourish our body. When you go through the grieving process, the Lung energy becomes deficient, and you can experience a state of unease, repressed emotions and depression. Our Lungs represent taking in the new and letting go of the old.
Here are some tips through TICM and beyond.
For deficient Lung energy, take energy tincture formula to strengthen and protect your Lungs against pathogens, bacteria, and viruses as they are more susceptible during times of grief, which can be prescribed by your TICM doctor.
A normal and healthy expression of grief can be expressed through sobbing. This deep crying originates in the depths of the Lungs, deep breathes with the expulsion of air with a sob. If that is held inside, asthma, chronic cough or shortness of breath can come as a result of the Lungs withholding energy that desperately needs expelling.
Practice deep breathing to move any stagnant energy stuck in your chest and Lungs. Breathe deeply into your diaphragm and expel out through the nose. Breathe in through your nose and imagine the air traveling all the way down to your toes and into the earth. Hold for a count of five and exhale through your mouth, making as much noise if that feels good to you. Repeat this 3 times and practice it morning, afternoon and night daily.
The Lung is associated with a healing sound that sounds like "sssssssssssss", like a snake. This is extraordinarily healing for the Lung, make this sound on your exhale in the above practice.
Eat Lung and immunity nourishing foods. They are white in colour such as garlic, radish, rice, miso, leeks, Asian pears, and onions. Also cinnamon, sweet potato, ginger powder, ginger extract, fresh ginger, walnuts and almonds.
Avoid phlegm producing foods like dairy, excessive raw foods, and foods high in sugar. Avoid alcohol.
Receive hijama, acupuncture treatments, massage, or body work to help release stagnated energy and stress and tension in various points of the body especially on the shoulders. Practice Qigong, Taichi, yoga, pilates exercises and meditation to keep energy flowing. When energy starts to flow, you will also start to feel better and will even start to deal with your grief better.
When you feel ready, start to try and limit the amount of time you are spending thinking about what is making your feel sad. If your sadness is caused by the loss of someone you love, Islam has given limits to how long or how frequently you will allow that emotion to stay. You do not want to ignore your feelings, but you also want to make sure you can start trying to focus on something else. Creative outlets prove to be very therapeutic during this time.
Important note: God tell us everyday that we are going to die or lose someone we love to test us. TICM tells us to remember death often. So in reality we should be prepared and never wait until death hits us or a medical doctor puts a timeline on us.
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