inspiration

HEALING FROM GRIEF

Four Ways to Find Peace

by Jasmin Jenkins

kissedbythegods/Pexels.com When I was 13, my mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. At 15, I was at her graveside, navigating my first experience with the other side of love: loss. Ten years later, my beloved and only brother died tragically as a result of PTSD and untreated addiction. In a word: suicide. Where my mom’s death silenced me, my brother’s death pushed me into a deep pursuit of healing.

In the nine years since then, I have committed to discovering the light side of grief, to identifying and embracing the invitations that lay within its deep layers. What I’ve come to learn is that grieving is actually a renewal state—a cycle of releasing and reconnecting. The tears and sadness are, quite literally, just a more fluid connection to love. These are the four invitations I’ve found within the grief:

1The invitation to pause When someone we love dies, our whole world changes in an instant and forever. And with this disruption, there is an opportunity for sacred inquiry that arrives as we pause and honor the absence of our loved one: the impressions they made on our lives, what we will miss about them, how we will continue to celebrate their lives and what their story taught us.

2The invitation to connect with our breath With the intensity of emotions surrounding loss, breath can serve as our anchor. Simply remembering to close our eyes and breathe allows us to stay grounded in our body, mind and spirit. In the TED talk “Breathe to Heal,” Max Strom explains how certain patterns of breathing can actually change how we feel.

3The invitation to feel Elizabeth Kübler–Ross taught us about the five stages of grief, but since everyone’s story and process is so unique, there is ultimately no linear order of the stages. If an emotion arises, allow for it. Feelings, after all, are just information about the state of our heart. The more we can give ourselves permission to be with where we are in our grief, the more at peace we will be in our process.

4The invitation to heal Healing is a verb requiring action and commitment. We have to allow for the pain to heal, also remembering that in doing so, we must keep our hearts open. We have to ask for help when healing, because most of us can’t heal in isolation. Therapists who specialize in grief, online grief courses, bodywork and support groups can help us move forward.

Zen Buddhism reminds us that the obstacle is the path. By exploring these invitations, we arrive at the truth that grief is actually a sacred pathway into a deeper connection within our hearts.

Jasmin Jenkins is a Los Angeles-based integrative grief guide and the founder of Fall Up, which supports people navigating the spectrum of grief. Learn more at WeFallUp.com.

The Akashic Records

The Soul’s Vibrational Continuum

by Kelly Martinsen

The Sanskrit term akasha was introduced to the language of theosophy by H. P. Blavatsky in the mid-1800s. She characterized it as a sort of life force, and also referred to “indestructible tablets of the astral light” recording both the past and future of human thought and actions. Confusing, right? I thought so too, so I sat down with Tatiana Valdivia Johnson, of @yestosoul and YesToSoul.com, to have a reading and learn more. “The akasha is an energetic field that is sensitive to the vibrations of conscious—like your feelings, your thoughts and your actions—and the Akashic records is like the library that holds all those vibrations; it is the records of all your soul’s lives, and also your future possibilities and probabilities,” Johnson says, explaining that the records are available when people have questions that pertain to the direction of their life. Johnson says she found the Akashic records when she felt her life was just not quite right. “I had what some might call a dream job—but it wasn’t, you know? I was always searching for my soul’s purpose.” Someone recommended that she get an Akashic reading, and from there, it clicked, she says. She read books and was trained by some of the most notable people in the field to become an Akashic reader. Johnson says the opening of the records is a coessential act—one that always begins with a prayer asking for light and understanding. During my own reading, I wasn’t sure what I should or could ask the records. She suggested asking short, precise, timely questions at first, such as, “How do I handle this week?” rather than huge, open-ended ones, as these shorter questions often guide a person to the ultimate “soul-purpose” question. The reading offered insight into my inability to move forward in certain aspects of my life. During my reading and in the days after, I did feel a profound sense of peace. That peaceful energy took up a beautiful space in my relationships and was an influential energy in my home (yup, even with a teenage daughter!). If they’re ready, it’s easy for people to access their own Akashic records, but a professional Akashic reader may help them interpret the lessons their soul has experienced. My own personal insight left me with a record of a tree, and a reminder to be both grounded and flexible (I am often just one of those things). For more information or to make an appointment for an Akashic reading with Tatiana Valdivia Johnson, visit YesToSoul.com. Kelly Martinsen is the author of A Year of Inspired Living and former publisher of Natural Awakenings Long Island. She is also the owner of a local hot fitness studio and a contributing writer on Medium.com.

The Emotional Organ

The liver isn’t just a detox machine—it has feelings too.

by David Pollack, DC

The liver’s claim to fame is detoxification. Certainly one of its main jobs is to break down toxins—both the ones our body is exposed to and the ones it creates. Perhaps more importantly, it converts settled, fat-soluble toxins into mobile, water-soluble ones, so they can be removed from “storage” in our fat and tissues and exit the body through the urine. It also makes proteins, globulins, allergy-controlling compounds, blood constituents and bile (for digestion); affects our energy level; and performs thousands of additional functions beyond just detox. All of these are critical operations. If even one didn’t work right, we would have a lot of problems.

THE LIVER AND MOOD But one surprising function involves mood. According to thousands of years of understanding through Chinese Medicine (as well as Ayurvedic and some European traditions), a dysfunctional liver tends to make us angry... or frustrated... or sad. Anger is the emotion classically attributed to the liver, although there many theories about why. The simplest is that increased toxicity in the body irritates us. Frustration is thought to be a slightly different manifestation of anger— perhaps filtered through different personality type or reflecting the liver’s interaction with other hormones or body systems. This is a two-way street: Liver dysfunction can create anger and frustration, which can in turn create liver dysfunction, in a downward spiral. Then there is sadness (or depression). The liver is commonly thought to be responsible for our energy level. If it’s too low, anger manifests as sadness instead. some variation of the following approach is the likeliest path to normalizing their liver and demeanor. It’s important to address the root of actual liver function. This may include detox (though not as often as one might think), optimizing digestion, cleansing the lymphatic system or even supporting the kidneys. This is done through diet, functional medicine (supplementation with herbs and enzymes), acupuncture or detox technologies, to name a few ways. From the emotional side, acupuncture and its cousin moxibustion are great options, and emotional release techniques can help the body and mind resolve past and present emotional burdens. There are various therapy approaches used later in that process to clean up the remnants of any baggage. I find that talk-based therapy tends to be ineffective if it’s done too early, when the physical body isn’t ready to heal. While detox is all the rage and the liver the main event, this is not always the best strategy—and it can cause deleterious effects. Healing the liver and soothing the soul can be an amazing process. It often leads not only to a healthier liver and a lighter heart, but also to many other health improvements.

David Pollack, DC, is the founder of Pollack Wellness Institute, 66 Commack Rd., Ste. 204, Commack, NY. For more information, call 631-462-0801 or visit PollackWellness.com. See ad, page 4.