[193] Exploring the experience of grief and loss meditation with Dr Joe Parent

11:05PM Feb 11, 2025

Speakers:

Joe Parent

Keywords:

Grief

loss

emotions

meditation

physiological response

storyline

Trungpa Rinpoche

kindness

compassion

suffering

well-being

breathing techniques

grounding practice

mindfulness

practice sessions.

Greetings. Everybody. Nice to see new and familiar faces. Was talking with some people today about working with emotions, and particularly grief, which it's an it's an interesting one. My best friend passed away a week ago, Friday, so almost 10 days now, and it's interesting to explore the different emotions. His wife was pretty obviously devastated, so part of my grief was sublimated in taking care of her, and then there's a feeling of hollowness. And you know, there have been studies on the different stages of grief, of denial, bargaining, all the all of these things. But you know, really looking into it is exploring what am I experiencing, and the first step, thank you, Tim for your comment, the first step is just to tune into what the feeling is in your body, where it is, what it feels like, what it's doing with your breathing, where the movement of energy is blocked, where It's flowing. Now, to do that requires some dropping of the storyline, because this our storyline provokes the emotions, and then there's a physiological response. Studies have shown if there's a sim a single physiological response. It lasts 60 to 90 seconds. 30 to 90 seconds. Now we feel like the physical feeling that goes with an emotion goes on and on and on and on and on sometimes, but that's because before those 90 seconds are up, we think about something else that re triggers it. So it's like, not, you know, we peak of this, this physical energy. As it starts to go down, we pick it up again, and it goes up again, and and so the waves never get back down to equilibrium. They just keep going until we get exhausted and then. And then they do. So if we drop the storyline and just tune into the physiological feeling and identify where it is, what's going on. We let it play itself out, and then we're left with a bit of open space, and in that open space we can see what's coming up. And I was telling somebody this story of something that happened to me with a great teacher named Trungpa Rinpoche, who passed away about a year and a half ago. Seems like yesterday, but he was he was there, and I had an opportunity to have an interview right after one of my closest teachers, probably the one I was, I was, I spent the most time with the American student of Trungpa, Rinpoche, with the title, who had the title Bucha region. And he died, and I was pretty broken up, and I went to Trungpa Rinpoche, this great teacher, and he was so kind. He was on this low seat, you know, some this like an upholstered chair, but legs only this tall, and I was sitting on a rug in front of him and sobbing, you know, in grief. And he's so sweet, he reached and got his Kleenex box and offered me a Kleenex, and I was still crying, and he actually slid off of his chair and sat on the rug on the floor next to me with his his hand on on my on my knee, and one hand on my knee and one hand on my shoulder. And he said, it's going to be all right. Okay, okay. He says it's going to be all right. He. Was very realized he'll be fine. And I said, I know he'll be fine, but, and you know what I was going to say next, right? What about me? But when you're there with a great, enlightened teacher, you kind of can't say, what about me, with them there, so it stopped it, and I'll never forget that his kindness and to say that it's not about me. So exploring the grief, what is it about? It? Must be some about me, because our not me personally, but anybody's grief. It's, it must be some, it's our grief, because we feel the loss of that part of our lives. It leaves a hole in the his wife was saying, it felt, felt like the world just went sideways. I said, because the part that was his, that was his weight poop, it's gone, and the rest gets, gets heavier. And so it's been an interesting process. That way of saying, okay, so accept and acknowledge my feeling of loss, and then do everything I can to be there for the others who are feeling that similar loss. And then the traditional practice is to say, May all, May every person in the world who's feeling that loss of grief, of loss of a loved one. Oh, good. MyRA is here. Hi, my I Mayra. I Myro. Where is she? There she is. We're glad you're here. We're talking about grief and the loss of a loved one and and that the traditional practice, a great vehicle practice, is to say, Okay, I'm feeling this pain. I'm not going to suppress it. I'm not going to indulge in it. But feeling this pain I'm connected with, I share this world with so many other beings, and there are millions of others who are feeling a similar grief, a similar feeling of loss, may their pain be included in mine so that they can suffer less and whatever provides me some relief, like we his wife and I were sharing some kind of sayings that we that, that we often used, and we found some we went back to the source, where did that saying come from, and we had some laughs remembering him so, so it was an enriching moment. May, May any enriching moments that we have around our positive memories of the person send those out. May all beings feel the the lightning of the heaviness feel the joy of having known that person, the joy of having had been had that love between that person and yourself. So that's really the practice and and we'll work with that at the end of the end of the session to do that, we have to recognize the how much whatever happens we take through the prism of what about me, and letting that go, just for a moment, we get a glimpse of simply things as they are, which include ourselves. We don't disappear from that things as they are, but it's in the proper perspective, a little bit like when they discovered that the plant the planets and the stars and the sun don't rotate around don't revolve around the earth. That doesn't mean the earth disappeared. It's just the Earth's part of the whole system. And not the center of it.

That's what we are. So that's the Preface. And to do this, we will go through a sequence of practices that I like to teach. The first is a centering, settling, grounding practice. And I'm going to change the view here. There we go. Okay, so the settling Center during grounding practice, and if you're comfortable, it's sometimes easier to do this with your eyes closed. We'll do that. Then we're going to be aware of the space that our body is sitting in once it's centered and grounded, and we do that with our eyes open but our gaze down, then we open up to the bigger environment that we're sitting in. So we're going to be looking straight ahead and for that, or you can set it up now. You're not going to want to be looking directly into your screen. So you're going to want to turn, either turn your device or turn your seat or both, so that you're looking past the screen of whatever, whatever's in front of you, so that you can open up your peripheral vision to the bigger space. And then after we do that, and have some experience of how our perceptions and our emotions appear in our mind, then we'll work with those in the in the contemplation of sending and taking, of sending out relief and taking away the pain. Actually, we're taking I'll be a little more clear. We're taking away the suffering. The pain is what it is. The suffering is what we add on top of it that makes it miserable, not just painful. So we have pain, but we don't have to add misery to it. So we'll work with that a little bit towards the end. Okay, so as the gong fades, let your eyes gently close and we do this practice sitting up, because if we lie down, we tend to fall asleep. If we stand, we tend to walk. So this is putting ourselves in neutral. Whether you're in on a cushion on the floor or sitting in a chair, just feel your sit bones pressing into the seat that you're on, try to make them kind of evenly balanced. Notice, are you more on one weight more on one than the other? Just even them out. And you want to be sitting up, if you can sit without leaning back against anything, if not, if you have to lean back, scoot your butt right up back against whatever you're leaning on, so that you're not slumped there. But your torso is as upright as it can be without being rigid. And as far as your torso goes, you can kind of tilt at your hips a little bit left and right again, so that the sit bones are even, the weight is even, and you don't feel like you're tilted one side or the other. You again at the hips. You can tilt a little forward and back until you're upright. You can't you can't say upright feels like this. It just feels like not forward or back, not left or right. Now, as far as your legs go, you can either cross them in front of you, or if you're in a chair, you can have them flat on the floor, about hip width apart, so that your shins are vertical, perpendicular to the floor, and so your feet and your knees are about hip width apart. Now, if you have long legs or a low chair and your knees are higher than your hips, just cross your feet at your ankles, the same distance away from you and let your knees widen out so that they're a little bit lower than your hips. Good. Now we go back to the torso. We don't stop at the upright back, but imagine that a line goes straight from your tailbone, straight up to the back of the top of your head, so that that that uprightness and centeredness goes past the top of your back, even with your shoulders, goes up the back. Back of your neck, up the back of your head. Now there's actually some curvature there, but imagine that it's a straight line. And when you do and that back of the top of your head is straight up and down your chin kind of comes in naturally. See, sometimes we have a tendency for our chin to float up, and then we get sleepy. We have tendency to tilt down. That's when we get sleepy. When we tilt up, we get spaced out, sorry, and then we spend most of our day with our chin out in front of us. That's why people are all slumped over, because they're in a hurry to get somewhere, and they're they're out ahead of themselves. So now we pull back when our back of our top of her head is straight up and down. Chin comes in a little naturally. You

The other thing you do with your torso, we have some depth front to back, so your back is upright and firm. Try this out. You don't have to hold it for too long if it's uncomfortable. But take the center point of your breast bone, halfway between your throat and your solar plexus, your collarbone or your solar plexus, and imagine that point. Just push it a tiny bit forward and up just a quarter of an inch, what you'll notice is that it opens up your chest, your shoulders come back a little bit more in line with your ears. You may even feel a tiny pinching your shoulder blades. And when you take a nice full breath in through your nostrils, it really goes all the way across your chest, fills your lungs and then goes deeper cross and deeper that way.

Now where your shoulders are, let your upper arms hang straight down from them, from your shoulders, and swivel your forearms at the elbow, place your hands palm down on each thigh, so that your forearms go down, go along the thighs. In this way, with your upper arms vertical, you're not reaching forward or pulling back, just a natural position. This particular posture of the hands is called the resting the mind posture. There's also one where you put one hand on top of the other at your navel. But this work today we're doing resting the mind posture, hands palm down on each thigh and we're going to breathe in through our nostrils. If some air comes out through your mouth as well, that's not a problem, but try to just breathe in through your nostrils. We're

and so your lips are either just lightly touching or slightly parted, and a traditional placement of the tongue is just let it float up so the tip of your tongue rest gently against your upper palate, just behind your front teeth and

now it takes a certain amount of tension to hold this posture, the upright back, the extension up your neck and the back of your head, your breast bone slightly raised, but let's let everything else, let all any other tension around that that we don't need to hold. Let's let it melt down and out of us. Your scalp, forehead, face, ears and your jaw. Take your breath in, and as you breathe out, just let all that 10 and any extra tension melt flow down, neck, shoulders, collarbone, upper your chest and upper back. Breathe in and. Breathe out, let it flow down and out of you. See how that lets your shoulders hang down just a little bit more, upper arms, rib cage, all around, solar plexus and stomach. Breathe out, let the tension flow down and out of you. Lower back, core and deep belly, pelvic region and hips. Breathe out. Let all that melt and sink down. We sometimes clench down in our deep belly or pelvic region, just let it go without losing your posture, release, breathe down and out of

thighs, forearms and hands, breathe out, let The tension flow out, knees, calves, ankles and feet breathe out. Let it flow out. Now with each next out breath, feel your weight sinking down more into your seat. Breathe out and sink down and breathe out and sink down without losing your posture, just like your weight. Sink breathe out, sink down and imagine that you're merging with the Earth, merging with the ground. And

solidly grounded, but upright like a majestic mountain and

within that feeling of groundedness, centeredness,

let your mind rest deep in your core. Again, we're three dimensional beings. So as we breathe in and the diaphragm pushes it down to breathe, pull the air in, our deep core expands side to side, in front to back, as if it's filling. We can imagine that the breaths going all the way down, filling our deep core, and as the diaphragm comes up to push the breath out, it's emptying.

Now, as you first tune into that there's some intentionality, breathing in and feeling it fill, breathing out and feeling it empty. And now let go of that intentionality, and just be an observer and notice. Let your body do the breathing. I promise it will keep breathing without you controlling it. It might be a deep breath or a shallow breath. Long or short, doesn't matter. Just tune into the rhythm that your body creates

when you're not trying to breathe. It may get very subtle,

like a quiet day on the shore, the water coming up the beach, a little going back down into the lake, or the ocean

up the beach,

down into The ocean, up the beach, down into the ocean, and let's relax feeling that rhythm for a minute or two and.

That Question.

You thoughts may float through your mind. You might notice other bodily sensations, maybe sounds, just let them come and go. Return to that feeling in your core of Feeling in a ding. Relax into that rhythm and

as The Gong fades, reconnect with your posture. If you've gotten a little slumped, and now let your eyes open halfway. Look down under the eyelids, they'll come to rest a couple of feet in front of you and but wherever you're looking toward, just let your gaze soften so you're not looking at anything particular. You're just seeing the space that your body's sitting in a little bit in front of you. You can see your lap a little bit to the sides.

You're experiencing presence. Your body's present in this space. Stay connected with your awareness in your core, your attention to that feeling, that sensation, that internal sensation, but have a background awareness of your posture and the space that you're sitting In. Let's do that for A couple of minutes you

Now, at some point, you may find that one thought leads to another and another, And a storyline gets created that captures your mind. You might breathe out and think, Oh, this is very relaxing. It reminds me that yoga class I took. I wonder what happened to that teacher. I think she moved to New York. I really liked New York, that show that we saw, and suddenly you realize you were watching people singing and dancing on a stage in New York, but you're not there, and at that moment, you're already back,

let go and Relax, reconnect with your posture, awareness in your deep core, feeling the filling and emptying, seeing the space that you're Sitting In and

and as the gunk fades, you can move a little bit, Adjust your posture and

and now let your eyes Open, naturally looking out, not artificially raised to the horizon, they'll probably be a little bit below the horizon, where they naturally rest and again, not looking at anything particular, but just open up your peripheral vision, side to side, top to bottom, So you're seeing the whole space without looking at anything particular, like looking at a landscape in the distance.

And now we're looking we're going to connect more with that, instead of this, so much so, instead of the internal sensation of the breath, be aware that the breath is going out and dissolving into the atmosphere of the room. It's as if you're riding the breath out. There's an energy of out open. You know, when we were first getting grounded, we were breathing out and sinking down. Now we're breathing out and opening up, opening to the space, opening our awareness. We breathe out and then just rest in that open spaciousness. It includes the body breathing in by itself, but then catch the next out breath, like catching the waves out open rest. Spaciousness out, open, Rest in spaciousness. You

if your mind is very Busy with thoughts, you can lower your gaze a bit, not all the way down, like we did before, but just a bit, and pay particular attention to the breath and the feeling of it going out Your nostrils, and imagine it dissolving into the atmosphere you

I still rest in that gap, that spaciousness as the body breathes in the and then go out again.

And if you're feeling quite spacious and it's almost like an interruption to go back to the next out breath, let go of the breathing. Let it just be included in your spacious descend rest in that open awareness for as long as it lasts you.

Your mind may move to sights, sounds, bodily sensations, even thoughts that come up. Let them be included in that spacious awareness. They appear in your mind, but they are not your mind.

Your mind Is that spacious awareness you

As the gong fades, raise your gaze even more. Look out as if you're looking at the sky, and now we'll do the contemplation. Imagine that your mind, your awareness, is as big as the sky, so that you're aware of all the beings under that sky, all under the same sky, different places, but the same sky, all on the same earth,

and we beings that share the earth and The sky all have in common the wish to be free from misery, free from suffering, and To enjoy a life of well being, peace, health

well being in body and mind,

freedom from suffering of disease in body and mind, disease or dis ease in mind, Disease in body, disease in mind.

Tune into your heart. Sometimes it's helpful to put your hand palm down, palm towards your heart center, at the level of your heart in the center of your chest, if you'd like. And you can do this with your eyes open or closed now and and feel like you're touching your own heart of kindness and compassion. Kindness is the wish for beings to be happy, including ourselves. We're beings. Compassion is the wish for beings to be free from misery, from suffering.

And let's activate that wish, so that as we breathe in, we imagine that we're freeing all these beings from suffering, including ourselves. We're drawing out suffering like poison from a snake bite, and

it feels good to be able to free ourselves and others from suffering. So send that good feeling out to yourself and others. Send out as you breathe out, imagine that they're filled with well being in body and mind, peace, health and happiness. May all of us have peace, health and happiness? May all of us be free from suffering?

If one person comes to mind. Practice with that one person, freeing them from suffering, filling them with well being, if it's a group of people, whatever comes to mind you.

It might be a whole country,

but eventually let it be the whole world. I

and go deeper when you send out that well being, send out the causes of well being to yourself and others,

which is love and understanding.

If we have love and understanding and give love and understanding that it's the cause of well being in the world and

I go further with deeper, with the wish to relieve suffering, because the causes of suffering are ignorance and hatred and the emotions that arise out of that, greed, jealousy, anger, intolerance.

Imagine that as you breathe in, you're drawing out, that those poisonous emotions from all beings and they dissolve and are replaced as you breathe out with love and understanding you

fill the world with love and understanding, extract the poison of hatred and ignorance and

and now let go of the contemplation. Reconnect with your posture, a half eye open, gaze down, aware of your body, your posture, sitting in The space, feel the breath going in and out you.

Now To go further with that aspiration. What we do is we take the practice that we've done and say, I hope that that spreads throughout the rest of my day, the rest of my year, the rest of my life, and benefits other. So you can repeat after me or put in your own words, may the practice we have just done give even more benefit to others than to ourselves. That's true generosity. So thank you for your practice. And what I'd like to do, turn my lights on.

Here we go. It's a little different view that way, and I'm going to unmute let everybody unmute themselves. Okay, now you can do that. And please, if you have any questions, comments, anything you'd like to Share, let's do that for the next few minutes. You

uh, comment I had, like my, you know, just in that meditation, it was like a tingling, almost like a tingling feeling throughout my whole body. And I just, it was kind of a different feeling that I've ever felt before, and I really resonated with that felt really good, like a spiritual massage.

Nice. That's nice? Was it a feeling of of presence that you could just relaxing your body and not have to do things. That's the idea we're so busy. What's that saying we should be called human doings instead of human beings? So I'm glad you had that experience, Laura, that's great. Now, one thing to keep in mind, don't necessarily try to recreate it. You go, Oh, that was good. I want to do that again. And then you start thinking. And then you start trying to think, how do I do that? And now it, it's like trying to grab that wet bar soap. Okay, so if it, if it comes to you, say You're welcome, you're invited, but I'm not going to go reach out for anything. And maybe it'll be different next time there's there's no such thing as a bad session, because you may be completely caught up in thoughts the whole time, but then you realize, Wow, I was caught up in thoughts the whole time. That was an informative experience. You go, what, what? What was going on that was triggering that. And we, we, we, there was a slogan we were looking at today in an earlier group that I was studying with, investigate and examine. Investigate is being open to what you're experiencing and notice, oh, this is what makes my mind move in that direction. This is what triggers me. And then you notice the situation that that happens. And then you look further and say, what is it about that situation that moves me in this way? What is it about that situation that triggers me? And that's more the examining. So we investigate the whole what is the metaphor like a detective? You check out the whole scene, and then you look for clues. You see the whole picture of what happened, what's going on, and then you look for clues. So Patrick asked a question in the chat, is the secret chakra different than the sacral chakra? Whoo, I don't know. The secret chakra become lucid in dreams. So. Yes, not. I'm not familiar with that. I'm not familiar with how that when this, when you say the secret chakra, I know, I don't know all of them. I'm assuming that's the one in the sexual center, either it's there or in the top of the head. I'm not sure what you're referring to. Maybe somebody else knows what the secret chakra refers to, but I know for dreams, we work with the throat, the throat center, and imagine that there's a beautiful red flower in the throat center, and there's a whatever represents it's the syllable, ah, whatever represents that Sound, whether it's English letters or some other alphabet. Yeah. So Patrick wrote, yes, the genitals that I've never heard of that in connection with lucid dreaming. That doesn't mean it isn't, but I've never heard of it. Work with the throat. Anybody else have a comment? You welcome to it. If anybody has a comment on Patrick's genitals, oh, I'm sorry. I don't mean that. I mean the Patrick's comment about genitals Center,

I'd like to thank you at I then just say, meditating for somewhat like 40 years and done different things. And this is really refreshing to be with you at this miraculous age where I could be in Windsor, Ontario, and really present, this was a very, very good experience for me. I'm still learning so much, and it's an honor to learn with you and from you to have this experience.

Thank you. I always feel like I get more out of these sessions than anyone. So thank you. So I dedicate it back to all of you and all all beings. That's the idea. Oh, you know what? I just noticed it doesn't have my name on here. I'm called Night Club. Oh, I like to leave a small case. See that has a different feeling than all caps kind of there you go. Okay, good. I think Lauren got cracked up. Mike, thank you so much. It makes me happy. I try to, you know, whatever I presented, it was interesting. As I was talking today, I was going like I was listening to it wasn't even just it wasn't my voice, it was my teacher's voices coming through. So anything that I said that's a benefit is completely due to them. Mistakes are mine, but that's what the lineage of meditation practice is about. So let's stay in touch, and if there's anything I can do to help you continue with your Practice, I'm happy to do that.

Patrick wrote, okay, yes, I we have these recorded. I hope I can load it up onto the nightclub site. But there some of the other sessions I've done in the past has been recorded, and I have my own Dr Joe parent YouTube channel. And I, because I do these on a Thursday morning as well. I I think the next one is February 20. Don't know which one my next one is. Hang on one second. I'll tell you. And if you have to go, thank you. I know we're past the top of the hour. My next session is February 20, so 10 days from now, it's a Thursday morning, 9am Pacific Time, and the the link is on my website. Let me just I'll copy. That page for you right now. Put it in the chat, as you said, Mike, it's a miraculous age. You there in Windsor, Canada, and here we are practicing together.

So yeah, so please come and and my my YouTube channel. I've got about 90 of these on the YouTube channel, so you can practice along with it and the recordings here at the nightclub, and you just whatever practice has been introduced, just hit just hit pause and practice it for as long as you want, and then continue and and do the others. So it's good to do it, but it's good to do relatively short sessions and then refresh short, refresh and short, maybe one minute and then five minutes and then 10 minutes and then 20 minutes short is relative. See one short compared to the other on, oh, now the other one short. That's a traditional they do with fingers. There. There we go. If you compare this one to that, that's long, but if you compare that to this, then it's short. Patrick wrote that Muslims believe soul leaves the body during sleep. Yes, they believe there's a soul and perhaps the Bardos are dream levels. There's actually Bardo means in between state, and dream is one of the in between states and waking and dying and death. And there we go through all these different in between states, but it's always in between something and something else. Any other questions or comments? See, we we've been so successful. We've made my right completely disappear. I

i do like to joke, and you know, I think the most important thing is a sense of humor, and it's good to take our practice seriously, but not to take ourselves seriously, if we can help it. I

And if you want to be in touch, all my contact info is there on that website that I put in the chat. That's the that's the practicing mindful awareness page. But once you're on the website, you can find the contact info and all that. Okay, well, thank you all so much for your attention and your practice. Wonderful to be here with you, and we'll see you. I don't know what I'm doing. Oh, you know I'm doing. I think I'm doing another one here on the 20. It'll be the 24th I guess, right, yeah. Okay, good. So see you at one of those sessions. Thank you. Thanks. Myra, bye, bye, bye.

Myra, can you stay on just for a minute? Yes,

yo, I'm sorry. I'm in the rehab center with my husband because he had surgery, and that's why I was kind of in and out. But yes, that's okay.

I'm I'm not going to be here for most of March. I'm going to do this the session. I think I signed up for the 20 if today's the 10th and I signed up for the 24th but I don't know. I might be on the 17th. Instead, I have to check the

schedule. I think they call me about the 17th. Is that let me see, but whatever we work around, just tell me what days I'm looking at my phone to see. What time do they ask me? But that was at the beginning of the month. It was not recently. Yeah, let me look 17.

Okay, let me look at Stacy's. And when I signed up for for February? Yeah, I'm on the 10th and 24th Okay, okay, good. I'll let you know if I have to. Can you do the 24th of actus? If I need to switch? So far, it's so good, yes, okay, but keep it the way it is. Okay, all right. Thank you for being here. Good luck with your husband. I don't know he's doing much better. We're in a great center. My best friend died about a week ago, so that's why we were talking about grief when you came on. Oh,

it was beautiful. I was able to meditate in this place. So it was good. Okay, good. Thank you. Bye, Josh, bye.