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Anthony Quintiliani, Ph.D, LADC

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December 24, 2019 By Admin

Journaling and Grief Process

Journaling and Grief Process

Regular brief journaling may be helpful in your grief and horror regarding significant personal losses of self and/or others. Here are the various ways it may be helpful to you.

  1. Writing and reading about your personal loss experience may help you to make sense of the process, and at the same time guide you gently on that path.
  2. Journaling may open up past and present realities – both positive and negative – about your loss experience.
  3. At times anger, resentments, and regrets will come up. These realities open you up to the depth of the grief experience. Do not linger too long there!
  4. S. Kierkegard reminded us that our lived experiences are processed forwardly, but better understood if observed backwards. Journaling helps to focus us on the present but never lets go fully of the past.
  5. It may be important to you to make your personal journal more balanced with both negative and positive experiences. For example, it may be helpful to list all simple pleasures you experienced in any given day. It may also be a good idea not to linger emotionally too long when such experiences trigger negative states.
  6. I have always found it helpful to list my personal gratitudes, even in the midst of painful loss and suffering. It is not uncommon for the most valued experiences to be linked with the lost love-object and your shared life.
  7. If fear and trepidation occur as you move through the grief process, I suggest that you break down the scary moments into smaller, more manageable periods of time, space, and emotions.
  8. Pay attention to and write about both helpful and unhelpful thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and sensations related to your grief process. Be aware keenly of small improvements in all.
  9. You may notice that as you slowly heal you spend less time journaling. This is natural.
  10. You may wish to do “grave worship” practices, or simply write many good things about the lost person.
  11. V. Frankl noted that when we cannot change the reality of a situation, we may have to change ourself.
  12. When you find yourself crying over your loss, that is a very good time to contemplate and do journaling.
  13. Reading related poetry or writing your own may help you.
  14. If and when you experience the emptiness of the void inside, do your best to find words for the experience. And, work to fill that void by re-engaging with your life as it is now.
  15. It is always a good idea to develop and practice personal rituals about your healing. Write about this in your journal.
  16. S. Becket reminded us that we must go on! As painful as it may be, we cannot stop the process.
  17. As P. Chodron noted, we must allow it all to fall apart before we can find the resilience to face what comes next. In most situations, what comes next is slow improvement in your emotional condition.
  18. Rest in peace with your breath, and do more meditation or yoga if that suits you well.
  19. You may wish to visit optionb.org or other sites that support grief work.

Refer to Sandberg, S. and Grant, A. (2017). Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy. New York: A. A. Knopf, pp. 58-76.

Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC  

From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont and the Home of The Monkton SanghaChiYinYang_EleanorRLiebmanCenter

Author of Mindful Happiness  

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New Edition of Mindful Happiness in Production…Coming soon

Filed Under: Activities, ANTHONY QUINTILIANI, Calming, Coping, Crisis Resilience Skills, Emotions, Featured, Gratitude Meditation, Grief, Holiday Coping, Inner Peace, Journal Writing, Learning, Letting Go, Meditation, MIndfulness, MIndfulness Activities, Mourning, Natural Healing, Self Care, Spiriuality, Stress Reduction Tagged With: ANTHONY QUINTILIANI, GRATITUDES, GRIEF PROCESS, JOURNALING, MINDFUL HAPPINESS, RESILIENCE

December 18, 2019 By Admin

How to Offer Personal Tribute to Those Who Have Died

How to Offer Personal Tribute to Those Who Have Died

The Four Noble Truths tell us sobering news. There is suffering, and impermanence of all things including us and our loved ones. Below I have listed several thing you can do to HONOR a person you have lost.  Here is the list.

  1. Recall a special time before or at the time of death, and consider it a sacred place in space and time. Honor it and the person with the complete softness of your loving heart.  Do this now if you wish to.
  2. Pray for the person you have lost – and the goodness in that lost relationship.  You can do this if you are agnostic, even atheist. The prayer is to honor the loved person not to one of many gods.
  3. Go to your soft, suffering heart and fill it with joyous remembrances of your time with the person. Yes, the person has moved beyond; however, your internal and emotional memories are quite vibrant. They have made a special place for them self in your soul.
  4. You can carry this to a deeper level by seeing and touching special objects that belonged to the deceased.  Or, you can set up a small shrine in your home to pay respect and honor whenever you wish to do so.
  5. Know that the deceased person would want you to recall your joy, so light up your senses and recall in mild meditative state the pleasant and happy experiences you both shared.  If something happened with them that made you laugh, go there! This is what they wish for you.
  6. Listen to the music the lost person enjoyed, or read something inspirational.
  7. Think carefully of all the ways you could say goodbye again. Do it now if you wish to.
  8. Recall the smile on their face, and smile back. You may be surprised at how powerful this experience may be.
  9. Dedicate meritorious behavior to them. If you wish, set up some special program or fund to champion causes they cared about. The financial level is far less important than the emotional level of actually doing something.
  10. Write a special tribute about them in a journal. Write often, and read what your have written again and again.
  11. Lastly, work carefully to discover some ways to celebrate that person’s life and your relationship. Celebrate often and be calm within the warmth of your love.

For more information refer to Reoch, R. (1997). To Die Well: A Holistic Approach for the Dying and Their Caregivers. New York: Harper. See also Holecek, A. (2013). Preparing to Die: Practical Advice and Spiritual Wisdom from the Tibetan Buddhist Tradition. Boston: Snow Lion, pp. 312-314.

Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC  

From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont and the Home of The Monkton SanghaChiYinYang_EleanorRLiebmanCenter

Author of Mindful Happiness  

Mindful Happiness cover designs.indd

New Edition of Mindful Happiness in Production…Coming soon

Filed Under: ANTHONY QUINTILIANI, Compassion, Coping, Death, Deep Mindfulness, Featured, Gratitude Meditation, Grief, Letting Go, Meditation, Mourning, Rituals, Self Care, Spiriuality, Tributes Tagged With: HONOR, LOVING, OFFERINGS, PRAYER, TRIBUTES

May 26, 2016 By Admin

Meditation on the Feeling of Letting Go

Meditation on the Feeling of Letting Go – Pacification!

Pacifying the mind is a desired outcome of regular, stable meditation practice.  Pacification may be done via meditating on the breath, general mindfulness awareness, vipassana, and various other forms of  meditation.  However, the wise mind skill of “letting go” of unhelpful, negative, and harmful thoughts and emotions may bemindfulhappiness-meditation-monkey-mind more difficult for many people, even many meditators. In this post I hope to teach you how to LET GO.  Since letting go is much more than a cognitive action, it is necessary to examine other human processing channels – especially sensation, body movement, and emotion.  “Monkey Mind” can be pacified! Pacifying “monkey mind” when it contains strong negative objects of awareness will require a bit more practice and determination. Discernment of finer details in thoughts, sensations, body movement, and emotions will be necessary. Let’s begin.

  1. Begin with a comfortable but functional meditation posture.
  2. Pay close attention to your breath just as it is. Do not try to control it.
  3. Now slowly begin to slow and deepen your breathing, noticing breath passing in and out of the nostrils, the chest area, and how your lower belly moves in and out.
  4. Continue with abdominal breathing as long as it does not cause the opposite effect – making you anxious.
  5. Now become aware of your mind, and the thoughts that are passing through it right now.  Practice bare attention without making any evaluations or stories about the thoughts.  Just let them pass.
  6. Check your personal stability in posture, breath, and clear seeing regarding the coming and going of your thoughts.  Still no judgments or analysis – just moving thoughts like a leaf in a stream.
  7. At this point make a conscious effort to produce a negative thought you would rather not have in your mind.  Just notice it!  Drop judgment and the need to respond to the thought.   Just allow it to be.
  8. Notice that it tends to produce unwanted sensations and/or emotions – feeling associated with negative thoughts.  Just notice.  No need to respond.
  9. It is important that your realize just how easy it was to intentionally produce a negative thought in your consciousness.  Yes, we have automatic negative thoughts, and we have intentionally created negative thoughts.  Both are unhelpful, unwanted and uncomfortable.  The important thing is that thoughts – like breathing – can be under both voluntary and involuntary control. Positive thoughts are the same way.
  10. Now give yourself a SUDs score (0 to 100) regarding the negative thought. The higher the score on Subjective Units of Discomfort, the stronger the unpleasantness is.
  11. Let’s practice. Make the negative though more clear in your mind, then let it go. Just use your intention to let it go cognitively.  Add sensation: get the thought going again, and feel it in your body.  Intentionally let it go, and focus on the subtle change in sensation.  Do it once again, but this time focus on the emotion the negative thought produces in your body. Focus on the thought; let it go, and notice the subtle emotional shift.  Let’s add body movement to this process.  This time let the thought go, and make an arm gesture as if gently flicking the thought away.  If it helps use both arms at once.
  12. Now practice it all at once. Produce the thought. Intentionally let it go cognitively, and notice the subtle shifts in sensation and emotions.  Add you arm flicking movement.  Really get into letting it go, over and over again.  Do it one more time. Include cognition, sensation, emotion and the body movement. Now give yourself another SUDs score from 0 to 100 to see if the overall discomfort has been reduced.
  13. Practice this skill often!!!!! If you relapse into autopilot mind, STOP and intentionally make a new thought.

By Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC

From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, VermontChiYinYang_EleanorRLiebmanCenter

Author of Mindful Happiness  

CLICK HERE  or any image below to Order 

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Filed Under: Activities, ANTHONY QUINTILIANI, Benefits of Meditation, Featured, Ideas & Practices, Letting Go, Meditation, Meditation Activities, MIndfulness, Mourning, Practices, Training Tagged With: ACTIVITY, LETTING GO, MEDITATION, MINDFULNESS, MONKEY MIND, PACIFICATION

May 9, 2016 By Admin

Grief, Mourning, and TCM

Grief, Mourning, and Traditional Chinese Medicine

Based on the Buddhist reality of impermanence – we all will someday die; it is also quite true that we all will suffer from loss, grief, and mourning when others we care about die.  The typical stages in this process are Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. There are many psychological approaches used to support a healthy grief and mourning process. However, most approaches ignore one of the oldest healing systems known to world history – Traditional Chinese Medicine.  In TCM grief and loss process involves energy flow and its quality. In TCM lung chi/qi, large intestine energy flow, the mindful-happiness-chinese-medicinecolor white, and the sound of sssss are all associated with the grief and loss process.  Furthermore, since breathing anchors our central nervous system, it is also involved in energetic flow in our bodies. Positive and negative energy flow has strong influence on our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.

In the following TCM treatment for grief and mourning the exchange mindful-happiness-stages-of-Griefof life-sustaining oxygen and toxic carbon dioxide is important in the process. The lungs, the color white, and the sound of sssss are all involved in harmonizing the emotional energies of grief and mourning.  It all begins with calm, deep, slow abdominal breathing.  TCM for grief and mourning also includes dietary applications as well as acupuncture possibilities. Here we will deal only with using the breath and imagination.

See the steps noted below.

  1. Sit in a  calm and comfortable spine-straight meditation posture.
  2. Complete several calm, slow, deep diaphragmatic breaths.
  3. Once you feel relaxed, complete ten more calm, slow, deep diaphragmatic breaths.
  4. Using your strong imagination, imagine that on each inhalation you are taking in healing white light. This healing white light enters all of your body organs and cells. Repeat for ten breaths.
  5. Using your imagination, on each exhalation imagine that the toxic pain and suffering leave your body as carbon dioxide. Repeat the in-breath and out-breath cycles ten times.
  6. Continue to breathe in this fashion, but now as you exhale make the sound of sssss.  Do this ten times.
  7. As you continue to breathe, make images of the healing white light moving around in your body, and the suffering and pain leaving the body. Repeat this for ten complete, full breaths with the sound of sssss.
  8. Now slow down even more and simply notice the quality of your feelings.

For more information refer to Dr. Mark Wiley. Managing grief: Ancient practices that heal. www.easyhealthoptions.com . Retrieved April 27, 2016.  See also Jahnke, R. (2002). The Healing Promise of Qi…Chicago, IL: Contemporary Books, pp. 39, 212-213. And Cohen, K. S. (1997). Qigong: The Art and Science of Chinese Energy Healing. New York, NY: Ballantine Books, pp.219-241, 237-238.

By Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC

From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, VermontChiYinYang_EleanorRLiebmanCenter

Author of Mindful Happiness  

CLICK HERE  or any image below to Order 

Mindful Happiness cover designs.indd

MindfulHappiness_Amazon           mindful-happiness_barnes_and_noble

Filed Under: Activities, ANTHONY QUINTILIANI, Featured, Meditation, Mourning, Practices, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Training Tagged With: ANTHONY QUINTILIANI, STAGES OF MOURNING, TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE

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