Reflections on Embodied Living & Dying.

I wrote this short piece in 2020, after my grandma died. She had spent months in a carehome where we weren’t allowed to see her or visit her until she was already dying and unconscious.

The following words were my way of honouring the process of dying as a witness. I feel this is connected deeply to Yoga, for many reasons, one of which being that Yoga philosophy teaches us the impermanent nature of life. I found meditation on impermanence to be a support during the grief process. You can read more about Yoga & Grief here in my article for Yoga Basics.

Jas regulating her nervous system with breathwork and meditation.

Holding hands with a loved one whilst their body is shutting down in the final days of dying is profound.

Time shifts.

Every second feels so much longer because there’s a heavy sense of anticipation in the air. Any concept of time also disappears completely because of being so intensely focused on one thing: When will the last breath be? Is it going to be this next one?

It struck me how even when the body is dying, the breath still comes and goes till the very last moment. It seems obvious, breathing is living, we all know that. But there’s something extraordinary about having this intrinsic link between breath and life become so prominent.

The body is clever because it has a system for dealing with difficult experiences such as seeing someone you love dying. On one level I feel I’ve had no time to process anything over the last 2 weeks and on another level I realise my body is working away beneath the surface to do it for me without it requiring conscious effort.

My dreams are working through it all. I yawn a lot during my yoga and meditation practices. I’m tired and sleeping in more. Tears burst out here and there. Laughter too. I have less capacity to focus at my desk job on my laptop and have done a bit less over the last few weeks. Words fall out into poems. Staring out the window feels more desirable than calling a friend.

Half of me wants everything to slow down so I can soak up the simple pleasures of being alive and feel them all for her, now that she can’t. The other half wants it all to speed up so I can busy myself with distractions, with having a purpose so that I don’t have to think about the glaring fact that I’ll never hold her hand again and we are all going to die.

Then I come back to my own breath and ride it to that calm, stable place within. Because that’s all we really have at the heart of it: our breath coming and going, until one day it stops.

I suppose embodied living is embracing the body we live in as our home and part of that is understanding it’s impermanent nature.