3 ways to practice little deaths
In the last few weeks two people in my larger community died. One was in their fifties, the other in their early thirties. Both left behind spouses, young children and a whole load of people who loved them for the hugeness of their hearts and spirits.
For the first handful of days after learning about each person’s death, I felt them palpably with me throughout my day, as if they were standing very close to me as I went through the ordinary moments of my life.
I feel it was my psyche’s way of trying to make sense of them no longer being in a body, and what that means for them, for their families, for me.
I’ve been having all the typical experiences and mindsets that happen when you’re in the liminal space after someone you know dies, even if it wasn’t someone terribly close to you.
I want to squeeze the people I love tighter.
I’ve been thinking of all my loved ones who have died.
I’ve let my heart wander to, “what will I do when x person is no longer here?”
I’ve said fuck that to some of the things on my to do list that seemed so urgent until I sized it up against the reality that I just don’t know how long I have.
I’ve found it easier to unhook from some of the persistent and trivial-in-the-grand-scheme-of things worries.
I’ve spent time thinking about what I want when I die. (For a tremendous resource on how to make death more sustainable and how to create death rituals that actually honor your values, do please check out Good Grief. I was lucky enough to meet it’s founder when I was in Graz earlier this month. Hi Stefanie!)
And look—I wasn’t going to write about any of this. But then on Monday, as I sat down to write a newsletter for you without a single idea about what to share, I went to the list of topics you had requested I write about in the poll I sent out in May.
Alongside requests for me to write on “betrayal,” “the many facets of love,” “relationship with money and related concepts such as freedom” (you know, just the little, simple stuff), these two topics listed stuck out: “death,” “end of life fears.”
Side note: as all of the suggested topics came in from the survey I sent out, I’d see them and think, “Oooh, that’s such a GOOD topic! Cool!”
But then when I collected them into one list and read through them I kind of shut down. I can’t write about these things! Who do these people think I am??
I was both honored that you would trust me to write about these topics, as well as terrified that you actually might expect me to say something about them.
But then, as I pondered writing about death and end of life fears this week, it dawned on me that people don’t really want answers to these kinds of topics.
I mean, that’s not true…we REALLY want answers to these kind of topics. Like, so bad. SO bad.
But most of us get that there aren’t really clear answers or how-to’s or step-by-step guides to the biggest mysteries of life. What we most want is to see these topics talked about in a way that’s thoughtful and that may make us feel less alone in the way we think about it or open us to a new way of thinking about it.
That, I’m happy to do.
So…when I think about death and end of life fears I think of how important practicing little deaths has been for me. I learned this through two of my spiritual practices over the last two decades.
The first is savasana, the last pose in a yoga class where you lie still on your back. It may seem like a sweet opportunity to simply rest, but when you take to heart that savanna is translated as “corpse pose,” it becomes an opportunity to get to know who you are if you briefly died to productivity or achievement or who you know or what you know or what you look like or any of the things you define yourself through.
There’s a reason why savasana is often the hardest yoga pose for many people. To surrender your conditioning so deeply, even for a seemingly innocuous handful of minutes on your back on a yoga mat, is confronting and can be deeply uncomfortable. Or liberating.
The other practice of dying came from when I used to participate in and lead wilderness-based rites of passages with the School of Lost Borders. One of the personal ceremonies they taught was to symbolically enact your own funeral.
It may seem morbid, but it’s useful. Who would you want to be there? What would you want said about you? What would you want people to grieve?
But also, importantly, what would you grieve as you imagine that scene? And from those insights, who do you want to be now as you live?
There’s also another practice of acknowledging the smaller deaths along the path of life, the different rites of passages we go through.
The moment you die to having an addiction. Or when you die to being single when you get married. Or you die to having your children in your home when you become empty nesters. Or when a marriage dies, a career dies, a possible life path dies, a way of thinking dies.
In these moments of transition, we tend to look forward and focus on what will be, or we tend to get stuck holding on to what was.
It’s different to look back AND let go. To really feel the loss. Grieve. Celebrate. Honor what was. And acknowledge that it (whatever it is) is no longer “alive.”
I can understand how these practices might feel flimsy when it comes to facing death straight on. (But what doesn’t feel flimsy in the face of death?)
What I know is that these practices have been so powerful for me. When I do them, they open a window to a space that is timeless and bigger than what any of us can know while we’re in a body.
The more I do them, the more time I stack up living next to that open window, and I’ve come to find when I live next to that open window, I'm better at making the most of being in a body.
Do any of these practices resonate with you?
Do you want to practice corpse pose on a regular basis? Or creatively imagine your own funeral? Or is there a small death (or series of deaths) that you feel it would be important to acknowledge?
If you find yourself curious about any of these practices and want to know more about how to engage with them, feel free to reach out to me. I’m happy to share more.
But I also encourage you to make it up for yourself. There’s no right way, just the way that feels meaningful to you.
Here's to a full life!
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