On this page
Grief is not a problem with a solution and nothing here treats it. What a practice can offer is company for an hour, and somewhere to put attention that is not the effort of holding yourself together.
What this practice is
The sessions ask very little. There is no work to do, nothing to get better at, and no suggestion that you should be further along than you are. That is deliberate: most of what makes grief exhausting is the management of it around other people, and the practice is time without that.
Attention rests somewhere simple and the feeling is allowed to be whatever size it is. Grief does not come at a steady rate, and a session may be flat, or may not be, and neither is the practice working or failing.
The stages people expect are worth setting aside. Grief does not proceed in an order, it recurs, and the expectation of progress is itself a source of distress when the fourth month is worse than the second. Nothing in this practice assumes a direction.
The tradition treats loss as a thing to be met rather than resolved and does not promise it will ease. What people commonly report is that having somewhere to put an hour helps when nothing helps. Any claim beyond that would need evidence nobody has.
When to use it
Use it when you want to stop performing. Grief is heavily managed in front of other people, and a session is an hour where nothing is being held.
It suits the ordinary middle of grieving more than the first days, where practice of any kind is usually beyond reach and should be.
It is not for making yourself feel it, and it is not for making yourself stop. Both are ways of taking charge of something that does not respond to being taken charge of.
The sessions
Moving Through Grief, one practice at three lengths, 9 to 28 minutes. Every session in this collection needs Premium. Four other meditation collections have a free session in them, and the free tier covers twelve guided sessions across the app.
| Length | Tier |
|---|---|
| 9 min | Premium |
| 18 min | Premium |
| 28 min | Premium |
How long to practise for
Take whatever length you can be still for. Grief is depleting and there is no version of this where a longer session counts for more.
The longest one is worth having available for the days when the feeling wants room, and is a poor default for the days when it does not.
The general version of this, and what a longer session actually adds, is in How Long to Meditate For: Choosing a Session Length.
How to use it
Practise somewhere private with nothing scheduled after. Being interrupted mid-grief is worse than not starting.
Let tears happen. They are common in these sessions and they do not need anything from you.
Stop whenever you want to, without treating it as giving up. Leaving a session early is a legitimate use of it.
Do not practise every day out of duty. Grief already has enough obligation attached.
What usually goes wrong
Expecting it to help. Most sessions will not, in the sense of feeling better afterwards. What it offers is an hour with the feeling that is not spent managing it, and that is the whole of it.
Measuring progress. Grief recurs rather than proceeds, and a practice used to track improvement turns every bad week into evidence of failing at it.
Using it to avoid people. Solitary practice is easy to prefer when company is hard. If it is replacing people rather than sitting alongside them, that is worth noticing.
Starting too soon. In the first days almost nobody can practise anything, and there is no benefit forgone by not trying.
Somewhere to put an hour
PanchPrana offers this without any promise attached, because grief does not respond to promises. It sits alongside the practices for loneliness and for anger, which grief usually arrives with.
Who should take care
Grief is not an illness and this is not a treatment for it. What follows is about the places where grieving and something needing help overlap.
If you live with PTSD or complex trauma, or if the loss was sudden, violent or witnessed, do not work with this alone. Sustained attention can bring back the event rather than the feeling, and that needs a therapist rather than a recording.
Grief that has not shifted at all after many months, that stops you functioning, or that comes with hopelessness, is worth seeing a doctor about. Prolonged grief is recognised and treatable, and reaching for help is not a failure to grieve properly.
If you have thoughts of harming yourself, contact a doctor or an emergency service now rather than practising. Stop any session that leaves you worse rather than steadier, and come back to the room and to other people.
See our full Health & Safety Disclaimer.
Common questions
Will this help me get over it?
No, and that is not what grief does. It offers an hour where the feeling is allowed to be whatever it is, which is worth something and is not a treatment.
Is it normal to cry through the whole session?
Yes, and it is also normal to feel nothing at all. Neither says anything about how you are grieving.
What about the stages of grief?
They are a poor description of how grief actually goes. It recurs rather than progresses, and expecting an order makes a bad month feel like a failure.
How soon after a loss can I start?
Whenever you can be still, and not before. There is nothing lost by waiting weeks or months.
Should I be doing this every day?
Only if you want to. Grief carries enough obligation without a practice adding to it.
