‘When I say we are “intervulnerable,” I mean we suffer together, whether consciously or unconsciously. Albert Einstein called the idea of a separate self an “optical delusion of consciousness.” Martin Luther King Jr. said that we are all connected in an “inescapable web of mutuality.” There’s no way out, though we try to escape by armoring ourselves against pain and in the process diminishing our lives and our consciousness. But in our intervulnerability is our salvation, because awareness of the mutuality of suffering impels us to search for ways to heal the whole, rather than encase ourselves in a bubble of denial and impossible individualism. At this point in history, it seems that we will either destroy ourselves or find a way to build a sustainable life together.’-Miriam Greenspan, MEd, LMHC
The weight of awareness in these times of polycrisis is immense. Though I have been thinking about, working with, and feeling through collective or ecological grief – the pain of a suffering world stemming from our interconnection – for years now, I have never before known these depths. And so many of us are together in these deep waters. Take heart: We are not alone.
I am a Geography and Environmental Studies college lecturer, regularly teaching courses such as ‘Global Awareness’ and ‘Emotions in the Anthropocene.’ For the last decade-and-a-half I have been studying and teaching our intersecting socio-ecological crises rooted in a violent colonial-capitalist culture of supremacy and oppression. As I teach these heavy topics, I watch my students experience a wide range of emotions – shock, anger, confusion, anxiety, numbness, grief – and of course I feel them all myself. I have come to center this emotional response as a crucial part of expanded awareness that can show us what we love, what we care about, and what we are called to protect. Grief ultimately is inseparable from love, and it’s love that can guide our most powerful action.
We all have a role to play in these times, and, importantly, we don’t have to play all the roles. If we try to do everything, we’ll end up doing nothing, burnt out and overwhelmed. It is vital that we find our own authentic and even joyful path, and that comes with the willingness to feel what is so deeply painful. Without support, practices, and frameworks of understanding collective and ecological grief, this can be very difficult, if not impossible. If we find ourselves closing off our hearts in these times, it’s understandable. The pain is deep. Be gentle with yourself.
For me, I have found yoga as a relational, somatic, and embodied practice with ancient roots in India and parts of Africa to offer such a supportive framework. When I first began regularly practicing yoga more than a decade ago, I found a place to feel, to process, and to move the emotions that were congesting and hardening within me as I delved into the heartbreaking realities of the world. Through my breath, through physical poses, through mindfulness and meditation, through community, and through ethical precepts like ahimsa (nonviolence), satya (truthfulness), and aparigrapha (non-clinging), I found a radical pathway to help cultivate my capacity to stay with what is (not the same as apathy), to deepen in my compassion for self and others, and to support me in nourishing my heart so that I can keep it open.
And the truth is, we don’t have to keep our hearts wide open all the time. It’s too much, it’s too painful, the waters are too deep. In Sanskrit there’s a word: Spanda. It means the continual pulsation of the universe, of all life, constant cycles of expansion and contraction. When we really look, we realize that everything is moving in this way. The seasons. The moon. Life cycles. Night and day. Our breath. Right now, as you read this, your body itself is expanding (inhaling) and contracting (exhaling). At the time of my writing the moon is waxing, expanding into its fullness. The seasons are also contracting as the days get shorter and we move more into the darker, yin times of the year.
In order to expand, in order to keep our hearts open and be nourished enough to feel and to bear witness and to take aligned action, we have to also contract – softly, without hardening or getting stuck. We have to turn inward, find support, rest, restore. From this replenished place, we can again turn toward, open to, and move through the heavy emotions and the hard realities of these times. From this re-sourced place, we can return to the work of justice and collective liberation required in these times, however that may look for you.
It is crucial to also remember that the pain we feel for the world and other beings is not only heavy and overwhelming, it is also radical and transformational. If we were truly separate, isolated, hyper-independent beings, as the dominant culture tells us, why would we feel the sorrows of the world? If we were truly greedy, self-interested beings, as the narrative of ‘human nature’ goes, why then would we care? Why are so many people around the world standing up against genocide, ecocide, injustice? Collective grief shows us in a deep and embodied way that we are conscious, that we are compassionate, and that we are truly interconnected. There is no separation. None of us can be free until all of us are free.
In any case, the weight of collective grief requires continual metabolization, continual processing. When we move it through us, we can transform. When we move it through us, some kind of magic happens. I see this not only in the Restorative Yoga classes and private sessions that I offer, but also in the Community Grief Circles that I regularly facilitate. These intimate spaces allow us to sink into the support of community, to be vulnerable together – what psychotherapist Miriam Greenspan calls intervulnerability. Grieving in community within a compassionate and trauma-conscious container allows us to show up in an authentic way, to feel safe enough to tell the truth about how we really are. Communal grieving allows us to metabolize our grief in a way that we can’t access when we grieve alone, in a way that our ancestors knew, that our bones recall.
May we remember that not only are these times thick with grief, they are also ripe with liberatory possibility. May we remember that the deep activism we are called toward can be joyful, must be loving, should fill us up rather than burn us out. May we remember, in the words of Octavia Raheem, that ‘grief and joy are sacred twins.’ And may we remember that we need each other, that we are interrelated, and that the Earth is still holding us. May we remember that we are being held.
