By Headspace
Facing our own mortality can be uncomfortable and, for some, distressing. But when we befriend death—when we approach death mindfully—its force doesn’t necessarily derail us in the same way.
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CLEAR ALL
To help you learn how to meditate and integrate it into your life, SELF asked meditation experts some of your most common meditation questions.
In most modern cultures, it’s common for people to feel uneasy about death. We express this discomfort by avoiding conversations on the topic and lowering our voices when speaking of the dead and dying.
Studies of dying patients who seek a hastened death have shown that their reasons often go beyond physical ones like intractable pain or emotional ones like feeling hopeless.
My Feb. 5 column, “A Heartfelt Appeal for a Graceful Exit,” prompted a deluge of information and requests for information on how people too sick to reap meaningful pleasure from life might be able to control their death.
Though I wince at the redundancy, funeral “pre-planning” is a phenomenon receiving increased attention, and a growing number of Web-based guides tell how to go about it. As www.funerals.org puts it: “Funeral planning starts at home.
Is a “good death” just an oxymoron? Or can the experience of death be far more positive—an opportunity for growth and meaning?
Meditation is very handy for adapting to challenging situations.
The fear of death and dying is quite common, and most people fear death to varying degrees. To what extent that fear occurs and what it pertains to specifically varies from one person to another.
In the past, I’ve felt kind of foolish every time I’ve tried morning meditation. I kind of tried to keep with a regular practice but it just wasn’t working for me.
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Sean Illing and Frank Ostaseski discuss what Ostaseski has learned from the conversations he’s had with the dying.