By exploring mortality with curiosity, we challenge the pervasive norms of avoidance and fear, replacing them with emotional awareness and a deeper understanding of life’s purpose and interconnectedness. Below, we share intentional, creative practices for building a conscious relationship with death and understanding its role in our lives.
Image: Capela dos Ossos (Chapel of Bones), Évora, Portugal
Consciously confronting our own mortality allows us to cultivate emotional mindfulness and sensitivity. By facing our fears and exploring death, we develop the inner calm and strength needed to navigate life’s most challenging transitions and all the "little deaths" that can be found in our daily lives.
When we have explored our own relationship with death, we can show up fully and without pretense. This allows us to hold space with authenticity and vulnerability, fostering trust and deeper connections with others. In effect, our peace with mortality encourages openness and acceptance in those around us.
When we are comfortable with death, we counter societal death-phobia and naturally create space for others to discuss it without fear or shame. This can help us have important conversations about end-of-life decisions, legacy work, and the profound act of letting go.
Death is not the enemy; it is an integral and sacred aspect of existence. Befriending death allows us to recognize it as a teacher of profound truths with opportunities for growth, connection, and transformation.
Are you curious what befriending death can look like in daily life? The following practices provide thoughtful opportunities to explore mortality with intention and reverence:
Yoga Nidra, or yogic sleep, is a powerful guided meditation that gently reflects the process of dying by guiding us to release awareness of the physical body with gratitude and ease. In this practice:
This practice of surrender deepens our capacity to accept the process of death as a natural, peaceful transition.
Fear often stems from the unknown. By learning about the practical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of death, we replace uncertainty with understanding. Death education can include:
Knowledge empowers us to approach mortality with confidence, countering the societal tendencies to deny and fear death.
The breath is both the essence of life and the final act we release as we die. By deepening our connection to the breath, we practice the art of letting go:
One of the most impactful ways to befriend death is through service in the community. Volunteering with hospice organizations or sitting vigil with those nearing the end of life offers a direct, compassionate experience of mortality. By being present for others during their transition, we gain precious insights into death's realities and deepen our sense of connection and purpose.
Plant and animal medicines have been used for millennia to expand human consciousness and connect us to the metaphysical realms. For example, indigenous cultures have long incorporated sacred plants like ayahuasca and peyote in ceremonial practices to foster spiritual insights and confront mortality. Similarly, animals such as the toad (through its secretions) have provided consciousness-expanding experiences that offer glimpses into life beyond the physical realm. When approached with care, support, and reverence, these medicines can reveal how fragile and miraculous this life is.
For those who prefer non-substance-based exploration, shamanic journeying through practices like drumming, Holotropic breath work, and intention-setting provides a powerful means of accessing spiritual insights. These methods allow individuals to symbolically explore the afterlife and gain comfort with the unknown.
Dreams can serve as a bridge between the conscious mind and the mysteries of death. By exploring your dreams with curiosity, you may uncover symbolic insights about transformation and the afterlife. Practices for death-dream exploration include:
This dream work fosters a sense of curiosity about the mysteries that lie beyond physical life.
Befriending death is not a single event but a lifelong journey.
Through intentional practices like Yoga Nidra, plant medicine, breathwork, death education, and community service, we foster reverence for life's impermanence, cultivate emotional awareness, and deepen our understanding of death as an integral part of the human experience. In doing so, we learn that death is not merely an end but a teacher—a companion that invites us to live and love authentically.
Are you ready to take the first steps toward befriending death? Breathe. Reflect. Embrace the practices that speak to you, and trust the wisdom that death offers.
Image: A Woman Divided into Two, Representing Life and Death - Austria, Germany, Switzerland, or North Italy; 1790-1820 Oil on Canvas.
ANTIDOTES TO FEAR OF DEATH
by Rebecca Elson
Sometimes as an antidote
To fear of death,
I eat the stars.
Those nights, lying on my back,
I suck them from the quenching dark
Til they are all, all inside me,
Pepper hot and sharp.
Sometimes, instead, I stir myself
Into a universe still young,
Still warm as blood:
No outer space, just space,
The light of all the not yet stars
Drifting like a bright mist,
And all of us, and everything
Already there
But unconstrained by form.
And sometime it’s enough
To lie down here on earth
Beside our long ancestral bones:
To walk across the cobble fields
Of our discarded skulls,
Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis,
Thinking: whatever left these husks
Flew off on bright wings.