A Gift for the Dying
Alex de Angelis, Holistic Healer & Wellness Witch, shares her experience on holding space for those who are passing on from this life, mortality and the connection we share with those who have passed. As Alex discusses, death is often treated as a taboo topic and yet is an inevitable part of our life cycle, as is the grief that follows.
The two most significant events in a person’s life are when they’re born and when they die. We celebrate the first event every year, yet the second one seems to be something we avoid speaking about for the entirety of our lives. We sweep it under the carpet and view it with a heart full of fear. It becomes this thing we push aside.
It’s hard to face the question of our own mortality, let alone that of those we hold dear. Death is heart hollowing and unacceptable especially when we just don’t understand it; if you’ve experienced grief and its long bumpy road then you know exactly what I’m talking about. Having little or no spiritual foundation means dealing with death can be the hardest experience of all and inflict deep, weeping wounds.
As an energy healer with a calling to enhance the lives of others, death was really hard to accept when I first worked with the gravely ill. Yet as a medium, I’ve dealt with death from a completely different angle, one of continuation where messages of peace and resolve are delivered from beyond the veil.
I’ve come to learn that healing has its rightful place in the process of dying. Healers follow a calling to improve the quality of life but I’ve come to realise that the true nature of healing relies on the acknowledgement of all parts of the sacred cycle of life and that includes death too. In fact, holistic healing by its very essence is holding space for grief in all of its facets. Death in both a physical and symbolic sense is inevitable and the more I experience it, the more the fear of finality vanishes. The ‘end’ is a worldly illusion.
If you’re not sure where you stand on life after death or you find yourself really very anxious about the subject in general, I want to share this with you; if you’ve ever lost someone very close to you and been extremely aware that your connection still exists, that’s because it does. Connection is energy based and it doesn’t or can’t suddenly stop. We’re all made of energy and energy can never be destroyed, it can only ever change form, this is fact.
When we go, our souls, or in more relatable terms, our consciousness, is released from our tired bodies and exists in another form. Exactly how or where it goes remains the greatest mystery of life, but at least this idea lends us hope.
I’ve worked with people in their last days and in their final hours. The greatest act we can carry out for them is healing, not to extend life when it’s their time to go (although this can also happen), but to give them enough support and resolve to let go peacefully.
Energy healing at the time of death is very much akin to soul midwifery, offering palliative and spiritual care to the dying and their relatives. It is readily welcomed in hospices, where the peaceful effects of healing hands give much-valued respite to those in pain.
Where dying has become so medicalised, holding space, even from a distance, can remind us of forgotten vigils and sacred rites, helping those in the liminal stages of existence gently relax into the unknown awash with love and comfort. By facilitating the death process, healing practitioners aid the soul's natural progression; it helps the soul return home with ease.
With energy healing we are able to bend time. Theoretical physicists suggest that time as we know it is an illusion. Our perceived reality is just a complex network of events onto which we project the idea of past, present and future. Timelines are a perception of the memory. Everything that has ever been and will ever happen is happening right now.
As science catches up with our understanding of the quantum realm, there is one thing we do know; we are all made of energy, thus we are all connected. There is an interconnectedness and influence between energies which surpasses the need for physical presence. Einstein called this phenomenon “spooky action at a distance”.
With energy healing, the very intention to connect to another at a different point in ‘time’ and in a different place means we can administer a treatment to anyone, anywhere at any time. This is extremely comforting for grieving relatives where the idea of a traumatic or lonely death is a continual point of upset.
Holding space for the dying is not for everyone. An impermeable spiritual foundation is key, or at least, a deep knowing that there is so much more than this experience we call life. Although we cling onto the hope that life can be extended, the most valuable gift we can give to the dying and to their loved ones is a last act of kindness - holding space for the soul’s transition towards the light.
By Alex de Angelis, Holistic Healer & Wellness Witch
Instagram: @reiki_and_rocks
Website: https://www.reikiandrocks.co.uk/