Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by
narrow domestic walls.
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms toward perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action--
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

~Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali

Today is not the first time that my practice has calmed a crisis. Literally stopped it in its tracks.
Practice is a path, and I chose wisely.

Broken hearts are some of the hardest wounds to heal. It doesn't matter if broken by death, separation, or some kind of betrayal. It's a pain that eats you alive from the inside out and can't be avoided. It's deeper than any comfort can reach. Clinging to the pieces and trying to force them back together only prolongs the pain. There's no pill to swallow to dull the ache. Being self-destructive only compounds things.

Just about the only thing to do is be with it in all its shifting agony.

I cried tidal waves until I felt empty. I was shaking. I paced back and forth through the house. I took a long hot shower. I wrapped myself in cotton from feet to head. Turned on some music and got on the mat.

I found myself standing barefoot on a chunk of Vermont.
Outside, mountains and pine trees weighed down with snow.
Beneath me, another version of the forest outside, hardwood, firm and smooth.
All around my shelter, the same blank shimmer, sky the same color as the frosted ground.

Within, a similar dullness: flat, dead versions of life; a clean slate frozen in time.

There was no sense in sitting in what was already too still.

I stood.

Consciously expanded.
Emptied and released.
Conjured up some warmth.
Suppled myself.

Softly,

I planted my feet like a hero.
I praised.
I bowed.
I opened.
I embraced.

Finally, I laid down.

Reabsorbed.

The best cure for a broken heart is to wrap yourself around it like you would the person you wish you could hold.

Really it's that reflection that needs restoring.

The only medicine for loss of love is more love.