How Meditation Helps You Heal After a Breakup

There can be tremendous pain when we make the decision, or somebody else makes it for us, to end the relationship we had with them. From a subtle energy system perspective, it makes a lot of sense why somebody would be in pain. We form emotional connections with each other that can cause tremendous pain when we cut those emotional cords after a breakup. It’s the connections we make with one another that can cause the most problems when we break apart.

So there’s one person in the relationship, the other person in the relationship, and then the connection between the two. There’s the first person, the second person, and then there’s the “us.” And it’s the “us” that can create a lot of pain when it’s torn apart or separated. Because the “us”—that energy between one person and the other person, the thing that’s we, us, ours, unity—that’s been broken, and that can feel very uncomfortable. 

In a meditation practice, we have the ability to bring healing into the “us” and the “we,” to consciously dissolve the “we” and take out much of the pain that can arise when it dissolves on its own. So if the two of you—whoever the two of you are—have known each other for a very long time, that can be very painful when that separates. Maybe you’ve known this person for a long time, and you’ve just grown in different directions. Whatever the reason, there’s a tear and a pull, and we bring light and healing and understanding and compassion into the space around us and into the “us,” whatever it was that you and the other person shared.

What we want to do is clearly cut the energetic cords and connections we had with the other person and give ourselves the opportunity to be autonomous in our own space. Once somebody pulls out, sometimes there’s an urge in the being to go out and have somebody else fill that space. We’re not conscious that we’re doing it, but it feels very uncomfortable to have that emptiness. But the emptiness is really space. 

So we fill the space with our own energy and essence, with love, compassion, healing, and light. We can use colored light. We can do anything to bring healing into the energy field, clear the cords and connections, make new choices, and be autonomous. When we do all this intentionally in a meditation practice, it can help ease the pain of our breakups. Cutting these cords also helps the other person as well. It gives both of you an opportunity to heal and recover from the breakup.

This is also true when we leave an organization, a group, or a school. Maybe you say, “This just isn’t working for me.” Either you’ve grown, you’ve changed, or they’re going in a direction you don’t want to go in, so you go a different direction. There’s pain. There’s no longer an “us,” and we are no longer part of the collective unity. You might be all alone. You might be in another group now, but you might not be.

So when we do meditations to address that space—the loneliness, the isolation—actually, that’s solitude. The emptiness? No, actually, that’s space. We just have to reframe it. “I’m all alone in the world.” Actually, you’re not. When we become aware that part of what’s creating the pain is that for the last five years, ten years, or two months—whatever length of time it’s been—you’ve been flowing energy and attention in the direction of that person.

You had a friendship, a romance, a marriage—whatever it was, there was an us, a we, an ours. All of that is gone. There’s a loss there. And even if it was your decision, there’s still a loss. When we see it that way, we become aware that we’ve lost something. And even if that loss was intentional, and even if we know it had to happen, there can still be pain, because not only are you letting go of the person, in a lot of ways, you’re letting go of who you were when you were with that person.

So if this were a marriage and now you’re getting divorced, you are no longer missus or mister. You’re not that person anymore. A lot of our identities get caught up in the other person. Another reason why it’s painful when we get divorced. Another reason we want to meditate and be aware of the loss is to help us move through it.

I’ve worked with people before who were sad that their marriage ended, but when they looked at it, they realized, “I really just didn’t like the person I was with. They changed in ways that didn’t work for me. So I know I didn’t want to be with them. So why am I so sad?” It’s the loss of a dream, the loss of us. It’s really a deep letting go—not just of the other person, but also of who you were when you were with that person.

You might carry a lot of the same qualities into the next relationship, but you’re not going to be exactly the same person, because the next person you’re in a dynamic with won’t be reflecting your energy back in exactly the same way. So change is going to happen.

And if this was the other person’s idea and not your own, then you have not only the fact that you’re feeling the tearing of the “us” and feeling the space as emptiness in the moment of the pain, but also that the other person has determined they no longer want to be with you. So then it wasn’t even your idea. You have to deal with that pain on top of it.

But you can address that in meditation. You can really nurture that and reframe it. When one person doesn’t want to be with you anymore, for whatever reason—whether you’re no longer their best friend or romantic partner—you have to trust, somewhere inside, that means that person was no longer appropriate for you. And even if you thought they really were, they must not be, because they’re not there now. And that has to become okay with us.

That space, that gap—well, maybe it’s just you, whether it’s for a day, a week, a month, a year, or ten years. You don’t have to be in another relationship, platonic or romantic. You can gain a lot of that within yourself, and you can nurture the hurt and pain of losing what you had.

And it’s not that you put up some defense system and then you’re all alone forever. Now you learn how to self-nurture and self-care. You learn to be autonomous, to be okay alone, and to know that alone is solitude, not loneliness.

When we make these shifts, we feel better about ourselves. We feel whole, and we tend to have much more balanced relationships because we’re not seeking something from the other person that we can only really give ourselves. When someone else gives us something we feel we really need, we become dependent on that person. In our meditation practice, we can see that we might be doing that. 

You become dependent on them to provide the emotions, energy, and support we’re really meant to cultivate for ourselves. We’re meant to be mostly self-sufficient, accepting and giving the occasional hand up: support, encouragement, instruction, guidance, and assistance, while at the same time always cultivating within ourselves. And we do that in a meditation practice.

I encourage this because I really want to help you get back to yourself. When we’re dealing with a loss like that, we have to give ourselves time to mourn. We understand that we’re mourning. We want to observe the mourning and what we’re feeling. As we observe what we’re feeling and what we’re thinking about what we’re feeling, we can change the way we’re thinking, because that generally changes the way we’re feeling.

I have a suggestion for you when you’re going through heartbreak: let your heart break open. Just let it open and let all that pain that’s in there out. The heartbreak of this last relationship that didn’t work, and the twenty other relationships before it that didn’t work—including the one with mom and dad, if you have to. Let the pain out. We don’t have to sustain it, maintain it, or carry it around. And sometimes during our heartbreaks, we’re not only feeling the heartbreak from this relationship, but it also dovetails into the heartbreak of the last relationship, the one before that, and the last time we tried to have a friendship, which didn’t go well. There can be pain upon pain upon pain, which can be a huge opportunity in a meditation practice to access the deep root and let yourself heal.

It’s going to be uncomfortable when a relationship ends. If it’s not uncomfortable in the moment, it may be because you’re not dealing with the emotion, you’ve already dealt with it, or you will deal with it later. So it’s either suppressed, simply not there because you’re not capable, or you’ve already dealt with it or will deal with it. But if you can deal with it in the moment, that might give you the best results: move through it a little faster, a little more intentionally, and give yourself as much opportunity to heal, grow, and get clearer.

If your last friend didn’t have the level of integrity you need in a friend, you just get clearer and clearer about what it is that you’re choosing in friends. If that’s important to you, let that be forefront. Whatever is important to you, keep it at the forefront. And if somebody else is no longer there, that just creates space for the right person who is going to align with you now—the right friend for who you’re becoming and who you are now, or the right romantic relationship for you, whatever that may be, somebody you want to grow with. Whatever that is, only you know what that is.

So we can use meditation as a tool to help us deal with the emotional ups and downs of a breakup, empowering us to take the steps and make the changes we want, and opening the way to something even greater.

We can do that in a meditation practice. We can give ourselves back to ourselves. We can love ourselves. We can get very clear on what we’re manifesting. And we can heal. We can do all that in a meditation practice.

Come join in on any of the meditations. I’m actually going to suggest doing the ones that help you work with your emotions—meditations for your emotions—and the one to clear your aura and your minor chakras. Those are the two meditation programs I would really recommend when you’re in the middle of a breakup.

The one to clear your aura and your minor chakras will really help you with those cords and those connections and the “us” and the “we” and the energy aspect of a relationship. And working with your emotions can really help you move through them, so you don’t get stuck. It can also help you access deeper emotions this breakup is triggering in you, move through them, and move to higher emotional states so you can feel better and better and better.