Elephants are known to have funerals, to grieve the deaths of their loved ones for prolonged periods. I also read somewhere long ago that they stomp as part of their grieving rituals.
I like to think that they stomp because they’re letting everyone around them know that they’re grieving, that they need extra care and extra space. By stomping they’re alerting the earth, the stones, the trees, the waterways that they need help through their grief.
Perhaps its that they’re honoring their beloved dead and their grief by bringing their wide foot into contact with the ground… not to go anywhere, but rather to make some noise and stimulate their body through vibration…
Movement takes something that is static, a noun if you will (grief) and makes it actionable, a verb (mourning). One of my favorite definitions of grieving, which I learned from that grief literacy course with “Being Here, Human”, is that mourning consists of four pillars:
movement
sound
storytelling
community
So if we stomp we are moving, if we stomp we are making sound, if we stomp we are telling the plants and earthly beings around us that we have something difficult or sorrowful going on, and if we stomp we are asking the plants, fungi, and animals around us to support us actively (or passively by giving us grace and space).
So stomping like an elephant and allowing our grief to become a movement in this way- becomes a full bodied experience of mourning. Give it a try and let me know how it feels in your body?
Video Credits:
I originally made this video as a bonus resource for my self-guided mourning ritual bundle. Check it out if you’re in need of support processing acute or lingering grief about the death transition of a loved one (human or companion animal), ecological grief, or the death of a circumstance (i.e. relationship, job, home).
Mourning singer FayePatrick Kennedy created the score for this video.
Photo Credits
I had the pleasure of meeting this elephant in a wild sanctuary, in Thailand, their eyes and gentle wrinkles say it all, yes?
(Unidentified) mushroom fruiting bodies I met in the woods of Maine long ago.
Burdock Chocolate Mushroom Elixir:
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