How Do You Help Someone Who is Dying?

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This is a shorter episode, recorded while my family and I accompany my mother through hospice care. I reflect on an instruction I received when I first learned to meditate: resting more fully on the out breath than the in breath. As I prepare to be with my mother at the end of her life, that instruction has taken on new meaning. I share a few experiences that have shaped how I understand death, presence, and what it means to simply be there when a loved one is dying.

Highlights:

• Why my meditation practice rests on the out breath
• The link between breathing out and letting go
• My own near-death experience and how it colors the way I am accompanying my mother
• The impossibility of knowing what is right during such moments

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Produced by Citizens of Sound

Music by: Derek O'Brien

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