When we’re in a state of deep grief, our heart physically aches.
Have you ever wondered why that is, and how to soothe your aching heart?
The vagus nerve is the master switch of our body. It's our longest cranial nerve, linking our brain to various organs. It’s also the heartbeat of our parasympathetic nervous system. This is the part of our nervous system that promotes relaxation, and is responsible for regulating many automatic functions in our body, such as heart rate, breathing, digestion and immune response.
When we are faced with deep and painful emotions, it’s as though a switch flips in our body. Instead of being in a calm and centred space where we can negotiate obstacles with strength and ease, we switch into the sympathetic nervous system. This is our fight or flight response. It’s when our body reacts to the perceived threat by shutting down and hiding, or by coming out with armour on and fists swinging.
The sympathetic nervous system is important. When we are under a genuine threat, we need to be able to flee or to fight. But this is only ever intended to be short term, and when the threat is over, we want to be able to once again return to a state of peace and tranquillity.
That’s where the parasympathetic nervous system comes in. It’s there to compensate for the sympathetic nervous system, so it can bring our body back into balance when we are no longer in danger.
When we are in a state of emotional distress, the sympathetic nervous system becomes activated, and creates a surge in hormones like adrenaline.
The vagus nerve is responsible for pulling us out of that fight or flight state.
But when the emotional distress is intense, the vagus nerve can at times become overstimulated. It’s in this state of overstimulation that we experience symptoms such as chest pain (ie. an aching heart), difficulty breathing, changes in appetite, diarrhoea, nausea and even vomiting.
So that physical pain in your chest is because of the cascade of chemical reactions in your body, as a result of these intense emotions.
Two weeks ago, this happened to me. I’m planning a trip to Bali next month, and one of the highlights of that visit is the opportunity to visit my first spiritual teacher Anand Krishna in his Ashram in Bali.
When I visited him in 2018, his parting words were an invitation. When could I return? He would love me to be a guest speaker at his Ashram.
I was so deeply touched by his invitation that it’s been on my wish list ever since. But then our world turned upside down with covid and lockdowns and years flashed by. I travelled to Bali in September 2024, but Anand Krishna was away at the time. We connected by phone, but couldn’t make that trip work.
I promised to come back again this year. And finally, the time is here. My dates are planned, and I reached out to my friend via text message to let him know I’m coming.
Then something happened. I was in my kitchen, pottering around making myself a delicious dinner. I had hit “send” on my message no more than 5 or 10 minutes earlier, when I started to get a very unsettling feeling.
Into my mind popped the thought that he was dead. It had come from nowhere, unasked and uninvited. But in the time it took me to walk around the kitchen bench to sit at my computer, I had tears running down my face. A part of me knew, before I knew.
And sure enough, when I googled my friend, I found his death notice. He had passed away on 6th Feb 2025, only 6 weeks earlier.
Every now and then we meet someone who changes our life forever.
Anand Krishna was one of those people for me.
We had met when I was 25 years old, and living in Jakarta (Indonesia). I had left my life and career in Australia behind, to follow my first husband to Indonesia for his work. He was an architect and designing the Sheraton Hotel in Surabaya. I went from a successful career in Zoology, to being an expat wife.
That was one of those sliding door moments for me, that I’ve never looked back from. I wasn’t able to work in my career, so instead I turned my head towards my spiritual interests.
My mornings were spent in quiet time, meditating and reading spiritual books. My afternoons were devoted to offering healing sessions and psychic readings for the expat community. And in the evenings, Anand Krishna came to my home to teach yoga and meditation classes.
His gentle Spirit and desire to help others was an inspiration to me, and the mantras he would sing at the beginning and end of his classes remain etched in my heart. They are something I return to whenever I need some extra peace and comfort.
The news of his passing hit me like a steam train. I rang my closest friend from Indonesia, and sobbed the news to her.
Many tears later, I realised how deeply my heart was hurting.
I’m sure you’ve had times like this yourself. Sometimes we know that a relationship is going through its death throws, or we know that a loved one is marching towards their grave.
But at other times, grief sneaks up on us in the most unexpected and shocking of ways.
It’s easy to say that grief passes with time. Whilst it’s true that every passing year brings greater ease, there are things we can do to ease the pain associated with grief.
I have one tool that is my “go to” when grief knocks at my door. It’s an essential oil blend called Joy, and it’s made by my favourite oil brand - Young Living Essential Oils.
In his early days of exploring the transformative power of essential oils, D. Gary Young (the founder of Young Living) was fascinated by the work that Bruce Tainio was doing with his radionics machine. Gary enlisted Bruce’s help to measure the frequency of various things – emotions, body systems, essential oils.
In one of those experiments, Gary measured the frequency of people in a state of joy. He then began blending individual essential oils until he formulated a blend that achieved that exact same frequency. This is the blend he called “Joy”.
Joy works directly on the heart chakra to lift our heart out of a state of grief, and into joy. And if you’re not in grief, that doesn’t matter.
It will lift you from any lower vibrational state, into one of joy.
Gary even experimented with putting an unopened Joy bottle next to people. It wasn’t touching their body. It wasn’t even opened. But the frequency of the oils in the bottle raised the person’s frequency into joy.
My first experience with Joy oil was with one of my clients. She had come to me for a psychic reading, and we got onto a particularly emotional topic for her. She was telling me about the death of a loved one, and tears were rolling down her face.
She was in such a state of emotions and grief that I became concerned. I knew the emotions would pass in time, however I had another client due to turn up in 15 minutes. What was I going to do when that person arrived, and Margot was still needing my support and nurturing to hold her in this space of safety while she worked through her emotions?
I had just received my very first bottle of Joy oil, and I was curious to see what happened. I knew it had a reputation for helping with grief….but this was my opportunity to really put it to the test.
I offered Margot a drop of Joy oil, and she put it on her heart chakra. The transformation in her was utterly profound. In a very natural and gentle way, her tears slowed down and stopped. That only look a few minutes. Five minutes later, she was smiling and laughing and back “in the world”.
The Joy oil had lifted her out of her grief and into joy. It was amazing. As Margot left just in time for my next client to arrive, she asked me if I had any information on Joy essential oil. She had felt its positive impact on her just as much as I had witnessed it.
26 years later, she is still one of the beautiful customers in my essential oils family, and still loving the oils as much as when she had that very first experience.
Caution: Joy oil does contain citrus oils as part of its blend, so wherever you place that drop of Joy oil needs to be covered from sunlight and UV light for the next 24 hours. Citrus oils are photosensitising, so they make the skin more sensitive to sunlight and UV light for that short period of time. That’s why I like to place Joy oil on my heart chakra, where it will be covered by a T-shirt if I go into the sun. Otherwise the skin ends up with something similar to a birthmark when it’s exposed to UV light, and that can take many months to fade out.
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