On a recent Saturday evening, the scene was serene inside Tac-tile Mountain, a carefully curated small shop in Pasadena. Meditation cushions are spread on the concrete floor. A sea of white candles is flickering by the window. And then, the restaurant next door started playing Rihanna’s “Umbrella”.
The six of us gathered inside laughed nervously. We were excited and a little hesitant. After all, we were there to reflect on our own death.
Tac tile mountain is hosting “Death Reflections,” a two-hour, $55 workshop led by Marifel Catalig, a trained death doula and breathing instructor. it was advertised on Instagram is “a method of guided breathing meditation that contemplates death in its many forms.” The description ends there, so no one knows exactly what will happen.
Entering the workshop, I hoped that spending an hour reflecting on my inevitable death would help ease my fear of death. What I didn’t anticipate was that I would walk out with deep gratitude for all the ordinary, messy, sparkling lives I’ve been fortunate enough to live so far.
This overwhelming feeling of gratitude is not unusual after a lengthy death drill, said Ines Testonia social psychologist who directs a course in death and end-of-life studies at the University of Padova in Italy.
“What I have seen over the past 15 years is that knowing one has to die allows people to value life and feel more grateful for what life allows us to do and enjoy,” she said.
Catalig, 40, in a white shirt and loose jeans, greeted us at the door, then told us to find a seat. After lighting the candles placed at the top of each of our cushions, we began to move gently to relieve the stress of the day, then focused on our senses — paying close attention to what we could see, hear, taste, feel, and smell.
The meditations on death are very diverse. In the Buddhist tradition, the practice maraṇasati, or mindfulness of death, is designed to remind practitioners that death may come the next morning, their next meal, or even their next breath, and encourage them to act on it. Another Buddhist practice focuses on detailed visualization of the final breakdown of the body to help relinquish attachment to the material world.
Catalig once attended a death meditation session where participants were wrapped in a white cloth to simulate the shroud they might wear after death. Another time, she led a live funeral workshop where everyone was asked to write a eulogy for themselves and she read it aloud to the group.
The meditation I attended was simpler. The main focus is on the kind of life-review that many people do before they die.
Accompanied by a wordless playlist that was more evocative than unpleasant, Catalig asked us to imagine our earliest memories and consider where we were, who was there, how we felt, what it smelled like, and what sounds we heard. We do the same for childhood, pre-adolescence, adolescence, early adulthood, etc.
As she spoke, memories of the many lives I had lived flashed through my mind. Most of them are mundane, but they make me feel gentle. There, I was playing with the Fisher-Price barn on the green carpet, walking to school in my new saddle shoes, cycling on the sidewalk with my sister. I saw middle school sleepovers and dances, late summer nights wandering the country, bored and aimless.
No one has lived your life but you. All your experiences, everything that brought you here, belongs to you.
— Marifel Catalig, breathing instructor
I’ve seen scenes from my adult life before having kids, my life as a new parent, my life with young children, and finally my life now – my husband, my teenage sons, my co-workers, my friends. All the different and different lives I’ve lived.
“No one lives your life but you,” says Catalig. “All your experiences, everything that brought you here, belongs to you.”
Then the music turns and she asks us to imagine that we are near death. Our vision fades, our hearing becomes more muffled. The food wasn’t as good as it used to be and we ate less. In my mind, I felt myself receding from the immediacy of life – a gray fog between me and the world. As my experience of the world became more muted, I felt less afraid to leave it.
Then Catalig made us fantasize about our final days. Who will visit us? What will they say? And then we visualize our last breath. “What do you want to inhale?” she asked. “And what do you want to exhale?”
We imagine hovering over our lifeless bodies, what they will look like and who will take care of them. For a brief moment, we imagine what might happen next.
In a society that rarely encourages thinking about death and dying, many of us respond to our innate fear of death with denial, says Testoni. Taking the time to visualize and imagine our own death can help us deal with that fear effectively.
“Contemplation makes us realize that we are afraid of something we do not know,” she said. “Knowing is not knowing, but knowing a lot is very reassuring.”
When the meditation was over, Catalig invited us to share our experiences.
One participant said meditation helped her reframe the times in her life when she thought she was a bad person. Instead, she sees herself with more compassion. Another participant said that she feels that her higher self has been with her the whole time and is still with her. This gives her great comfort.
As for me, I walked out of the store in high spirits. I’m less afraid of death, but mostly I’m glad to be alive.
If you’re curious to try one of Catalig’s death meditations, you can find her future offerings. Instagram pageor contact her through her website BreathtoDeath.com.
