Grief is not a linear process, but an oscillating experience between the pain of loss and moments of reorientation. Many people report that words reach their limits, while the body and senses remain sensitive. This is precisely where the Pan Balance method comes in: Using a handpan, you create a gentle left-right alternation – bilateral stimulation – and link it to your inner attention. The principle is related to proven psychotherapeutic methods that use bilateral stimuli to better process stressful memories and regulate the nervous system. Research in recent years has shown that such alternating stimuli can promote extinction learning – in simple terms, the unlearning of excessive fear reactions. Studies have found evidence that bilateral auditory stimulation facilitates the extinction of fear and reinforces its retrieval – a mechanism that can be significant not only in trauma but also in emotional adjustment after loss.
Why bilateral stimulation makes sense in grief
Grief binds attention, images, bodily sensations, and thoughts. In moments of "stuckness," the inner experience often feels overwhelming, rigid, or circular. Bilateral stimulation—classically through eye movements, in Pan Balance through alternately striking the handpan—acts here as a gentle cognitive dual task: It keeps part of the working memory capacity occupied while stressful content is recalled in a measured way. Meta-analyses show that such dual tasks can reduce the vividness and emotional charge of negative memories; this applies not only to eye movements but also to alternative bilateral tasks.
While grief is not the same as post-traumatic stress disorder, the overlap is greater than one might think: moments of shock, distressing images (hospital, accident, farewell), feelings of guilt and powerlessness. In clinical practice , there is therefore increasing discussion about how bilateral stimulation can be helpfully integrated into work with prolonged, dysfunctional grief. Reviews and practical reports on EMDR-based approaches for complicated grief describe a useful focus on "hot spots" of loss, current triggers, and the preparation for a life "beyond the pain." Pan Balance translates this logic into a low-threshold, self-directed form: It links inner remembering to a steady, physically self-generated left-right rhythm, which provides stability and enables measured adjustment.
Sound as a Regulator: What the Data on Music and Grief Suggest
Music isn't a "sugarcoat" for emotions, but rather a direct access to autonomic regulation. Meta-analyses and experimental studies show that music can modulate the stress axis: Before, during, or after stressful situations, cortisol levels drop more quickly, and heart rate variability—a marker of parasympathetic recovery—can be positively influenced. Such effects aren't therapy in themselves, but they shift the internal starting point in favor of processing, especially when music is used consciously, regularly, and in appropriate doses. The handpan offers special qualities for this: clear overtones, long resonances, soft transients—sound characteristics that allow for calm, unobtrusive focus and intuitively facilitate bilateral playing. In grief counseling, randomized and mixed-mode studies have found that music therapy interventions can alleviate mood and stress; systematic reviews of pre- and post-bereavement settings also report improved coping experiences among family members of seriously ill patients. This evidence justifies taking music seriously as a building block – especially when combined with mindful, structured bilateral stimulation as in Pan Balance.
From a neurobiological perspective, Pan Balance kills two birds with one stone: The regular left-right pattern promotes integration between prefrontal control networks and emotional centers, which supports flexible reappraisal; at the same time, the musical dimension dampens hyperarousal and promotes patience in the process. Experimental work on extinction learning, memory consolidation, and bilateral stimuli supports the assumption that such couplings can make memories more "detoxifiable" – without repressing them.
Application in everyday life – and clear boundaries
In practice, a simple framework has proven effective: a clear intention ("What do I want to gently connect with today?"), a brief check of inner stability, and then three to five minutes of bilateral play at a gentle pace, while allowing images, sentences, or bodily sensations to come and go. If something gets too close, reduce the pace and volume, increase the distance internally, open your eyes, and orient yourself in the space. Many mourners describe this as creating a "pendulum": approach – regulate – integrate. This is consistent with clinical recommendations that, in prolonged grief, alternate in measured doses between confrontation and reconnecting with one's own life. Specialist articles on Prolonged Grief emphasize precisely this coordination of dose, focus, and stabilization – elements that can be shaped in a self-care manner with Pan Balance, especially as a supplement to conversations or therapy.
The boundaries remain important: Severe, persistently limiting grief, traumatic experiences of loss, and intrusive images belong in professional hands. Handpan-based self-practice is no substitute for treatment. However, as a supporting component, it can promote regulation, facilitate access to memories, and strengthen the experience of self-efficacy—that quiet but momentous experience that pain is allowed to be there without determining everything, and that one's own system has tools to contain it and give it shape. For many, this is the first step toward allowing grief to transform: not disappear, but bearable, remembering, connected—and open to new life.
