Dharmapunx NYC Unpacking the Four Stages of Grief
Jan 28, 2026
A deep dive into how the brain predicts and reconstructs experience, explaining why grief often returns in waves. Exploration of attachment, triggers, and a four-stage model mapping numbness, searching, collapse, and gradual rebuilding. Buddhist themes appear, including impermanence and rituals for reintegration. The episode closes with guided meditations and visualization practices to process loss.
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Perception Is Predictive, Not Passive
- Josh Korda explains perception is largely built from brain-generated templates, not raw sensory input.
- This predictive processing causes us to experience a stable world despite incomplete sensory data.
Past Emotions Reappear In The Present
- Korda describes the right hemisphere reinstating past emotional states that shape present feelings.
- These reinstatements explain sudden anxiety or anger with no clear present cause.
Grief Splits Feeling And Knowing
- Loss breaks predictive models so the brain keeps expecting the absent attachment figure to be present.
- This split between right-hemisphere feeling and left-hemisphere knowing creates persistent disorientation.