A guide to yoga for grief
This is not a step-by-step guide. Grief is not linear. It’s a take-what-you-need anytime kind of guide.
This guide is not intended to “fix” or “heal” your grief. Grief is natural, and inevitable. This is a guide to support you in your grief.
Not only is every loss different, but each individual will experience grief in their own way.
I have some practices and things that have helped me, that I would like to share in case they help you sometime, too.
In early April I lost my best friend & Yoga Dog, Bonnie, who you may have heard snoring during my recorded relaxations, or seen flopping around on screen in my videos.
I know not everyone feels the same way I do about dogs, but for me the grief has been every bit as real as when I lost my parents, or human friends. Different, but just as real.
For anyone who has also grieved for an animal as a family member, you might draw comfort from this article:
The psychology of grief: Why losing a pet dog or cat is like losing a family member.
I've lost a step-daughter, a nephew, both parents and some close friends, and every grief journey has been unique.
Here are some practices that have helped me…
Practices that are steadying and grounding for the initial shock of loss.
When my step-daughter died, I was in deep shock for a couple of weeks. I needed my yoga practice like a drowning person needs a life raft.
I found myself just practising Virabhadrasana 2 (Warrior pose) over and over again, because it helped me to feel like I had a centre. It helped me to feel like there was still a ground under my feet.
One morning I had the strange & comforting sense of not only the Warrior pose I was in at that moment, but all the times I'd practised it before; as if all those previous Warrior poses, all those moments in time were lined up behind me like a row of reflections in a mirror, and they were all holding me up.
When I remember this, I realise how important it is to already have a practice, when tragedy strikes. Is there anything you already practice that makes you feel strong, grounded and centered?
It could be something very simple and familiar, that you can rely on when you need it. A friend took me out for simple walk on the beach during the first week, and that in itself was so comfortingly grounding, I will never forget it.
Here’s a 20 minute video, suitable for beginners, (and featuring my lovely elderly grey-muzzled girl) with the Warrior (Virabhadrasana) poses I regularly include in my practice:
Practices of deep rest, for when the reality of loss starts to sink in.
After the initial shock, we may feel completely drained of energy.
After every funeral that I've organised or has been important to me, I've felt mentally & physically exhausted and at that stage, there's just no way I could stand up and hold a warrior pose.
This is when I rely on restorative yoga.
Although I love guided relaxation (yoga nidra) at all other times, sometimes grief consumes our minds so much that it's impossible to concentrate on a voice, or it feels somehow distracting to hear a voice.
At these times, I find the silence of restorative yoga much more soothing, and I use specific poses to support and soften my body.
Here’s a pose I know I can rely on to keep my heart soft. It relieves heaviness, while honouring the need for deep rest. It also helps relieve that breath-squashing “elephant foot on the chest” feeling that can happen with grief.
You can use a couple of pillows if you don’t have a yoga bolster, and any kind of blanket you can fold.
Practices of ritual for finding meaning & remembering
While I’ve been to some very heart-felt, meaningful funerals, often our modern rituals around death have left me feeling hollow; narrated by someone who didn’t know my loved one, in language that feels distanced and artificial. Maybe it’s also all the small talk afterwards, which being neurodivergent I find draining at the best of times, let alone when my heart is in pieces.
Anyway, in my experience, it’s once the busyness of organising a funeral is over that the complex journey of grief really begins.
It might even be months after the funeral, when everyone seems to have moved on, getting on with ordinary life, that grief is hardest for some of us. The need to have ritual & remembrance, times to honour the loved one definitely doesn’t end with the funeral.
Rituals for meaning & remembering can be as simple as moments of mindfulness.
I have a friend who makes time to sit in a place in her garden that she and her late husband both loved. Another friend remembers her father every time she sees a feather on the ground. When I see lenticular clouds in the sky, I think of my father who taught me their name.
Every morning on my meditation walk with my newly adopted Labrador Elvis, we stop at Bonnie’s resting place in our orchard under a young dogwood tree that we planted in honour of her.
There, I tell Elvis something about Bonnie; something she liked, like stealing strawberries, or doing zoomies in the frost. Or something I loved her for, like the way she laughed with a big Labrador “huff huff huff”.
I usually cry, because I miss my best friend, and it also helps me to feel close to her memory and appreciate her life.
This is my ritual, and while it reminds me of my sadness, it’s also helped me to feel less lost or helpless, and less frozen in my grief. And if there are mornings when I don’t have the emotional energy for this, then that’s ok too.
I have a tendency to keep my emotions to myself, but Bonnie was a special dog for a lot of yogis. In her last days, some of her most loved yogis visited with treats & pats, and shared their tears with me, which was incredibly comforting.
From her closest yogi friends who laughed and cried with me as we remembered Bonnie stories, to the people in our community who sent messages saying how much they'll miss her, I discovered how reassuring and helpful it is to have grief shared.
The practice of setting boundaries
As much as community & connection are healing, there will be people in your circle who haven't yet met grief, and cannot understand.
If I could go back and tell my younger self something about grief, it would be this:
It's ok, even necessary, to limit time with people who are not comfortable with seeing someone grieve.
You cannot grieve to anyone else’s timetable. There is no time frame for grief.
Grief is natural and not something to be fixed. There’s nothing wrong with you.
You may need more rest, more quiet time, or even more company, than usual. Do what you need to do, not what other people think you should do.
Grief is a hard enough journey without having to spend extra energy disguising or moderating our emotions for others.
It's ok to choose to spend time only with people who allow you to be authentic, and allow you to feel how you feel; people who don't try to "fix" you and who know that grief isn't something you ever "get over".
If you don’t have the good fortune to have people like this in your life, grief can be very isolating. It may be helpful to read or listen to others who know grief.
I love this letter by Nick Cave, who lost his son, written in response to a fan’s question about grief.
The practice of acceptance.
By acceptance I don’t mean that we deal with it and “move on”, even though that often seems to be what people expect of us. When I say acceptance I mean the gradual, ongoing practice of accepting that grief is part of our life.
It won’t always feel as constantly, painfully acute. But with every season, transition, celebration, and milestone, the grief will be present. We meet the loss all over again, with a new perspective.
Sometimes grief will remind us of its presence unexpectedly, catching us off-guard in ordinary moments. It will always be a reminder of how much we love our lost one.
At these times I find breath mindfulness helpful to stay present and not rush into avoiding the feelings.
For me this means breathing slowly and quietly, and feeling the movement of my breath around my heart.
I’m 52, and at this stage of my life I feel like my heart’s been broken, bruised, shattered and scarred more times than I can count.
And I’m grateful because my heart has also become more receptive, grateful, empathetic and sensitive because of all those bruises and scars, and because of the passage of time and the good fortune to have the capacity to slow down and feel, thanks to yoga.
I’d love to hear from you. Are you grieving? have you grieved and found a helpful practice? Send me a note here.
