One of the beautiful aspects of yoga is that the practice is fluid and changeable, just like our lives. One day you feel called to an energetic Vinyasa flow and the next a peaceful yin class. Learning to adapt your practice to serve yourself best at any given time will ensure you stay healthy, inside and out. It’s natural for your yoga practice to shift with your current circumstances.
Sometimes current circumstances are painful, difficult, and seemingly unbearable. Loss and grief affect us physically, not just emotionally or mentally. The pain sits in our tissues and if left untended can result in blocks and stuck negative energy. By practicing yoga and mindfulness, we can help ourselves work through whatever is going on, whether it is loss of a loved one, illness, or trauma. Utilize yoga as one of the tools you use to navigate the difficult times.
How can yoga help you process grief? Grief is like a rollercoaster––it doesn’t have a time limit, it doesn’t have a distinct beginning or end. Your feelings and pain are individual and each person’s process is unique. Yoga can help you by moving the emotions that have settled into your cells, it can help you release the pain that may seem to have imprinted into your heart. We aren’t claiming you’ll be miraculously healed, only that you’ll have another way to help process your emotions.
Working with the definition of yoga in the Yoga Sutra 1.2, Chitta Vritti Nirhodha, learning to quiet the fluctuations of your mind will aid you in focusing on directing your attention where you want to go, Perhaps you seek some peace and calm or to connect with cherished memories of a loved or quieting anxiety that may have you in its grip. If you are navigating illness and your time is consumed with dealing with doctor’s appointments, side effects of medication or surgery, it can be tough to escape the burdens of feeling sick. Implementing pranayama techniques to stay calm while enduring treatment or waiting for test results can make an enormous difference in keeping calm.
Yoga can help you empower yourself and tap into your inner resiliency and strength in such a way you can continue moving forward in your life despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Yoga reminds us that everything is temporary. Everything. Accepting the concept of impermanence can help us adjust to illness, loss, and grief. The only constant in this world is change and tuning into this universal truth helps us feel more in step with the rhythm of life and death and transformation.
To put it simply, by moving your body in certain ways and breathing deliberately and quieting your mind, you are helping your nervous system quiet down and cope with grief.
You know how much better yoga makes you feel in general, well, it can help you feel better in dire times too.
This week, we’ve got a special class package, Healing 101, by Shannon Paige, to help begin with your powerful healing process. If you’re going through a hard time, whether it’s from trauma, grief, or illness, try these classes.
Featuring the 6-classes below:
1. Shannon Paige Yoga for the Anxious Moments
2. Shannon Paige Yoga for Navigating Illness
3. Shannon Paige Yoga for the Dark, Dark Days
4. Shannon Paige Yoga for Loss
5. Shannon Paige Criss Cross Healing
6. Shannon Paige Mindful Motion for Healing