I want to start out by saying that I have no financial disclosures for this post. I share resources that I gathered and still use in my journey through grief. While I personally know some of the people mentioned in this post, I do not receive anything for recommending their products or services. I am simply sharing my journey and what I found helpful.
I can still hear my father on the phone as I returned to my office at work from seeing students and saw I had numerous missed calls from him. He told me to sit down and he said, “The doctor said Mommy won’t make it through the weekend.” It was Wednesday. He told me that if I wanted to come see her before she passed, I needed to come now. I left work, hurriedly packed, picked my kids up from the afterschool program they attended, and drove the two and a half hours to my parents’ house. My husband had just left for Tokyo from our home in Upstate New York on an important business trip. The week that followed where family gathered to say goodbye to my mother and we held her funeral was very challenging to say the least. But I remember saying to my aunt as I walked into church for the funeral mass, “I know I can do the funeral, but I don’t know how I’m going to do every day after this one.”
When I returned home, that was the feeling that filled me: I don’t know how to live without my Mom. I came home to a disaster of a house. I had left in such a hurry to be there for my Mom’s final moments on this Earth. The house was filled with dirty dishes including an unfinished cup of coffee, countless laundry, and there was a large pile of mail. I thought the mail was a good place to start. As I looked through it, there was a magazine advertisement (yes, I used to get those) for Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. I went there yearly with a friend. It was October and I quickly looked through to see if they had a workshop on grief. I saw that one was being led by David Kessler, who is a well-known expert on grief, unknown to me at the time. He was also presenting with Paul Denniston and Maureen Hancock. I immediately signed up for the workshop. It was well-timed in mid-November before the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays to come, which I knew I would need support through.
While this may sound like an exaggeration, this workshop literally changed my life. I bought several books of David Kessler’s there with gift cards my friends had given me at my Mom’s funeral and found them very helpful in the months that would follow. If you would like to learn more about David Kessler’s books, workshops, groups, and other resources he has to support people in grief, visit grief.com.
I also got a reading from spirit medium, Maureen Hancock, which was very comforting and startlingly accurate. You can find more information on Maureen at maureenhancock.com.
The most transformative experience at the workshop was Paul Denniston’s Grief YogaⓇ class. It was 7:00 in the morning the day I did the first class. I remember as I was participating in the yoga class thinking, “This is what I have needed my whole life.” At the end of class, I was so moved that I went up to Paul, gave him a hug, said, “thank you” and walked away. There was nothing more I needed to do or say. I felt so held and nurtured in that moment and I felt like I had been given what I needed to move forward.
Paul’s Grief Yoga classes combine movement, breath, and sound to release suffering and connect to love (Denniston, P., n.d.). His classes are a fusion of many different forms of yoga to address grief. Using gentle opening and stretching of the body, sadness and anger are released. Paul uses ideas from Peter Levine’s work (1997) and other somatic approaches to healing trauma and personal growth which emphasizes the idea that the “issues are in the tissues.” Paul takes you through the “cycle of compassionate transformation” which includes awareness, expression, connection, surrender, and evolution (Denniston, P., 2021). You can find out more information on Grief Yoga at griefyoga.com.
In the weeks that followed this workshop, I developed significant neck and back pain. While I was doing yoga like I typically do to support my body, this time Hatha Yoga wasn’t enough. I contacted Paul and got advice from him on additional videos and Grief Yoga workshops he had. I continued doing his practices and found relief from the neck and back pain. I attended additional workshops of his in New York City and again at Kripalu. I took to heart David Kessler’s (2020) words that “the only way out of the pain is through it.” I didn’t just sit with my grief, but I moved through it and with it.
Paul then began training other yoga teachers in Grief Yoga. One of them that I attended virtual Grief Yoga classes with was Beth Segaloff. I continued to reap benefits from Beth’s classes like Paul’s. Beth offers a variety of services including Reiki, coaching, and group sessions. I attended several of her sessions and found them very helpful in processing my grief and healing. To learn more about Beth, visit her website here: www.treeoflifecenters.com.
While attending several Grief Yoga workshops and classes and repeating the same videos was helpful, I found I really needed something regular. I was so thankful when Paul created a community called Spark that meets weekly over Zoom. I finally felt like I had what I needed to address the mind-body connection to my grief on a recurrent, regular basis. This has been instrumental in my healing. I was especially thankful for it when five years after my Mom passed, my Dad passed as well. I don’t know what I would have done without a supportive community already set in place to help me navigate both my parents passing a few years apart from each other.
Grief is not linear. It does not follow a predefined progression like a baby hits predictable developmental milestones on its journey from infant to adult. Grief has states that we flow in and out of like anger, sadness, and a host of other feelings. Grief is a journey that does not end. A quote attributed to the Buddha says that, “pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.” While I have felt deep pain, what I am finding on the journey of grief are tools that allow me to alleviate suffering. If you are on your own journey of grief, I wish you peace and love and hope you find your own path away from suffering.
References:
Denniston, P. (n.d.). About Paul Denniston. Grief Yoga. https://griefyoga.com/
Denniston, P. (2021). Healing through yoga. Chronicle Prism.
Hancock. M. (n.d.). Maureen Hancock world renowned spirit medium. https://maureenhancock.com/
Kessler, D. (n.d.). Grief.com Because love never dies. https://grief.com/
Kessler, D. (2020). Finding meaning: The sixth stage of grief. Scribner.
Levine, P.A., Frederick, A. (1997). Waking the tiger: Healing trauma. North Atlantic Books.
Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. (n.d.). os.me. https://os.me/suffering-is-optional.
Segaloff, B. (n.d.). Tree of life center. https://www.treeoflifecenters.com/
