Being With Grief Instead of Running From It

As both a therapist and a yoga teacher, I've also experienced grief personally. One of the things I want to be careful about saying is that yoga doesn't take grief away. It didn't make me miss my person any less, and it certainly didn't make the hard days disappear. There isn't a magic practice that makes loss hurt less.

What yoga did give me was a way to stay present with myself. Instead of disconnecting from my body or trying to push my emotions away, it gave me a place to notice what I was feeling without needing to change it. Some days that looked like moving through a few poses. Other days it meant simply sitting and breathing.

That's one of the reasons I continue to recommend yoga as a support for grief. Not because it fixes anything, but because it helps us stay connected to ourselves while we move through one of life's hardest experiences. In my experience, healing isn't about avoiding grief. It's about learning that we can be with it, one breath, one moment, and one day at a time.