When To Start Yoga for Grief Support?

*This post was written the month after the death of my Dad*

​When a loss happens, it's natural to want to solve it right away. To do something, anything to make it better. But staring a grief support group too early can be counter productive. 

These early days of grief remind me of something important.

Early on, there is a tendency to move away from the reality of the loss. This is a protective response of the heart.

I see this in myself. Instead of using yoga as a way to process what I'm feeling, I've been using it as a distraction. I want my practice to be sweaty and muscley and fast...not a lot of time to think or feel. This is what I need right now. It would be counter productive to the needs of my heart and spirit to force exploring emotions that I'm not ready to feel.

As time passes (and there is no set timeline), and numbness wears off, you will naturally move towards the pain and realities of the loss. It's often as the numbness fades and the realities of living with loss set in,  that more support is needed. It is then, that a class like Yoga for Grief Support may be helpful.

In the Yoga for Grief Support program, we use yoga and meditation as a way to "go inside" and explore the pain and reality of the loss. One has to be "ready" to do this. Starting too early may feel like you are driving with one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake.

In most cases (not all), it may take a number of weeks to a few months to be ready for a class like Yoga for Grief Support. Each circumstance is different, with a number of factors affecting someone's readiness. Sometimes, people start a group and realize it's too soon. That's OK too - it's impossible to know what this grief experience is like because each loss is so different.

If you want to explore this further with me, feel free to reach out via email.

I find the poem below, by Wendell Berry to be helpful when considering if you need specific grief support. Sometimes, it is when you don't know what to do, that you are ready to start. 

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.
Wendell Berry, from Standing by Words.

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