Yoga and Grief

Written by Sandra Olarte-Hayes LCSW, Director of Equity

Colors of Austin Counseling’s entire team of Clinical Therapists was trained in Nityda Gessel’s Trauma Conscious Yoga Method (TCYM) earlier this month. TCYM blends yoga philosophy, breathwork, and gentle movement with elements from Internal Family Systems, Somatic Experiencing, and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (all therapeutic modalities that are evidence-based for treating posttraumatic stress disorder). It is used by both mental health professionals in the therapy room and by yoga teachers who want to be more conscious of how trauma may impact their students. Our practice’s leadership made the decision to offer the training to our entire staff for many reasons but primarily because we know trauma is incredibly prevalent in the communities we work with and because of the wealth of research that exists showing that trauma is held and healed somatically in the body.

I came to practice yoga in my early twenties after a time of profound turmoil. I had recently lost someone who was very dear to me and was hurting. My friends introduced me to the little hot yoga studio on the same block as my apartment in Montreal, QC. It was perhaps my first introduction to meditation and it felt good to be in my body and in the present. I mostly enjoyed pushing myself, falling and getting back up, and contorting my body into positions and balances it previously could not hold. It was also my first introduction to exercise and movement that wasn’t focused on weight loss and co-opted by diet culture (though many yoga spaces of course are) and up until that point, I had rebelled hard against the notion that exercise could be a positive force in one’s life because exercise is so tied to weight loss in our culture. It felt good and I soon found myself going to yoga regularly…sometimes daily.

Since then, yoga has felt almost like a constant…not a practice that I have kept up with consistently, but one I always come back to. I tend to alternate between phases where I practice yoga through movement and phases of seated meditation. Each time I have returned to these poses, it has felt familiar…comforting, even after long lapses. But it was difficult for me five years ago when injuries and chronic health conditions made it so that most movements, especially strenuous ones, became risky. The choice to move, to use my muscles, and to stretch meant risking a pain flare up that would impact my life for days. I pretty much completely stopped the physical practice of yoga, though I still meditate.

Nityda’s TCYM training involved lectures, dialogue, and experiential practice (both meditative and movement-based). We talked about duality, colonization, indigeneity, and we spent a significant portion of the time in motion and practice. Physically, it felt good. Emotionally, I felt an immense amount of grief and found myself openly crying at multiple points during the first day. It is both joyful and painful to do something that feels so good when you feel your body has also taken that very thing away from you and betrayed you. It felt pretty vulnerable to be feeling my grief and looking at my losses publicly in plain view of my team and coworkers, yet it also made very clear to me the importance of this type of work because of what came next.

In my early 20s, yoga was about presence, yes, but it was also very much about sweating and challenging myself in physical exertion. Competing with oneself isn’t necessarily a bad thing and I enjoyed it, but taking that approach meant that once my body’s abilities changed, yoga felt inaccessible and almost pointless. It meant having to face my limitations and my losses each time I went into a pose requiring the necessary modifications, needed to go very slowly, and had to focus on stretching rather than pushing myself. I think this is why I completely stopped practicing. The TCYM training forced me to slow down and move differently…to pause, breathe, and notice, when normally I would try to get away from my discomfort.
I found that certain poses made my sadness more accessible, whereas others made me feel playfulness and joy, or anxiety and discomfort. I noticed that choosing to slow down and stay when grief showed up allowed me to also find new value and purpose in this practice…to feel that sense of familiarity and comfort again. It turns out I don’t need to sweat in order for the practice to be worth it. Feeling what I needed to feel has helped me realize that this practice that has been so important to me perhaps does not have to be lost. I’ve found myself doing yoga, slow yoga with many modifications, every day since.