inner peace

Finding a Path through Grief

Elizabeth Education, Mindset , , , , ,

Yoga and Grief book cover

I wanted to share a new yoga resource with you. Gloria Drayer, a wonderful yoga teacher and friend, has co-written a book entitled, Yoga and Grief, a compassionate journey toward healing. This book is an insightful guide, explaining different yoga techniques and how they can support you as you experience and move through loss.

One of the first things I noticed about the book was the gentle, comforting language used. Nowhere do we hear what we must do to assuage our grief. Everywhere we are encouraged to use what works for us, to respect our own needs, to allow ourselves what time we need to heal, despite outside pressure to move on.

Most likely, the writers’ own experience and wisdom has guided their supportive tone. Both Gloria and Kathleen came to write this book out of their own experiences of loss: Gloria as she cared for her mother in her last year of life and Kathleen as she faced a major health crisis in her own life. Both talk about using the techniques of yoga described in this book to help them through their own journeys.

The writers explain that the suffering of loss unbalances our entire system. By using techniques of yoga we can rebalance the energy of our bodies and minds to find, over time, a sense of calm and peace.

This book is remarkable in its breadth, clarity, and accessibility. Strategies offered include breathing techniques, gentle yoga postures, meditation, chant, and the use of ritual. For each of these techniques, several options are offered for their use. For example, in the chapter on yoga postures, there is a practice that can be done in a chair, another done standing, another on the floor, a longer practice, as well as suggestions for rest, so that anyone can find something appropriate.

In each chapter, the writers explain the benefits of each technique and offer easy to follow instructions to perform it. To help follow instructions for yoga postures and breathing practices, clear black and white photos supplement the instructions, which are written accurately and simply. To support learning of the chant and meditation, Gloria has recordings of the chants and guided meditations given in the book on her two websites.

I highly recommend Yoga and Grief, a compassionate journey toward healing, whether you are dealing with grief right now or not. We all experience losses in our lives, be it the loss of a loved one, the death of a pet, the loss of health, the loss of a relationship, or a job or home, and most of us help others close to us with their losses. To understand the techniques of yoga and how they can support us can be invaluable when we need help. Gloria and Kathleen have created a remarkable resource. It is a gift to those needing a path through grief.

Visit www.YogaSimpleAndSacred.com or www.YogaAndGrief.com to learn how to order the printed book or e-book edition of Yoga and Grief, a compassionate journey toward healing.

A Symptom of Inner Peace

Elizabeth Health, Knowledge, Yoga Terms , , , , , , ,

Peaceful Purple Sunset

“A loss of the ability to worry” is a serious symptom of inner peace, according to one writer’s reflections on inner peace I found stuffed away in a poetry folder. I smiled as I read this because I believe we all might agree that worry and inner peace do not co-exist in our bodies or minds.

Have you noticed how you are conscious of the present moment when you feel a sense of peace? Worry, on the other hand, takes you out of the present. The mind becomes occupied with what might happen in the future or the ramifications of something from the past.

My parents were great worriers, and so I grew up with worry as an unconscious habit. Focusing on the worst case scenario of a choice, behavior, or event, I would make decisions as a way of “protecting” myself from the disastrous outcomes that I imagined. The great irony of this is that I was not protecting myself, as I really did not have control over the outcome of things worrying me; rather I was creating a negative and unhealthy environment for my body, mind, and emotions.

Worry is about fear. We fear something bad will happen. Often what we dread is a loss. It might be a loss of a person, pet, reputation, success, power, possessions, health, or life. Fear engages the stress response, our body’s natural physiological response to a threat or danger. When this response is activated a flood of chemicals in our system raises blood pressure, increases respiration and heartbeat, and creates tension in our muscles, all preparing us to respond to the threat of danger we believe is immanent.

Worry, and especially chronic worry, has negative health effects, and it does not even protect us from the bad things we fear will happen. Worry keeps us from living the only life we have – this present moment.

In yogic terms, worry is avidya or lack of awareness or knowledge. We are caught in illusions that we have power over events when we don’t, or that things must never change when it is their nature to change, or that we have knowledge of what will happen in the future when we cannot know what will happen. Avidya inevitably leads to duhkha or suffering. When we worry, we suffer.

Yoga can help us with avidya and worry through practice (abhyasa) and discrimination (viveka). Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra gives us the eight limbs of yoga – ethical practices, behaviors toward ourselves, postures, breathing practices, and the inner limbs of yoga, all leading to purification of the body, mind and heart. Through diligent practice of the limbs of yoga, purification leads to greater clarity. We begin to see our ourselves and our behaviors; we see what we what we can change and what we must let go of. We have strategies in our practice to take the mind to a more peaceful place when habits of worry return. As the mind becomes clearer, we develop discrimination, the ability to see what is helpful and what is harmful and to base our decisions on that knowledge.

While banishing worry from our minds forever may not be attainable for most of us, discrimination that comes out of a consistent and sincere yoga practice can help “weaken” our tendency to worry. And, as worry diminishes, inner peace can take root and grow.