Mindfulness and Grief with Heather Stang

Changing the Face of Yoga Podcast

Heather Stang SN

Yoga and Grief

Introduction of Heather and the topic

5:05 Tips to stay healthy while grieving. Sleep, digesting, hydrating may all be difficult. Yoga is one of the activities that can be accessed early. Doesn’t require talking about our emotions and brings us back into the body. Can help with sleeping, digesting and hydrating. People are dealing with the ongoing connection they feel with the person who died. The relationship continues.

7:50 Myth has been that you “get over” grief by detaching from the person who died. Research shows that maintaining a continuing bond helps with living your life.

8:20 What to do for the teacher and other class members when a long-time member of a yoga class dies. Understanding that the class needs to be modified, slow the pace, each person encouraged to share their feelings, perhaps a letter to the person or write down feelings. Open ended yoga questions: what does grief feel like in your body. Create a yoga pose to reflect those feelings What would a statue look like that represents the person who died. Have your boecaedy look like that pose. Allow people to speak freely about their grief. Disenfranchised grief – not allowed to speak freely because of a perceived social position. For instance, a friend’s grief is not as valued as a family member’s grief.

14:20 Anniversaries of death can be difficult in the yoga class. If student share a date, then keep note of that because often time coming up to the anniversary is difficult for the person. The grieving person needs to plan ahead of the anniversary to do what they need to do that helps them

18:09 Heather has written a book called: Mindfulness and Grief. She had started Yoga and Grief previously, an 8 week program for people grieving. She was also exploring meditation in more depth. She interviewed past participants of the yoga and grief classes to see what the long term result of the classes were. The book is in an 8 week format, but can be done in the time period that an individual needs. There are a variety of tools to address the physical symptoms of – anxiety, tension – and tools to use for their life after loss. Chapters are: Mindful Awareness, Conscious Relaxation, Compassion/Forgiveness, Vulnerability and Courage, Unstuck, Reconstruction and Transformation. Each week/chapter has tools for that week including journaling, creative projects, yoga.

Grief permanently changes you in many ways and the change may even be positive.

Yoga consists of ancient techniques to tend to our suffering.

26:15 Grief does not have to look a certain way; it is different for everybody. Some show their emotions easily, others show little emotion but both are grieving. Yoga teachers may be dealing with our own grief and need to take care of ourselves also

28:10 Recommended books:

Mindfulness and Grief by Heather Stang

Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness by David Treleven

IRest Program for Healing PTSD by Richard Miller

All are available on Amazon

Contacts:

Website: www.mindfulnessandgrief.com

Insta #mindfulgriefquotes

Twitter: @HeatherStangMA

FB: mindfulnessgrief