Can yoga help us heal from grief or trauma?

At a recent yoga workshop presented by Antonio Sausys founder of SatYoga.com on the use of yoga for grief and trauma, I was surprised to find that yoga had specialized treatment for this area of life. Many people suffer grief everyday in the form of loss of a loved one, loss of a job, loss of a relationship, loss of mobility and the list continues. All of this loss has an effect on our emotional and physical well being. If you have had a loss or traumatic event in your life you will find some benefits from such specialized yoga programs. In learning about the effects of yoga for our grief and using it to assess where we are in the process. There are four stages of mourning; 1) accept the reality of the loss emotionally, 2) process the pain of grief, 3) adjust to the reality now that the loss has occurred, 4) embark into life in a new direction through acts of selfless service and self-reflection. Yoga can help you go through the process of transformation that gives you back a sense of control over your grief process and avoid becoming stuck while processing the sadness and pain of loss. Yoga can be a source for helping us find liberation from a cycle of suffering.  In processing grief one of the four key emotions triggered by a loss is anger. The anger can be triggered by a seemingly benign event. A single word or an exchange with someone that seems innocent enough could release the fragile thread that was used to wrap the pain from grief and loss into a tight emotional bundle inside. If you are close to someone, it could be difficult for them to see your life filled with positive events, love of family, friends and continued energy for living life to the fullest. Someone who is still processing grief may be having a normal day or conversation one moment and become very angry and unleash an emotional volcano or outburst including verbal slurs or threatening actions. Being with someone going through something like this is unsettling unless you have worked to process your own emotional trauma. The person going through their grief process when angry can’t hear you, because they want to be heard. So, they will direct their anger towards you. It may have been something else that happened to them earlier in the day and now they need to release what they could not do (perhaps in a public arena) towards a total stranger at you the person that they find themselves with later in the evening. You could easily be drawn into a scenario that could lead to an argument or actions that spiral out of control. But if you are present to your own emotions, you may have better insight in the moment, and let the other person go through their emotional upset without attaching to it personally. It takes effort and time to know yourself at a very deep level, so that you are not lost in the same moment when your friend who is grieving snaps emotionally.  Learning about the power of yoga to help us process our grief and using specific yoga techniques designed to help us heal from grief and trauma has been one of the most important teachings I have learned as a yoga therapist.

The yoga sutras lend us insight into the two companion practices: Abhyasa and vairagya that are the means of mastering (nirodhah, Patanjali Sutra 1.2) the many levels of mind, so as to experience the true Self (Patanjali 1.3). All of the many other practices of Yoga rest on these two principles. These are two of the principals that yoga teaches in order to help us learn to find compassion for others and for ourselves in the moment as someone is processing past trauma or grief whether in a yoga session or while watching a beautiful sunset over the pacific ocean.