Yoga for Grief was born with love and in service of love. A gift from our hearts to all of you grieving, whether it is the loss of a loved one or a way of life

as always, included for members

“I really believe grief is not something to overcome or to be healed; it is something to navigate. Together with these practices we have a vast range of tools to use.”

— ALESHA HANSON

Before each session, Alesha would work her magic by putting reiki in the room, creating an altar overflowing with intention, burning palo santo and sharing this prayer with all of those involved. We now offer this prayer to you and encourage you to set a space that is nurturing, safe and where you feel held.

HOW DO I BEST UTILIZE THIS PROGRAM?

This program is an exploration. It covers a variety of asana, meditation and breath practices for opportunities to learn and surrender. Alesha addresses how each practice helps to manage grief, so you begin to understand while experiencing.

With 4 full yoga practices, 2 meditations and 5 breath breaks, how you organize and approach this program will be as individual as you and the grief you are experiencing. Grief comes in waves. You can tap into these practices as the waves come or as they recede.You can work your way through each offering or repeat the same again and again. Commit to practicing one offering each morning, each night or both morning and night. Share with a loved one or find some solo self-care time. Wherever you are, whatever you need, there is something here for you.⁠

ASANA PRACTICES

power • slow flow • yin • restorative

“Grief, I’ve learned, is really just: love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.”

— JAIME ANDERSON

power flow • 55 minutes

playlist: alesha grief - flow

slow flow • 47 minutes

playlist: alesha grief - flow

I envy the tree, how it reaches but never holds.

Things that matter come and go, but being touched and feeling life move on, we tend to cling and hold on, not wanting anything to change. Of course, this fails and things do change. Often, we are stubborn enough to go after what we think is leaving, trying to manipulate and control the flow of life. Of course, this fails, too.

We can’t stop life from flowing. So we are left with feeling what was and what is, and we call the difference loss. But all the clinging and holding on only makes it worse. Now, new things come, and some of us anticipate the loss and just let the things of life go by without feeling them at all.

I have done all these things, but when clear enough and open enough, I try to let things in, to let things touch me. I try not to poke and pull at them as they move through. It doesn’t eliminate the loss, but when trusting enough to let this happen, I am tuned like a harp held up to wind.

-MARK NEPO

slowflow.jog.jpg — “When our personal and particular grief opens a window… then through our grief, we walk with all the world.”

— MICHAEL STONE

yin yoga • 63 minutes

playlist: alesha grief - restore

restorative yoga • 48 minutes

playlist: alesha grief - restore

Underneath, there is only one emotion.

I used to struggle, fighting off sadness or trying not to be anxious, but as most of us learn, once that drop of melancholy or unrest beads on the heart, trying to feel anything else is denial. Once the mind like a long guitar string is somehow plucked with the slightest agitation, there is nothing to do but let it ring itself out.

We all know of the tears that turn to laugher. Or the laughing that breaks open to a cry. Or the anger that crumbles into a tender loneliness. Or the cool face of indifference that cracks, eventually showing its adhesive of fear. Amazingly, as the infinite forms of flowers all rise from the same earth, the earthly garden of emotions – in all their delicate shapes and colors – all rise from the same earth of heart.

What this opens for us is the often hard to accept fact that underneath there is only one unnamable emotion, which all feelings know as home. Despite our efforts to be happy and not sad, to be calm and not anxious, to be clear and not confused, to be understanding and not angry; despite all the ways we carve up our reactions to living and then run from one to the other; despite our fear of certain feelings, it is feeling each of them all the way through that lands us in the vibrant ache that underrides our being alive. To reach this vibrant place is often healing.

It is a hard thing, though, to lean into sadness we don’t want, to let the tremor of anxiety work its way through. For myself, my resistance to unpleasant feelings has been my fear that if I give over to the sadness and anxiety or confusion or pain that is upon me, I will drown in it. I fear it will take over my life. I will become nothing but sadness or anxiety or confusion.

But what I discover, again and again, is that feeling any one feeling deeply enough – that is, thoroughly and completely – somehow opens me to the common source of all feeling. And at the source, no one feeling can last by itself. So, through our feelings, not around them, we come upon the unnamable source of all feeling that can heal us of the pain of any one mood.

-MARK NEPO