Tending your grief

Finding footing

What might that mean for you – tending your grief? Has this idea of tending been in your sightlines? I think we all need to do this tending to. Tending to ourselves, to others, to our lives, and to our grief.

I think it is fairly common for yoga practitioners to use yoga for tending to their physical selves. Most people start a yoga practice as a way to get healthier, to exercise and move their bodies. Take a class with friends and then lunch/dinner date afterwards. Perhaps yoga is a way for you to relax, chill, and even maintain a quieter mind after leaving the studio. Grounding yourself.

But tending to grief? Not sure that is what comes to mind for most.

But, for me, very much so. Yoga, plain old yoga, taught me how to tend my grief. Not just tend my grief but also stay with my grief. And come out the other side holding on to my grief, keeping it with me, less of the other way around. Everything changed around.

My grief changed when I found my footing. Found with the help of yoga.

This was not a solo expedition! There were (and are) very influential and important teachers guiding and bringing me through, placing opportunities and tools at my feet, nudging them closer if I didn't notice. Really though, it was on me to come back and ask yoga for what I needed. And ask again and again and again and again. I am still asking!

Graduation night from SYTT, Feb 2020, with two of my favorite teachers: my mother Charlotte Zoe Walker and Savonn Wyland.

How I use yoga, and not just for grief

Usually I use my yoga practice to be receptive to what is offered by the teacher. Opportunities to find what is needed in the moment, whether or not I am aware of which needs I have.

Of course, there's the yoga asanas, the physical poses and movements. It always feels great to move and find a rhythm to movement that can be both comforting and challenging. The repetition and ritual of it. The savasana finish.

Pausing in meditation, setting aside the noise of "before class starts" rush and arrive there on my mat. Pausing so I am not fixing problems, no busy-ness, running errands, or whatever else I am in the midst of. Being guided in meditation to the beginning of my practice.

Then of course breathwork, conscious and focused breathing. Letting breath out. Pulling it back in. Slowing it down, feeling the rhythm of it, not holding or restricting. Accepting how my breath can also assist in my mood.

During teacher training we studied the Yoga Sutras and philosophy of yoga, including the study of the 8 Limbs of Yoga. For me the Yamas and Niyamas are reminders to stay present in my internal and external life.  (If curious, read more on the 8 Limbs here.)

Rest is so important when we are grieving; our nervous systems are so activated by grief, by feelings that can overwhelm us. When resting in specific restorative poses and going beyond savasana pose, I feel the effects of grief on my nervous system begin to lessen. My body and brain begin to process the trauma and open to healing. My whole body feels the benefit of really slowing down. Rest is calming my nervous system and I’m finding support from props, from the ground, from warmth and comfort, from ambient sound. From yoga.

All these different aspects, pieces, and slices of my practice came together over time. Helping me heal and move forward. Unsticking my stuck parts, tending to myself, and tending to my grief.

Receptivity and why

There is no avoiding grief. It comes from everywhere and anywhere. It can be small, insignificant, minute. Random feelings popping in. Deeper losses and yearnings: ancient, recent, unremembered. No matter the size or source, grief is not insignificant.

Without realizing it, my practice started keeping me open, helping me tune in to yoga offerings, to be receptive. Somehow I found I truly was receptive to releasing. Yoga calmed me, encompassed and encircled me. I found rituals and recipes that could be repeated. A community was created and those around me were supportive. The grief work to be done was still my own, but was done more easily practicing yoga in the presence of others.

At a certain point, I noticed the impact of "grief" landmarks had lessened and how that felt good, to feel things swim in and out. To feel my grip loosening and then decide to chase those feelings more intentionally. And as I was feeling both the benefits and releasing my grip, what I then wanted was to share this more intimately with others. I found I wanted and needed to share this tending to grief. This I could do, I could create a workshop and offer to others what I now want and need.

Yoga for Grief Relief Workshop

What I offer in this workshop is what I have found most helpful and healing. Starting in December, on the first Fridays, there will be a once-monthly Yoga for Grief Relief workshop* from 2:00-3:30pm at Sellwood Yoga.

As we arrive on our mats, guided meditation is our starting place. Practicing gentle Hatha yoga and conscious breathwork will help emotions move through our bodies. There will be both restorative yoga poses and time in extended savasana. Rest is an antidote.

The language of poetry can express emotions in ways we are unable to and I will bring poems to share. Poetry can bring another layer to processing and understanding our grief. A thread to follow. 

The last component is the Sellwood Yoga studio. I believe it is both a wonderful place and a holding space. A space to be still in and to receive. A place to be in communion with others also grieving. A place of rest.

You can attend in person or live stream. A recording available for 7 days will be provided if you can't attend live. Please read here for additional details and visit Sellwood Yoga to register.

Note: this is not a series but a stand-alone workshop, although you are welcome to sign up every month. The offering will be there for you.

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*This workshop will be different from the 4-week workshop series Monica Welty, LMT, and I have co-led this past year. That series returns in February 2026 and more details are here.

The Golden Treasury of Poetry

The first 26 pages are missing. The binding is pretty beat up, water stains, tears, rips, curled edges, crushed corners. Amazing it is still here as it is almost as old as I am–received from my mother on February 8, 1967 when I was 6. Our family would have already moved as my parent's divorce was final the previous summer. Everything would have been new and scary and hard–and my mother comforted me as she would have comforted herself. With {cap-P} Poetry.

She always inscribed books for the recipient:

Poetry was her through line and I guess I didn't fall far from the tree having memorized a William Blake poem at the age of 6. How else do you garner approval from a lover of literature and poetry? Did I even know what the poem meant? But I loved the book and I loved the poem and I loved my mother. I probably recited this for her, my siblings and my grandparents (also poetry lovers) many times. My little show-off recital over-and-over.

My mother kept her poetry close at hand. She was a scholar and a teacher so all sorts of writing and courses and events came and went, and many students came and went. But most of all she was a writer and published novels, poems, magazine articles, essays, short stories, and anthologies. She wrote. A lot. She encouraged everyone around her to write and to read, especially within her family: her father, her siblings, her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Everyone in her family could become a writer and she told us so often and with total conviction.

There were some constants in her writing: her internal and family life (especially her novels and her father's autobiography), feminism (writing for Ms Magazine, founding a journal for her women's studies department), nature writing (John Burroughs), and studying the Romantics, especially William and Dorothy (William's sister) Wordsworth. She knew it was probably Dorothy and her support and love of her brother William that allowed him to become a poet. Perhaps even, inspiring with her own words, his most famous poem.

And this, {cap-P} Poetry, is what stayed with her all the way to the very end. When it became too hard for her to read she asked us to read aloud to her–anything from the Wordsworths or any poem even. She would ask for a poem by sharing a line or a phrase and we would search for what she wanted us to read. A favorite ask was I am of Ireland by William Butler Yeats. One of the last things she wrote in her journal was "it all comes down to poetry." Her complete through line.

What does this have to do with yoga or the Yoga for Grief series that my friend Monica and I are hosting at Sellwood Yoga? Quite a bit.

Because of my mother's influence I came back to yoga in my 50s. Because of my mother's influence I went to Yoga Teacher Training and graduated in 2020. Because of the pandemic I had to learn to teach on zoom and my mother became my student. Because of her I started listening to and reading poetry more diligently, especially how it related to yoga. Because of her during the pandemic year when we practiced zoom chair yoga, the poems would creep in to finish class. (She even wrote and shared poems. I didn't dare write any but just read the ones I liked.) Because of her I kept teaching (and continue teaching), at first just Chair Yoga and then other yoga classes too.

Because of her illness I cared for her at the end of her life and we had our small ways of bringing yoga and poetry together, mostly poetry as a way to lessen her grief and some of mine. We did our yoga breaths together. Because of my grief over losing her I dove deep into ways that poetry could help: reading, listening to podcasts, more poems, finding Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer (a poet I wished my mother could have read), searching for anywhere that poetry, yoga and grief intersected. Because of my mother I read a poem at the end of every class I teach. Because of her I wanted to teach a workshop on grief, using poetry as an anchor. (You can read here how that transpired back in 2023).

Because of her I didn't give up on finding a way to share poetry, yoga and grief in a way that could help other grievers.

My aha moment was realizing what I had added to the mix during my own (and ongoing) grief journey. Yoga was here, poetry was here, certainly grief was here, but there was more. The more was the Aroma Acu-touch and massages from my friend Monica. She is a talented and gifted bodyworker. But beyond that she also understands grief in a profound way and uses her understanding to help others with their grief. It is a unique and magical gift.

If I could combine those elements and recreate for others what helped me, helps me still, perhaps that is where the power lies. And that is where I am today. Monica and I teach Then & Now: Yoga for Grief. We taught one 4-week series in March and are teaching another coming up here in April.

We use everything we know and love: yoga movement, spoiler alert–poetry, aroma acu-touch, restorative yoga, community, kinship, writing, writing prompts, sharing, not sharing, tears, laughter, no tears, quiet, meditation, and breath. More poetry.

We do this together.

Our own grief shared and known.

We do this for each other's grief.

We do this for others, for their grief.

For any grief.

For all grief.

Nothing too big.

Nothing too small.

Recent, ancient, resurfacing.

Personal, global, ethereal.

Present, hidden, unknown.

For a beloved, a circumstance, a dream.

Devastating, manageable and seeming insignificant.

Whatever you carry we have a soft space for your grief to land.

We will hold it for you. For a moment, a day, a week, for as long as you need.

For forever.

Gratitude for yoga. Gratitude for poetry. Gratitude for grief.

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Monica shares her own grief story on her blog Harvey The Hero. Her most recent post discusses another way to understand and define grief. We make a good team and I am grateful for her guidance, collaboration and support.

You are not the grief

To promote my upcoming workshop Then & Now: Yoga for Grief I have been sharing posts, reels, stories on FB and Insta the past few weeks. Simple graphics and words - mostly ones my friend Monica has written as she is very eloquent. The posts are sometimes re-shared by her or other people I have tagged. Social media posting isn't a job I like but I know it does help promote workshops and classes I teach.

When I post I don't often think too much about who sees it, just hope it will be well received by whoever does happen to see it float by and that they will be interested. But if not well received or of interest, perhaps just ignored. I never think too much about it but I suppose it could hit someone the wrong way. Unavoidable on the internet. Someone, somewhere, is always ticked off.

It happened. A negative response to my posting (I know one negative response, so what). It was a message sent directly to me from someone I know (thus I am pretty certain it wasn't a positive vibe):

"You are the grief."

WTH does that mean? I am the grief? Makes no sense! It got right up into my head and I started to ruminate. This is a workshop to alleviate grief! To help others! How can that not be evident! Outrage! Retort immediately and ferociously! Engage the writer in a war of words! Or just ignore it? Block them? Share it with malice and cause a bigger mess? Then broadcast to the world how incorrect that statement is! How wronged I am.

Taking a deep breath I thought about it. What does it mean? Why do I even care? Let it go! Could it be a lesson and I need to own it? Sure I can feel my own grief and yeah, sometimes even cause grief. Lord, maybe I am the grief??? I wrote on a post-it:

You are the grief.

Then I thought about the workshop, took another deep breath, thought about what I can offer the attendees, what I hope to do for them:

You hold the grief.

Remembering this, my hope to offer something useful to grievers, something they might need and find useful enough to return to, and I wrote:

You can let go of the grief.

And I realized what matters to me, and hopefully to those I will meet in my workshop, is this:

You are not the grief.

You are not the grief.

Messenger - none of us is our grief.

I am not the grief, you are not the grief.

I can hold the grief, I can hold it for you.

I can let go of the grief, I can let it go for you.

I can let it go. Let it go.

I can let go. Let go.

Go.