For the next eight weeks I am going to offer exer­cises from my Yoga for Grief class online through the Mind­ful Grief blog. There is no right or wrong way to do these exer­cises, and the only rule is to honor your edge. This means do not do any­thing you are not capa­ble of doing; emo­tion­ally or physically.

I wel­come your feed­back and ques­tions in the com­ment field below. May this prac­tice ben­e­fit you and relieve your suffering.

Week 1: Heal­ing Grief in the Body with Gen­tle Awareness

When your heart aches the per­spec­tive on life nar­rows; The panorama of a once full life zooms in to the detail of suf­fer­ing, and the body closes in on itself in an attempt to pro­tect the heart from fur­ther pain. In yoga we call this a body cop­ing strat­egy. While your body thinks it is doing you a favor by pro­tect­ing you, in real­ity it is most likely caus­ing more aches and pains by hold­ing onto tension.

Can you imag­ine what it might be like to give your body a time out from hold­ing all that stress? You can, and it only takes a few min­utes to learn from your body. In this exer­cise I invite you to silence any inter­nal judg­ments or prej­u­dices about your body. Imag­ine you could approach your­self right now with lov­ing com­pas­sion (If lov­ing com­pas­sion feels too edgy right now, at least imag­ine see­ing your­self through neu­tral eyes). Take as much or lit­tle time as you need for this practice.

Prepa­ra­tion: Find a quiet place where you wont be dis­turbed. You may sit or lay down, and you will want your jour­nal or a piece of paper handy. You will also need three dif­fer­ent col­ored crayons, pens or col­ored pencils.

Step 1: Breath Awareness

Don’t breathe in any spe­cial way right now. Just get to know your nat­ural rhythm in this moment. What do you notice about your breath? Is it deep or shal­low? Easy or tight? Where do you feel your breath the most in your body?

Take a few moments to expand your breath — length­en­ing your inhales and exhales. What do you notice?

Return to an easy, rest­ing breath.

Step 2: Body Awareness

Begin at the crown of your head, and begin to scan down to your feet. Take your time, and imag­ine this is the first time you noticed each body part. Be curi­ous about your body — bones, mus­cles, joints, organs. Explore the whole range of your body sen­sa­tions: plea­sur­able, unplea­sur­able and neutral.

Repeat as many times as you wish to get to know your body better.

Step 3: Map­ping the Body

Draw an out­line of your body on your jour­nal or on a piece of paper. Don’t worry — it doesn’t need to be ren­dered per­fectly! (You may also find body out­lines for down­load on Google images).

With one color crayon/pen/pencil, shade in the areas of your body that felt tense, tight, stressed or oth­er­wise unplea­sur­able.
With another color, shade in areas that feel pleas­ant, open, at ease.
With the third color, shad in areas that felt neutral.

What do you notice about your body? Take 5 to 10 min­utes to write in your jour­nal any obser­va­tions, again with­out judg­ing what comes out.

Home Prac­tice

This week your home prac­tice has three components.

1. Find a way to be kind or nur­ture the parts that felt unpleasant.
2. Cel­e­brate the parts of your body that felt pleasurable.
3. Get curi­ous about the parts that felt neu­tral. You may learn some­thing new about them, or sim­ply dis­cover that they are indeed neutral!

Extra Credit

Of course there are no real grades, but you may wish to go deeper by jour­nal­ing each day this week about your rela­tion­ship to your body.

You may also sub­scribe to my newslet­ter (on the left side of this page) to receive a free down­load mp3 of me lead­ing a body scan.

Please com­ment below — I would love to hear about your expe­ri­ence and wel­come your questions!

Jai, Heather

Next Week: Free Yoga for Grief Week 2: Breath­ing Exer­cise for Grief & Stress