Grief Yoga. Healing through movement

Paul Denniston is a yoga teacher who specilises in learning how to move through grief or other difficult and challenging emotions such as anger or anxiety. He has created a practice called Grief Yoga that pulls together yoga, movement, breathwork and sound to transform pain or struggle and connect to empowerment or love.

There are many types of yoga. Hatha Yoga focuses on holding postures and breathing to quiet the mind and aid stability and balance. Vinyasa Flow Yoga on breathing and flowing from one posture to another like a meditation in motion. Kundalini Yoga uses different types of breathwork and posture to cause powerful transformations. Restorative Yoga is a gentle practice to help stretch and release tension and anxiety whilst Laughter Yoga is a mixture of laughter exercises and techniques blended with yoga stretching and breathwork. People have their own take on humour, but these are exercises that help release endorphins from the brain to facilitate more happiness. Paul uses elements of Laughter Yoga in his Grief Yoga practice because he feels there is a fine line between laughter and tears. Laughter helps the free flow of emotion to move through, especially the suppressed feelings we have beneath the surface, to allow the healing benefits to take place.

Having trained in the different practices, Paul realised that he was going to classes himself to help deal with his challenging emotions of anxiety and grief.  He created his Grief Yoga practice, a blend of different types of yoga, with the specific intention of releasing pain to fund more empowerment and love - it was a class that he would what to take himself! When going through training Paul was dealing with a lot of anticipatory grief because his sister was dying and he was having a hard time moving through the suppressed feelings he was holding onto. Although he didn't feel like laughter, it connected him to what he was feeling which was anger and sadness. Laughter gave him the release he needed to allow him to be more present with his sister and dealing with her loss.

Paul works with many people who have experienced and dealt with trauma.  The first step of the process is to become aware of the present, the body, breath and ways to befriend the body through gentle ways to move and stretch. The next step is about expression. A lot of the time we don’t have the words to express our pain, hurt, anger or rage so the practice of using the sound and vibration of the voice can start to move the pain through so we might not have to have the words to articulate it.

Paul spent decades trying to run away from pain, seek peace for himself and deal with his anxiety. He was going to classes for his physical wellbeing but he realised there was so much more beneath the surface. He then thought that if we channeled struggle and pain, we could use it as fuel for healing, If we hold onto pain in the body, the body remembers this and the trauma so it’s possible, in a compassionate space, to move the pain through so we don't have to hold to it inside. He feels that we can have physical pain in the body but that it can be a manifestation of grief that we are suppression. Because everyone grieves differently, it can manifest itself in different areas of the body such as the back, neck, stomach, pelvis or chest or even cause teeth grinding teeth at night if the grief is held in the throat.

Grief can come from many different aspects of change or loss so can be seen in many different ways - the loss of a loved one, a dream of what you thought was going to be, the ending of a relationship or even a sense of disappointment. It can also be a collective thing. People can experience grief when a famous person dies because of the way that person had touched them or through an event such as the pandemic or 9/11. Collective grief is rarely acknowledged and this can become challenging because grief needs to be witnessed by ourselves or by others. During the pandemic not being able to attend funerals meant we missed the healing of having our grief and loss witnessed.

Paul doesn’t necessarily believe in closure in the grief process. If we choose to love then grief is a part of the process. Each day is different but we need to move through the loss. One of the steps he focuses on is evolution – how we changed after the loss, how our life is different now, how am I different after loving them. With time things can become easier but its part of our life experience and process.

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information about Paul here..Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.

You can find out more about Paul through his website Griefyoga.com

His new book HEALING THROUGH YOGA Transforming Loss into Empowerment is available from January and can be pre-ordered through Paul’s website