I wrote  a couple weeks back about losing a family member, and then my sister-in-law lost her Dad and then the loss got a little closer to home. Mike (Douglas) Smith, died suddenly at 49. He had been my boss for many years and was a good one at that. He pushed me like crazy. His standards were a mile high. But he was fair.  If you worked hard nad did well it paid off.

I’m a fairly organized person, but any skill I have in chasing down every last detail and not losing track of even the most minor part of a project, I learned from him.

He also came to my yoga classes, instituted lunchtime classes in our workplace and continued coming to my classes when he went to work elsewhere.

So when he passed it was a real loss.  More sudden and and closer to me than others have been. I noticed how I felt it keenly in my body. Sometimes throat and chest. Sometimes my legs felt all fuzzy and weak.  My friend suggested I felt like my legs had been knocked out from under me.

It made me look into yoga for grief and how to work those particular emotions through the body.

And then Monday night we did a class around all that. Here’s what we did:

  • First I asked the class to think of  a loss that affected them – a friend, a job, a pet, not necessarily a death – and set their intention to do some healing around that loss.
  • We started with eye massages – using your first two fingers, run them along your eyebrows, inside to outside and then continue around in circles using the amount of pressure that feels good.
  • Modified throat lock – start with an inhale, then with the exhale lower chin to chest and inhale back up. Use a Ugayai breath.  After two or three, play with pausing, head down before beginning the inhale. Notice the feeling of peacefulness there where you have everything you need, even breath and oxygen.
  • Continue seated warm-ups with moving twists, side bends and folds forward alternating with seated backbends.
  • We got on our backs and did a whack of bicycle, to get the emotion moving through our bellies.
  • Then an easy down dog moving into a forward bend, using movement to ease into the stretch.
  • Then three half sun salutations and we worked in lots of spine moving, balancing and hip stretching poses: warriors 1, 2 and 3, triangle and revolved triangle, deep pauses in forward bend, wide leg forward bend, tree, high and low lunge and pigeon.
  • We did lots of backbending poses, modified bow and bow, locust, cobra, bridge.
  • We got on our backs for some final hip stretching and a good long spinal twistand
  • Then I gave them the choice of Legs Up The Wall or Shoulder stand
  • Finally i gave them temple and forehead massages with lavender oil for Savasana.  I played them Mike’s favourite Savasana tune.