Yoga for Grief, Trauma, and Depression

I can easily write a 10-page love letter to yoga. But what really made me stick with yoga was how much it helped me through grief, trauma, and depression. Yoga has been my rock through some of the darkest hours of my life. It was always there for me to offer support, guidance, and inspiration when I needed it most.

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Before we dive into this, please note that I am not you and I am not a counselor and what helped me might not necessarily help you. But to me, life is all about sharing experiences and if you read this and know that you are not alone, or it gives you hope, or maybe a different perspective, I think this is all that matters.

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The past years have been very transformative for me. Looking back it feels like a complete rebirth!

Grief and depression brought a lot of darkness into my life. But all that darkness brought me closer to my essence, which I am forever deeply grateful for.

Grief is the key to self-love

Grief offers you so much self-knowledge. If you embrace it, it opens you up to even more love, self-love.

Types of grief

Grief is the reaction to losing something that is important to us. Grief can be the loss of a person, but it can also be the loss of a relationship or a job. It can be abandonment, the loss of health, or the loss of safety through physical, emotional, or sexual trauma.

There are many different types of grief. When I finally opened up to my grieving process I really didn’t know that there are so many different types.

But what they all have in common is a deep heartache that can change you and your life forever.

Grief, trauma, and depression

For me, grief and trauma were interlinked. This might be different for you, but the more I opened up to this sadness inside of me, the more I noticed that, yes, there was grief, but there was also some trauma I had to work through. Depression was a consequence of grief and trauma.

But whether grief and trauma are interlinked or not, yoga can bring relief for all three, grief, trauma and depression.

Finding myself at a crossroads

Life is never straightforward. It throws its challenges at us and like many other people, I found myself going through a dark period of my life. 

Anxiety and depression weren’t new to me, I had been struggling with them most of my life. But the loss of both my parents within less than two years shook up my world and threw me back into a major depression.

Life was foggy, my soul felt heavy and sad, I was so tired, but my mind kept racing 24/7, leaving me anxious and restless most of the time.

I felt a lot of anger, rage, and sadness deep inside of me and for the first time, it was difficult for me to keep these feelings under control. 

I looked for help in therapy. It used to keep me going in the past. But somehow, I knew that this time therapy won’t do the job.

Don’t get me wrong, therapy has been a huge support to me throughout life and it still is today! And I would always recommend it! 

Therapy helped me to understand situations, related feelings, and reactions on paper, but I still struggled to feel these emotions.

Along came yoga

Back then I was far away from being a yogi. But within all the darkness and heaviness in my life, I suddenly felt this strong urge to do yoga.

Why? I seriously had no clue! Today I know it was my soul guiding me. So one day I found myself in a Kundalini yoga class. 

If you are new to yoga, let me tell you that Kundalini is not your average yoga class. There is chanting, breathwork, movement,…. the whole package! If you are new to yoga, like I was back then, this can be a pretty full-on experience!

On a side note, the Kundalini yoga crowd is generally dressed in white. Personally, I never made it out of the goth period. So I let your imagination draw that picture, but it really could not have been a bigger clash.

But for the first time in what felt like forever, maybe even in my whole life, I felt safe. I felt a sense of deep belonging and connection and I knew that things are gonna be ok. There it was, hope!

Releasing emotions through movement

“E-motions are energy in motion. If they are not expressed, the energy is repressed. As energy it has to go somewhere. (…) To deny emotion is to deny the ground and vital energy of our life.” 

John Bradshaw

Any negative emotion such as grief or trauma, that we experience in life creates tension, a physical tightness, within the body. 

If we suppress these emotions, the energy becomes stagnant and manifests/shows in other ways such as anger, depression, anxiety, etc. It can also be the cause of chronic diseases.

Yoga can be a great way to release this tension and work through emotions of grief and trauma. Yoga helps to open up the body, which allows the energy to flow and this can help to release any stagnant emotions you might be holding in your body.

I still remember the first movements on my mat. Every movement felt so natural to me, it was almost as if my body knew what it had to do. My body was graving these cats and cows. I was in love with down dogs and with each movement, I felt the energy slowly coming back into my body.

My mat became my safe place. And then occasionally during practice, I would break out in tears. The yogis among you know what I am talking about, but it is not uncommon in a yoga class that emotions come up during practice and suddenly you find yourself or the person next to you in tears.

One of my teachers always said, ‘Yoga is moving therapy’. And after the first tears on my mat, I knew what he was talking about. These emotions that I understood on paper, but could not access, well, I finally got access to them through yoga!

Sadness, anger, fear, disappointment, etc, one after the other came to the surface to finally be felt and acknowledged.

Society teaches us that emotions like sadness, anger, or fear are ‘weak’. From an early age, we learn to push these emotions away, to keep them under control. All for the sake of fitting in.

Yoga teaches us non-judgment. Meaning that there are no good or bad emotions. All emotions that you feel are equally important as they make you the person you are.

It has been a pretty wild rollercoaster of emotions and there were definitely more downs than ups to start with. But at the same time, it has been a wonderful experience to finally get to know and accept all sides of me.

Finding awareness in breath

When we grieve or feel depressed, we tend to get anxious, and with anxiety comes tension in the breath. 

Yoga starts with the breath. Yoga is all about creating unity between body, mind and spirit and we create this unity by linking breath with movement.

Through yoga, I learned to appreciate my breath and how to use it as a guide throughout my yoga practice and also through life.

Try this: find a comfortable seat, place the left hand on your heart and the right hand on your belly. Close your eyes and connect with your breath. Inhale and exhale deeply through the nose. With each inhale fill up your lungs and your belly with oxygen and with each exhale let go and release any tension you might be holding in your body. Repeat this a few times.

Conscious breathing soothes the nervous system. Over time, the mind becomes clear and free from any thoughts, judgments, or fears and we come back to our natural state of being.

Everything that comes from this state, is pure and filled with love and respect. It comes with an understanding of the universal truth: that we are all one, acknowledging and respecting that everything around us has life within. 

This goes beyond human beings. It applies to nature, animals, everything that you can see, and everything you can’t see, but you know it’s there.

I began to understand that we are all connected. Knowing that we are all connected, always and forever, made it easier for me to let go. 

In addition to this, knowing that I was still connected with my parents in the spiritual world gave me the opportunity to work through some things that remained unspoken, but needed to be acknowledged for me to find peace and finally move on.

Sitting with emotions in meditation

Yoga also brought me to meditation. And each yoga practice, I would finish with a meditation. I still do so up until today.

Whereas the movement helped me to release stagnant emotions, meditation was where I got to know and understand these emotions.

I would sit with whatever came up during practice, breathe, feel into it, and let be. Sometimes there would be tears of joy, other days there would be tears of sadness. But every time I would feel a release and I started to feel more at peace.

Yoga as a way of life

The physical yoga practice helped me to strengthen my body. And all that physical strength then helped me to open up to a side of me that I kept hidden away for such a long time.

Yoga offered me the tools that I needed to work through grief and trauma. And it brought amazing teachers and people into my life who supported me along the way.

The more I worked through grief and trauma, the more I started to live in the present moment. Spending more time in the present moment, allowed me to let go of my worries. And this eased my depression.

Every day I start on my yoga mat. I flow through a few yoga postures, meditate and practise gratitude, focusing on all the blessings that I have in my life rather than what is lacking. Practising gratitude was another way to help ease my depression.

Yoga became my morning routine. It allows me to stay focused and sets me up for the day. I start my days with a fresh mind, free from any worries and fears. Some days are different from others, but it’s a journey.

Yoga gives you the opportunity to show up every day as the best version of yourself. For yourself, but also for the others around you.

Yoga became so much more for me than just physical practice, it turned into a way of life. Life feels lighter, and brighter and makes more sense than it ever did before.

I feel deeply grateful for this journey. The people I lost along the way, I still miss them every day, I don’t think this will ever change. But I also love them more than ever before. I love them for who they were, who they could not be, and all the experiences and learnings they brought into my life.

In gratitude,

Nicolle

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What is your experience with grief? If you would like to share your thoughts, please feel free to leave a comment. Would be great to hear from you. Thanks for reading and I will see you next week.