Prior to losing Aiden I practiced yoga regularly and enjoyed it. I loved learning the postures and challenging my body, and had started to become interested in learning about the spiritual side of yoga. I continued to practice yoga while I was pregnant with Aiden and looked forward to using some of the techniques I had learned to help me during the pregnancy, labour and delivery.
After we lost Aiden my yoga practice stopped. I think the reason I hadn’t returned to my practice was fear. Yoga can be an emotional experience if you let it. Yoga creates a space for us to sit with the things that bring us discomfort. It requires us to breathe into the places we feel discomfort or resistance, both physically and emotionally, and notice how our body and mind react. It requires us to open our minds and our hearts, open them to the challenge of a new posture, to the discomfort of a deep stretch, to the pain we are trying to hide from. I think the reason I didn’t return to yoga was because I wasn’t ready to allow my heart to open, I was resistant to the overwhelming discomfort of grief. I was trying to hide from anything that I feared would expose my heart to more pain. My heart was so broken after losing Aiden that I felt too fragile to face anything more than I had to. I emotionally hid from anything I feared would open me up to pain because my heart felt too broken to take it.
Almost four years after losing Aiden, I returned to my mat.
The physical practice itself was great. It felt good to stretch, bend and push my body. During Savasana, the end relaxation, the instructor played a beautiful piece of music. I later learned it was a heart chakra mediation, a piece designed to help open the heart. The music literally resonated through my body as I felt the vibrations of the song. Following Savasana, the instructor led us through a short mediation where we visualized someone we love deeply and focused on sending our love to that person. Aiden had been on my mind as I had prepared to go back to yoga and throughout the whole practice. This mediation was powerful, moving and perfectly timed for me.
Tears ran down my face as I focused on Aiden and sent him my love. I felt my heart open, as though a protective layer crumbled away from it and there it was, raw, beautifully broken…and most surprising to me, healing. As I opened my heart to the grief of losing my sweet little boy, I knew that I had reached a new place in my grief journey, that this was the first step on a new path. This new path is one of processing, revisiting, accepting and ultimately healing. The pain is no longer as raw and unyielding as it was in the beginning. I am now in a place where I can look at my grief without facing such debilitating pain. I hope to continue to move forward from this place, knowing that I will never get over what happened. Losing a child is not something you can get over. It changes you, changes everything about you and your life. But I feel as though I am ready to move forward, acknowledge and feel my grief, but not let the fear and the pain define how I grieve.
I never expected returning to yoga would be such a powerful and emotional experience. I never expected returning to my mat would be the catalyst that would point me in the direction of healing. I have a new journey through grief ahead of me that won’t be easy, for grief work never is. But I will be forever grateful for that class, on that day. It showed me that my heart is not as broken as it once was. It showed me that I am strong enough to face my grief and the pain of losing Aiden. It showed me that my heart is open to finding peace.
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