Grief isn’t only about losing someone we love
We can grieve the end of a relationship, a friendship, a job, our health, independence, a home, children leaving home, a pet, a version of ourselves we no longer recognise, the future we thought we were going to have.
Sometimes grief has a name and a date attached to it, and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes we don’t even realise that what we’re experiencing is grief.
At Yoga Chew Valley, we believe there should be space for all of it, somewhere you can come as you are.
Yoga doesn’t ask you to be okay
I’ve been teaching yoga for over three decades, and I’ve heard something repeatedly from students, teachers, and friends. I’ve even said it myself, and that is, “Yoga held me through the tough times.”
Not yoga fixed me, or yoga made the difficult thing disappear.
It held me.
That’s because yoga doesn’t necessarily change what is happening around us. What it can do is give us somewhere to be while we are living through it.
For that hour in class, perhaps, there is nothing to solve.
There is a mat beneath you. Breath coming in and going out and a body asking to be noticed. And sometimes that’s enough.
Grief lives in the body too
When we’re going through a difficult season, it isn’t only our thoughts that are affected. We may notice tension in the body. Our breathing may change. Sleep can become difficult. We might feel exhausted, restless or unable to concentrate. Some days we want company; other days we’d rather retreat from the world completely.
A yoga practice gives us an opportunity to reconnect with the physical experience of being here. It’s not a way of bypassing sadness or pretending everything is fine, but a way of making a little room for whatever is present.
Also, your practice doesn’t have to look impressive. Some days the strongest thing you can do is simply get onto the mat, and there have been times where I laid on my yoga mat with a box of tissues, and that was my practice for the day.
The quiet power of consistency
Yoga gives us something else during uncertain times: consistency.
When everything else feels as though it has changed, Tuesday morning yoga is still Tuesday morning yoga. You know where you’re going. You know roughly what will happen when you arrive. You roll out your mat. You breathe. You move. You see familiar faces.
And then you come back next week.
We can underestimate how important those small anchors are.
You don’t have to wait until you feel motivated. You don’t need to be flexible, strong or particularly sociable. You don’t even have to be having a good day, and over time, getting onto the mat can become a quiet way of saying: I’m still here.
Sometimes it’s the people who hold us
Yoga is often portrayed as a solitary, inward-looking practice but practising alongside other people can be just as important as the poses themselves. Community matters, particularly when life becomes difficult, and support doesn’t always mean sitting in a circle talking about what has happened.
Sometimes it’s much simpler. The fact that someone remembers your name, or notices you haven’t been for a couple of weeks. The familiar smell of the studio and the face beside you.
Over the years, we’ve also had members write to us, saying they’ve just needed to spend an hour in a room with other human beings without having to explain anything at all, and thanking us for the non-judgmental, supportive space that has become our studio.
That’s one of the things we want Yoga Chew Valley to be.
A safe space. No judgement. No expectation that you need to arrive as the best version of yourself.
Our words have always been:
Come As You Are.
And we mean them.
Come when you’re energetic.
Come when you’re tired.
Come when life is wonderful.
And come when it isn’t.
There is no right way to grieve
Grief isn’t linear.
There isn’t a neat progression from sadness to acceptance with a convenient finish line at the end. You can feel fine one day and be floored by something seemingly insignificant the next.
A smell.
A photograph.
A piece of music.
A familiar place.
An anniversary you thought you’d forgotten.
And grief isn’t something we necessarily need to hurry through.
Yoga teaches us to notice what is present without immediately needing it to be different. That doesn’t mean resignation, and it certainly doesn’t mean that yoga replaces counselling, medical care or professional bereavement support when those are needed. It simply means there can also be value in having practices and people around us while we navigate difficult seasons.
Scent, memory and creating moments of calm
Our senses can play a powerful role in how we experience our environment, and scent in particular can evoke memories, associations and feelings remarkably quickly.
That is one reason aromatherapy can sit beautifully alongside practices such as yoga, relaxation and rest.
A familiar scent can become part of a ritual: lighting a candle, taking a bath, preparing for sleep or simply creating a few quiet minutes at the end of the day, and these seemingly insignificant rituals to someone else can be powerful anchors that ground us.
Our friend, Lisa Jo of Priddy Presence, helped us create our signature scent for the studio when we opened in Stanton Drew, and she offers beautiful aromatherapy and essential-oil experiences that complement this idea of making intentional space for ourselves. It’s about the small things we can use to create moments of comfort, familiarity and care when life feels difficult.
A place to simply be
If you’re going through a difficult season at the moment, you don’t need to tell us or explain, and you certainly don’t need to put on a brave face before walking through the door.
Come in.
Choose your space.
Roll out your mat.
And for the next hour, simply practise.
No judgement if today all you can manage is showing up.
Come as you are. We’ll meet you there.
Yoga and wellbeing in the Chew Valley
Yoga Chew Valley is a welcoming yoga and movement studio in the Chew Valley, offering Yoga, Pilates, BODYBALANCE, strength-based classes, Men’s Yoga, TRX and other wellbeing experiences.
Whether you’re completely new to yoga, returning after time away or looking for a supportive local community, you’re welcome to practise with us.
Click here to view our timetable
For local aromatherapy and essential-oil experiences, visit Priddy Presence.