Finding Your Rhythm in Grief

Learning to Move Between Stillness and Doing

In yoga a progression from warrior 2 to reverse warrior to side angle pose is so common, you might expect to see it in nearly every yoga class. Warrior 2 is a tall, strong pose. Reverse warrior is a true side bend on the back leg side of the body. In my experience, we most often allow side angle pose be a true side bend in the forward direction. Notice the shortening of the muscles of the side body in the direction of the side bend. It looks like this: Side body shortens, spine curves laterally in the direction of the front leg.

In the class I taught last week, we explored side angle with length in the spine instead of that lateral bend. It looks like this: Spine reaching long, ribs lifted, core engaged—not collapsing into the bend.

Believe me, this version is a lot more work! Yes, there’s still some side bending, but the intention is to create space and strength, not just fall into the familiar shape.

That was the point of the class: noticing the ways we default into what feels familiar or easier. Not because it’s wrong—neither version of the pose is right or wrong. The goal is simply different. And sometimes the goal is just to give the body something new to explore. A chance to notice. A moment of choice.

In yoga, we often talk about the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, as though one is better than the other. But the body’s actual goal is balance—the ability to move seamlessly between the two. That’s called homeostasis. Rather than dropping into one fixed pattern—whether in a pose or a nervous system state—can we develop the capacity to move back and forth with ease?

All of this got me thinking about grief. And how that same principle applies to the journey of healing.

Honestly, I think the first year of grief is mostly survival—emotional, physical, spiritual. In my case, I had just moved from my lifelong home in Georgia to the desert of Arizona. The landscape mirrored what I was feeling: dry, unfamiliar, stripped down.

By the second year, I started slowly offering what little I had to others. Around that time, my daughter opened her yoga studio. For both of us, it became a place of emergence. She was teaching 18 classes a week, and I was teaching 11. It gave us both a place to pour the restless energy of grief. A container.

In the third year, I pulled back—down to five or six classes a week—and began stepping into some beautiful new friendships. This past year, I’ve pared down to just two or three classes a week.

This pattern feels familiar. I’ve seen it in others too.

In response to grief, many of us get busy. We throw ourselves into work or caregiving or cleaning or creative projects. It helps us sleep better at night. It keeps the pain from overwhelming us.

Others pull back entirely—into solitude, stillness, even numbness. Maybe you’ve done both. I know I have.

The question is: how do we find balance in our ability to give and to receive when grief is present?

That’s where the nervous system comes back in. Learning to shift—consciously—between sympathetic (activation, doing, moving) and parasympathetic (rest, stillness, reflection) is part of the healing process.

If you’re a doer, then receiving might be the greater challenge. But what if it’s in letting ourselves be held, helped, and poured into that we begin to understand grace—not as a concept, but as an experience?

And then there are those of us who don’t get busy at all. Instead, we sink. The energy of grief pulls us inward, down into fatigue, into a kind of fog. Even small tasks feel overwhelming. If that’s where you are, please know you’re not lazy or broken—you’re grieving. And while stillness can be healing, it can also become a hiding place. The gentle invitation here is not to force yourself into action, but to find one small, loving thing you can choose. A short walk. A warm shower. A call to someone who sees you. Just enough to remind your body that life is still here, waiting for you, tenderly.

Which season do you find yourself in right now?

Do you need to slow down? Are you caught in constant doing—flight, perhaps. Always in motion, avoiding the pain beneath the surface. For you, stillness might be the real challenge. Being with the pain without letting it swallow you.

To receive kindness without deflecting.
To receive silence without rushing to fill it.
To receive beauty without trying to explain it.
To receive love without earning it.

It’s not easy. But it’s holy.

Of course, it’s also not healthy to stay forever in stillness. The parasympathetic state, when prolonged, can spiral into depression, loneliness, or paralysis. I know I need rest—but I also know I can get stuck there.

That’s when I have to choose to re-engage. To get up. To call a friend. To go to a yoga class. For me, that’s “fight”—in the most loving way. Fighting for connection. For life.

Wherever you land on that spectrum, it comes down to this:
Listening to your body. And responding with care.

Even if it’s uncomfortable.
Even if it’s unfamiliar.
Even if it’s the opposite of what you usually do.

It’s a process.

I’m four years out from my loss, and I’m still learning how to offer myself both variety and steadiness. Challenge and comfort. Familiarity and something new to notice.

And maybe, at its core, that’s what healing really is.

Because the desert also blooms.