The pain of loss

I’ve been dealing with loss and super-charged grief this fall. Within weeks two people very close to my heart left their physical bodies, both of them under the age of 40…many days all I could do was sit in a pool of grief. One afternoon I picked at a jigsaw puzzle in our living room, in a daze I tried to make sense of the scattered pieces, both in the puzzle and my heart. I only finished one corner of the border, that’s as far as I could go.

Wheee-my inner dancer unleashed last winter, 2014

How dancing lightened the loss-load

The power and presence of my friends was a lifeline. When I shared a tear-soaked afternoon with a girlfriend, the kind who refuses to let you change the subject as you shy away from your own pain, she mentioned that she’s been grooving out and dancing every day. She asked me if I’d like to dance a little, right there in her living room among the upright piano laden with kids sheet music, overflowing bookcases, a pile of unfolded laundry, the cat lounging on the couch and early autumn sunshine bouncing off the walls, traffic whooshing by the open windows. Hell no my mind said, but not wanting to be a total lame-o I nodded weakly, sucked back my river of snot and said, “sure, ok, let’s dance.”

She put on some tunes and before I knew it the drums and singing and sunshine helped me close my eyes and find a moment to be with my pain without words and my mind clogging up the connection to my heart. We danced for about twenty minutes, sometimes together, but mostly in our own little spheres of experience. When we finished we sat on the floor and as my mind started clicking back to it’s Very Important Thoughts In Process-Do Not Disturb mode I noticed…I feel a little better.

So I’ve kept coming back to dance. A few times a week I put on music in my yoga studio and dance. It feels good. Now I find that I’m dancing sock footed in the kitchen as I cook, the other day I was even grooving at the gas station as I pumped gas. Dancing with the pain, despite the pain, because of the pain all helps shift my body into a new state of being, it lets in the light.

How to get grooving' today!

No need to worry that you’re doing it wrong.
No technique needed.
Close the door, the blinds, do whatever you need to do so it’s just you and the music. Check your judgement at the door.
Remember it’s free
Enjoy some fun!
I promise it’ll shift your brain out of thinking mode and allow you to connect with your intuition and spirit-your highest self!

If I see you this next week, I’ll know you’ve been dancing ‘cause you’ll bust me a spin move instead of saying hi, and I’ll bust it right back-as only a geek can!

Om Shanthi Om,
Peace to you,

Gita

Jessica and her daughter love to dance...in Jessica's words:

Every day is stressful in my home. How much I let the stress get to me directs if I’ve won or lost for the day. Even if I have a mountain of laundry on my bed and millions of thoughts running through my head, I will put on a playlist as loud as I can to just get lost in the music. Sometimes I pick things that remind me of the past, sometimes its yoga music-MC Yogi- or even just a new station on Pandora. It all depends on my mood. Getting silly and dancing is a great release, even if it lasts only one song. For a project last year, Jaylin, my woman of few words, was able to tell her teachers what she loved doing with me. She wrote “dancing with Mom”. Small, stolen moments are what she remembered the most, and to me they were often transitional moments of a crazy stressful day. It is such a good thing to remember to be child- like…at least once a day.

Shake Your Asana