Episode 122 What Is Grief Yoga? | How To Use It In Sessions Today: Interview with Paul Denniston

May 31, 2023

What is grief yoga and how can it help individuals experiencing grief and loss? How can you use Compassionate Transformation when working with clients dealing with grief?

MEET Paul Denniston

Paul Denniston is the founder of Grief Yoga® and the author of Healing Through Yoga: Transform Loss into Empowerment.

The mission of Grief Yoga is to use movement, breath, and sound to release pain and suffering to connect to empowerment and love.

Grief Yoga combines many different forms of yoga to channel and release anger and allow unresolved grief a compassionate space to breathe and move. His gentle work creates a safe space of movement, transformation, and healing to connect to the resilient loving warrior within.

Paul has taught and trained this practice to thousands of therapists, counselors, and healthcare professionals around the world

Find out more at Grief Yoga and connect with Paul on Facebook & Instagram

IN THIS PODCAST:

  • What is the importance of combining sound, movement & breath? 5:44
  • How to overcome grief in a safe way 9:06
  • What are the benefits of using grief yoga?14:03

What Is The Importance Of Combining Sound, Movement & Breath?

  • What are the many ways that we suppress grief?
  • Creating intention when using yoga movement for dealing with grief
  • What are some challenges of moving through grief by only using talk therapy?
  • Understanding how grief can be trapped in our bodies

How To Overcome Grief In A Safe Way

  • Why it is essential to find what we have to support us when dealing with grief
  • Ways to find balance and center yourself
  • How to encourage breathwork in grief
  • How to introduce grief yoga to clients

What Are The Benefits Of Using Grief Yoga?

  • What is compassionate transformation?
  • A movement walkthrough to get into the body and deepen the breath
  • Identifying where you are holding pain in your body
  • The importance of keeping movement simple and embodying what you are doing at the moment
  • Is grief yoga trauma-informed?

Connect With Me

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Find out more at Grief Yoga and connect with Paul on Facebook & Instagram

Transcript

Chris McDonald: Do you struggle to manage your own grief? Are you having a hard time finding ways to support your clients in their grief? You are not alone. And today's episode we'll be discussing the therapeutic practice of grief yoga and how it can help individuals manage and heal from the pain associated with it.

We'll explore the benefits, including how it can help individuals release tension and emotions held in the body, as well as how to provide a safe and supportive space for them to process their grief. So whether you're looking for a new way to cope with your own, We're interested in learning more about how grief yoga can benefit others.

This episode is for you. Let's dive right in. This is Holistic counseling, the podcast for mental health therapists who want to deepen their knowledge of holistic modalities and build their practice with confidence. I'm your host, Chris McDonald, licensed therapist. I am so glad you're here for the journey.

Welcome to today's episode of the Holistic Counseling Podcast. Today I'm gonna be talking about grief. So grief is that universal experience that we all go through. Grief can be an overwhelming emotion. It can affect our physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing. Today's guest is Paul Denniston. He's here to discuss the therapeutic practice of grief, yoga, grief, yoga combines many different forms of yoga in order to channel and release anger to allow unresolved grief, a compassionate space to breathe and move.

His gentle work creates a safe space of movement. Transformation and healing to connect to the resilient, loving warrior within. Welcome to the podcast Paul.

Paul Denniston: Thank you for having me. So glad you could be here. Grateful to be here. Yeah.

Chris McDonald: Can you share more about yourself and your

Paul Denniston: work, Shirley? Yeah, so I, you know, I grew up in Texas.

My mom and dad were a Southern Baptist minister. So I definitely came from a household that did not really believe in grief. If anything, that was a form of weakness, especially for a young boy growing up in Texas. There was a kind of a belief that if there was any type of like anger, anxiety, grief, it should be kind of prayed or.

Nobody wants to see that part of you. And so I kind of learned from an early age to suppress it. I would notice how my father would bottle it up and it would explode in frightening ways. Once it was released, I was bullied as a kid. The same thing happened for me. A lot of bottled up until it, I fought back and I felt like anger was a dangerous emotion.

I would try to numb out sadness by eating. I was a very heavy. And, uh, that later shifted as I became older into addiction in other ways, uh, sex, drugs, and rock and roll to numb the pain out. You know, it was like I was trying to run away from sadness, and yet I felt like it just weighed heavy on me. And I was always, it was judging these emotions, anger.

And yet because the anger wasn't going, was because I wasn't releasing. It was getting stuck inside of me that I was harder on myself than anybody else was. There was a point that I would say about 25 years ago where I was like, something needs to shift here. And so people were talking about yoga, and so I entered a yoga studio and went into a yoga class, and I could feel my body trembling because I had suppressed so much.

I was hard for me. Present because I started to later on realize how much I was either stuck in the past or had fear and anxiety of the future. And because yoga, there was a compassionate approach to what I was going through, a compassionate presence and moving through it, it allowed me to surrender. To these feelings that were really hard for me to access.

And so I continued to move forward within it. And I was also a movement teacher for actors and as a movement teacher for actors. My work was designed on how to help them become. More expressive. That allowed them to develop deeper connections with them themself and within others. And at the same time, I was going through many different yoga teacher trainings to go deeper within this practice.

Now I believe you teach what you need to learn, and part of what I needed to learn. Was how to hold space with loss, both being a witness to my sister and her battle with cancer. Being a witness to decades of addiction use, feeling a bit broken that later, then moved on to a place where I had a traumatic fall that affected the way that I could even just walk and get around.

And so it was in that space where my yoga practic. Adapted in that space that served every body. But it, what was happening was was it was the beginning stages of the practice that I created called Grief Yoga and Grief Yoga is a blend of yoga, movement, breath and sound to release pain and struggle. To connect to more empowerment and love.

And within that process, it was a place for me to move into a place of sobriety so I could go into the more of the grief and the loss. It was a place for me to be able to channel that anger out in healthy ways. It was a compassionate space for me to say it's okay to to be within, to move with the sadness because it is an expression of our.

Yeah, that's

Chris McDonald: a great story. So how did you decide to use these components? I know you mentioned sound, movement and breath. So what is the importance of having those together? I

Paul Denniston: think that it is normal for us to suppress. I think suppression can happen in many ways. It can happen with sadness, it can happen with anger.

Suppression can happen with anxiety. And actually laughter and joy too. And I think that the root of that comes from we judge emotions. Some emotions are good and some emotions are bad. And so within this practice, I guess because I spent so many decades either running away from the pain that I decided, what if I channeled the pain instead?

What if I used it as a fuel? And so then it started to happen where it was like I'm taking. Postures from different modalities of yoga, but creating an intention within it that focused on grief and loss, whether it be regret or whether it be shame or anger, and having an intentional move that brought that mind body connection within it and sound is an important component to take what is suppressed and move it through as, as I teach this to thousands of therapists and counselors.

One of the things that they will share is sometimes how a client continually ruminates within an experience and story, and sometimes using sound to express and release what is hard to articulate can be one of the facilitations to help create that

Chris McDonald: breakthrough because what do you think are some of the challenges of moving through grief if we just use talk therapy?

Paul Denniston: Part of what can happen is we can get stuck in our mind. I think that when we've experienced that loss, our mind wants to try to process it, try to figure it out. I think that what happens is it then impacts our body in a great way. The way that it impacts our body is this. Sometimes our breath can become very shallow and part of the reasoning for that is, is the body.

Trying to protect itself because when we breathe deeply, we feel deeply. And so sometimes working with people in who've experienced loss will share how sometimes it's hard to breathe. And so I think that bringing that mind body connection is an important thing that facilitates it. And even, I mean so many people when they've experienced grief and.

It gets blocked within the throat space and it is hard to talk about the trauma and the shame, and so sometimes using sound, whether it's a light sigh, whether it's a powerful sound, whether it's a sound of why or whether it's a sound of a laughter, what's happening is it's taking whatever is suppressed and moving it.

Chris McDonald: I think that can be so powerful. Cuz I know a lot of my clients, that's the biggest issue is they're so afraid to connect to big emotions and so afraid to even be even ones that aren't so big. Right. That's the difficult part. So it sounds like this can really help them to really connect, to release some of that in a safer

way,

Paul Denniston: emphasizing the safe part and, and just, so for like tick for instance, whether it's you're sharing this work or you're wanting to support.

Always the thing to come back to, this is for myself. I remind myself, this is for you. Those are, these is for people who you're working with. The three resources that can always support us when things are becoming overwhelming and it's always a place to come back to. And the first one is always about foundation.

What, what is here to support us? So literally where I'm touching my chair right now where I'm feel my feet touching the earth that can give us the space. Being supported and rooted in. That's the only way a tree will support when storms move through. It's to connect to its deep roots. The same thing comes for us, and it helps us to quiet the mind as we bring our attention down to our roots.

The second thing that we can always utilize when feeling overwhelmed is a place of center. And one of the ways that we can do that is literally bringing our hands to our belly, to our solar plexus. I'm placing right now my hands right here on my belly. And this is a way of, of, of finding, a way of centering that can support the third resource, and that is the breath.

And to encourage the breath to come all the way down into the belly. And I'm actually gonna breathe for a moment here. And for those who are listening, if you wanna take a moment and breathe with me, you're welcome to do that. I'm gonna first take a moment. I'm just gonna exhale all the air out of the mouth.

Take a deep inhale through the nose, notice the oxygen filling up in your belly. And a deep exhale. Good. Now I'm gonna play a little bit with sound here. Take a deep inhale through the nose. I'm just gonna sigh if you'd like to take a moment in sigh. Just find that here.

Good. Let's try that again. Take a deep inhale. Maybe the size sounds a little different.

I'm gonna do it again, but this time I'm gonna be a little more dramatic, deep. Inhale this sigh here

and come back to your natural brass. Feel where you're grounded. That first resource, find that place of centering within your core, within your belly, and notice your bras. Once you begin to have that structure, that life raft, when the waves of grief come too big, you'll know that there's something here that you can connect to that can support you at any time or offering it to others that then can start to create the foundation to say things feel like they might be percolating underneath the surface.

What if we started to explore a little bit of movement, breath and sound to take what is suppressed and move it through and

Chris McDonald: just a review. So you said the foundation, so that's like feeling rooted? Grounded,

Paul Denniston: yeah. The, the foundation of the resources for us to tap into Foundation. Foundation. Mm-hmm.

Centering. Breath. Breath, okay. Those are the things to always come back to. If you're working with someone and they're feeling overwhelmed, come back to either one or all three of those. Yeah. That's always something that is, uh, that is here to support us When we're feeling activated, when we're feeling overwhelmed, that can begin to center us to do this deeper.

I know,

Chris McDonald: I like the word you said, life raft. So that's like the life raft that clients can come back to. And I think that a lot of clients, like I said, are, are really anxious of what are they gonna feel, what's gonna come up. But I think having that practice, and for listeners to remember that, that we always wanna bring a safe container for clients.

When we do any kind of yoga and movement breath, this is very difficult for them. So I'm guessing that you probably do some of these practices before you do movement, maybe practicing grounding so they understand what that. Practicing,

Paul Denniston: like before I begin to offer it to others. Yeah. You you practice with them doing constantly.

All the time. Constantly. Ok. It's, it's my life raft too. There's

Chris McDonald: your life raft too. Absolutely.

Paul Denniston: I'm doing it as I walk through the grocery store at times, you know, I mean, whenever it's literally anything that's there to support us. So yeah. If I tend to be a little bit of an empath and so one of. Is also about leaning in towards compassion and to not be able to take on a person's pain.

And so one of the ways that using these resources support me is, is to also remember me to don't abandon myself as I sit and be present with someone. And so it's a reminder for me to, again, center myself. Ground myself in and come back to my breath. And then to be able then to remind others to do the same.

Chris McDonald: Yeah. Yeah. So it's embodying that practice

Paul Denniston: pretty much.

Chris McDonald: Yeah. Getting comfortable with that. Yeah. I think that's so important. So what have you seen are the benefits of using this grief

Paul Denniston: yoga? Most of the time it's based on what this model is based on, which is compassionate transformation. So this model, so what I, I started to see as I was creating these classes that they were going through a bit of a cycle.

And so, so what I have seen within others is what is called compassionate transformation. Let me just share with you this cycle and then you can understand a little bit where. In a class, I would go through this cycle, but sometimes even they can just stand alone on its own. So the first step of the cycle is about awareness.

When I talk about awareness, like I just was going into awareness of resources, but awareness is also about using breath and finding safe ways. To move the body, moving the spine in a safe way, deepening the breath invitational language to flow the body. Okay? So creating that safe container is always key and, and starting to become aware of like, where is there struggle?

Is there pain? Where does it live in the body? Okay. Because that's where we're gonna do the work. And then expression is the second. An expression is, is using movement, breath and sound to take whatever the struggle is and channel it in empowering ways. Okay, that's the second step. The third step is about connection, and connection are flowing meditations that are designed to both witness grief or the facilitation to open the chest and the heart to create love bursts.

They are flowing meditations that are based on ways to connect to more love, more grace, more gratitude. The fourth step is surrender. And surrender is a way of softening. So surrender is a way of someone's dealing with a lot of anxiety. It's a way for them to relax the body. It is a way of letting go, not of love, but letting go of struggle.

And that is a way to relax and deepen the breath and soften the body. And then the final step is called evolution. And evolution is based on using. Techniques using movement, breath and sound to tap into perseverance, purpose and play. It's recognizing that after this loss and trauma, I am different, and now how can I move forward?

Maybe creating something meaningful after this loss. That's a lot. Be sure. I'm trying to, I'm trying

Chris McDonald: to process all that. I'm sure

Paul Denniston: that's a lot. That's a journey. Welcome to my life. I love it.

Chris McDonald: Sounds like a lot of steps, but very helpful

Paul Denniston: too. Well, and and to recognize that, you know, one of those steps can just be right where that person needs at this point.

Yes. You know, especially when dealing with trauma in someone who's very disassociated with their body. We might be spending a little more time with an awareness, you know? Yeah. Um, So for people who have gone through P T S D or people who have been victims of, of violence, part of their work too could be about using movement, breath, and sound to empower them so they can start to channel the pain through.

It is a practice that is meant for compassionate transformation and to take what's suppressed and find ways of moving it through. One of the the things that I was so loved about, Edith Eger was a psychologist. Is a psychologist. She grew up in, um, she was a young Jewish girl. She lived in Nazi occupied Europe.

Her family was sent to Auschwitz, and uh, she survived and she talked about how expression is the opposite of depression. And so the purpose of a lot of this work, that's, I would say the juicy part of this work is, is to, to take whatever is suppressed and instead to like, What if we used it as fuel? What if we channeled it?

What if we, what if we embodied it in a safe way that could shift some of the pain? Yeah. So

Chris McDonald: to shift and transform it sounds like. Mm-hmm. So could you share some, I know our listeners are probably wondering what is a movement? I know we're on audio, but I got

Paul Denniston: it. Uh, let's say, how about, let's say you're working with someone.

And I'm gonna just do all of this right from my chair right now, and you can actually, if, if you're driving, I would say don't do this technique. But if you're, you know, walking around listening to this, you can do this. And the first one I'm gonna tap into is a technique called flowing breath. And flowing breath is utilizing one of our resources, which is our breath.

Okay? And so within it, with my hands and my sides. I'm gonna inhale through the nose and I'm gonna lift my arms up. And then right beside me, I'm gonna bring my hands back down, palms facing the earth, and come back down. Good. And just begin. Inhale through the nose, lift the arms up. Exhale and bring the arms down, and now just start to go at your own pace.

You may go faster or slower, and if you choose to not move at all, I fully support that, but this is a small little step for us to get into the body and it's to deepen the breath as we enter a moving meditation. Inhale, arms rise. Exhale down by your sides. I'm just gonna do it in silence one more time if you'd like to do it with me.

Just

good and slowly. When you're ready, bring your hands down. Now, let's say you're working with someone and you invited them to say, is there a place that you hold pain in your. Pain can be physical pain can be emotional, and that's something for you that you can begin to notice where they're holding it and you can acknowledge it.

But something that you can also do is invite them to find it. Where do you hold stress, anxiety, pain in your body? A lot of the times people will acknowledge it the first door into acknowledging. Can sometimes be anxiety. And what can be beneath anxiety sometimes can be fear and grief. And so let's say someone goes, oh, I feel like I've holding so much tension in my shoulders and so, or in my neck.

So one of the ways that you can get them into that space is what's called a neck release. So I'm gonna invite you to do this if you'd like to right from your chair. I invite you to bring your ear to your shoulder and breathe. Now your chin to come to your chest and breathe opposite ear to shoulder and breathe Again, bring your chin to your chest and ear to shoulder.

You can just keep going back and forth or draw large circles with your head as you observe your breath. And then maybe again, large circles go in the other direction. And when you're ready, slowly come back to a neutral seated position. Now, for you, if you're working with someone or you're seeing someone who's holding it in there and you're like, you know, I'd like to become more comfortable in offering these practices and sharing about them, but I, I don't know how to like do it.

I'm not a teacher in that way. If you keep it very simple and embody what you're doing, you can. That's one of the ways you can do it with the flowing breath. I think we all recognize how meditation is important, and so you're just literally doing a moving meditation and this, it can be as simple as bringing your hands to your sides.

Inhale through your nose, lift your arms up. Exhale, bring your hands down and if you get confused about how to guide someone with breath, think of a balloon. When a balloon fills with air, it lifts up to the sky. Inhale through the nose, lift your arms up. Exhale, bring your hands down by your sides just to like a balloon when it deflates, comes back down to the earth When offering a place of a neck release.

Just keep it simple. Bring your ear to your shoulder and breathe, and for you to actually do it while you're inviting the other person to do it. Chin to your chest. Breathe opposite ear to shoulder, breathe, and go back and forth. Or create large circles around with your head. And for you as the person who's offering it, if you model it while your body is showing how to do it, then you can start to really tune into how is their body moving?

Is their body moving at all? Maybe their body's moving a different way, and for them it's the doorway in that we're looking to get into the body and finding ways to move the body. And sometimes people are like, you could even say if you, if. To see where there's pain in the body. You can even say if there was a move that would support that, how to kind of like be with it.

What would that be? And for some people it might be moving the shoulders around and you're intuitively tapping in for them about how to move their body that you can begin to, I love doing that.

Chris McDonald: That, yeah. Yeah. It is sometimes, and I use brain spotting and sometimes at the end I'll be like, you know, if your body wants to move in any way, just just do it.

And people will stretch and they'll stand up, they'll move around. Just allowing them to trust themselves.

Paul Denniston: Absolutely. Absolutely. Is is

Chris McDonald: this approach trauma informed?

Paul Denniston: It is. It is. It's, it is trauma informed, which I am using all invitational language. It is creating that safe container, but it's a little different approach to it because this movement is also about, you know, we are tapping into ways to self-regulate.

But we're also, what the work is about is it's empowering the person to move the pain through. Like take for instance, I'll share with you another like technique, if I may that Yes, please. Okay. Let's going into that space. So I'm gonna go back to the resources again that support us. So we've been playing with the breath.

Now let's play around with that place of centering and centering. I placed my hands on my. So I'm literally placing my hands again on my belly. This is a great way of centering. Now let me share with you what's called the cannon breath. The cannon breath is inviting us to breathe all the way down into the belly.

We're gonna continue to play with sound, but with the cannon breath, I'm gonna invite you if you're comfortable, to bring two fists to your belly. If that doesn't feel right, you can just have your palms at your belly. And now, within this breath technique, I'm gonna invite you to do three inhales through your nose, and then exhale out your mouth with sound.

Inhale through the nose, three breaths, and then exhale with sound

again. Inhale. Exhale.

Good. Let's play with the sound a different way, whatever it sounds like. Inhale. Little more dramatic. Oh, nice. Begin to shake it out here. Shake it out. Now let's say you're working with someone who's experienced trauma. Part of this work is designed too to empower that person. This is a technique. It's called Breath of Courage.

And here in this space, I'm gonna go back to. That flowing breath. But this time I'm gonna use a little more powerful breath and sound to help us to tap into our courage. Okay, coming back to that flowing breath. Inhale through the nose, lift the arms up. Exhale. Bring your hands down by your side. Good. Now inhale through the nose.

Lift the arms up. Now a little more powerful. I'm gonna bring my elbows to the ribs with a powerful oh. Yes. So in the space, I'm inhaling through the nose, lifting the arms up, and then I'm gonna bring my elbows down to my ribs and I'm gonna use sound. Yes. Again, inhale up, exhale. Good. Shake it out a little bit through the hands.

Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out. Another technique that you can play. So literally, by the way, just what I was doing was I was flowing, I was using the breath, and then I was using, Powerful sound to begin to open up the throat space, but let's say they even embody it. This technique is called breaking the chains.

All right? So the way you do it is, is you bring your hands in front of you and they are, my elbows are bent and my arms are parallel. One on top of the other, and my fists are right by my opposite elbows, almost as if this is a place of like being in chains. And I'm gonna connect to wherever it is that I feel stuck in my life, in my mind, in my body.

And I take a deep inhale and then I push my elbows back. Oh, and I'm literally opening up my chest as I do it, and then I bring my arms parallel in front of my chest and exhale and push back. Oh, and one more time. Oh, elbows back. And then just shake it out a little bit. So you'll see what's happening here is, is we are starting to empower that person.

Because what we can then do from an empowered and safe place is to say, let's take go deeper into the rage, the anger, the guilt, and how can we use more specific techniques on moving that.

Chris McDonald: Such a powerful feeling. I think just that release with sound, I've used a little bit of that. I did wanna share with listeners, I told Paul before we hit record that I had a nightmare last night and just had this really awful feeling like in my chest.

And I did some of his grief yoga, which some of what we did today, and I'm telling you by the end it was, it was transformed. It was just, I. More regulated, more centered, just myself. And so this modality is very,

Paul Denniston: very powerful. I'm glad it shifted it, I mean, shifted. Yeah. Amazing. It, you know, there was a study, David Kessler talks about the study of B, of how he studied buffalos and how when the buffalos.

Could see that a storm was coming. They didn't run away from the storm. They actually ran through the storm in order to minimize their pain from the storm. Coming from a place of decades of trying to run away from the struggle or suppress it, this is a practice. From a compassionate space that says we're gonna move through it, but we're not gonna get stuck there.

We're gonna go to a place of connection to more love, more grace, more gratitude to witness grief, but to remember with more love.

Chris McDonald: Yes. Yeah. To witness and walk alongside their grief with them. And what about clients who might be hesitant with the sound part? I've had a lot of clients. They're even just hesitant to use their voice for mantra or anything else when I've tried to teach that.

So do you have any ideas for

Paul Denniston: that? To start slow, to start off with a sigh? I think the, you know, okay. I mean, sound can be very hard because like I remember. Like with someone I was working with who had her brother, when she was little, came in and started to beat her up and she started to scream and the father came in and spanked her and said, no matter what is happening, do not make a sound.

You know, and so that registered for her that whenever there was pain to not speak, and so how normal I've spent decades. With it being blocked within my throat. So in some ways, that has served a purpose for them to protect them. There's also a point too, where I can see that you're holding onto a lot and there needs to be a release, and that release can happen through words.

But after working with Bessel VanDerKolk and seeing how he would incorporate saying, let the sound, let the pain Have a sound, can be in a powerful way to. But in a trauma sensitive place, sometimes that sound could literally be, you know, it can be a very, it can be a whisper and, and that can be enough at this point.

So if

Chris McDonald: they do that, cause I had a client do that recently. Cause I, I like to do the inhale, brings shoulders up to the ears and then exhale. Nice loud like that. But she was just like, so that's okay if they're,

Paul Denniston: it totally is. And I think, and I think to kind of like go slow in that way is. And to offer variations of different ways of sound.

And so for you, I think it's great if you were to be able to do it in a very subtle way at the beginning. Let it build and then to even just say, I'm gonna be very dramatic here. And then for you to offer that, and then for them to find what their own authentic expression can be. But if you begin to show the different ways to do it, they can see what matches and feels right for.

Chris McDonald: Yeah, so kind of doing it a little bit at a time and I, cause I liked how you taught it like that then Okay, let's do it a little bit louder and Right. You know, and I always say with it, if we wanna keep it trauma informed that we can stop at any time if it feels like too much and trying to offer that.

Space for

Paul Denniston: them too. Well, it's, it's meant from a trauma informed perspective, it's to empower them. Yes. You know, they, they've lost that sense of, of power. Exactly. Um, and, and perhaps because of a situation or a circumstance, they're feeling helpless, hopeless, or out of control. And for this work, this, this work is designed from a safe perspective to empower the person to move the pain through.

That's what this is designed.

Chris McDonald: So what's a takeaway? You could leave with listeners who may be just starting with working with grief?

Paul Denniston: The power of presence that, you know, yoga has a balance of being and doing and coming from a, from a male perspective, that if someone was in grief or needed, I was always like, let me do something.

And so what I have learned deeply within this work is, is if you actually just be with them and to say, you know what? I get it. It's. This loss has devastated your life. And how could you not be forever changed? And if you need to just sit in the mud for as long as you need to, I can sit in the mud with, within this, I'm gonna encourage us to not build our house in this mud.

But if and when you are ready, if you wanna begin to start to do things that can shift it, here are things that can support you. And for me from that perspective, you know, just because I know how mu, how heavy it is within that grief and loss. It's to deepen the breath. It's to find movements and it's to find the power within to help us move forward.

And so that's the, that's the work that I do. But it's, it's really a, a space of like for you to understand the importance and value of being and what can we do that can begin to shift the pain.

Chris McDonald: Thank you so much and I really appreciate you coming on the podcast

Paul Denniston: today. Oh my gosh, my pleasure. My pleasure.

And uh, I'll tell you, if you're a therapist and you're looking for some more practical techniques on this, I do a free training that you're welcome to utilize. It's a free one hour training. It's at the body remembers.com, and you're welcome to, uh, access that there, or grief yoga.com. There's lots of different resources that you can access and utilize there.

And you have a book too, I do. It's called Healing Through Yoga, transform Loss into Empowerment. And it goes over all of those cycles. It lists like lots of different techniques that you can begin to utilize that in your practice for yourself. For more information, you can find that@healingthroughyoga.com.

And uh, if you go there, there's also a free online companion course that can support the book experience. And you also

Chris McDonald: do trainings for therapists?

Paul Denniston: I do. There's a thing called grief movement training that uses these practical techniques right from a chair. Uh, if you're curious about that, check out grief movement.com and, uh, if you're wanting to be able to share this practice with others, Yes.

Chris McDonald: Excellent. And I'll put all that in the show notes as well so listeners can access that. And a big thank you to my listeners for supporting the podcast. If you wanna join me and other holistic therapists who are as excited about deepening their knowledge of holistic modalities as you are, come on over and join my Facebook group, the Holistic Counseling and Self-Care Group.

In this group, you can ask those burning questions about how to integrate your modality of sessions and any other ways that you need support. So the link is in the show notes. And again, this is. McDonald's sending each one of you much in love. Till next time, take care.

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The Art of Breath:  How to Integrate Breathwork Techniques for Effective Therapy Sessions 

Have you been wanting to integrate breathwork into your sessions but are unsure how?   Or maybe you want to refine your technique? Join me on a remarkable journey as we delve into breathwork techniques and how to integrate them safely and ethically into sessions. 

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Self-Care for the Counselor - a holistic guide for helping professionals by Christine McDonald , MS,NCC,LPCS