+ Her Barefoot Heart

Tag: yoga

Growth from Grief Podcast with Sue Anderson, Part 1

 

When Sue’s son died, she discovered yoga and how it calmed her body and distracted her grieving brain. A while later, she became a certified yoga instructor, offering classes online and in person. Then she began offering grief workshops (We met when I took one of her good workshops.), and recently she started her Growth From Grief podcast. Last week I was tickled to be interviewed by Sue for a podcast episode, and let me tell you: we had so much fun (yes, your can have fun while grieving), we decided to do a second interview.  We talked about things you’d expect us to chat about: grief, living with loss, self care while grieving, and we also went off script and talked about other things. You’re not surprise, are you?

If you want to watch our interview, sit back, maybe grab some popcorn, and enjoy. If you enjoy it – and.I sure hope you do – maybe you’ll enjoy some of Sue’s other podcast episodes and go to her You Tube channel to snag yourself a subscription and give her a thumbs up.

If you’d rather listen as you walk, do yoga, or I don’t know, maybe make some art, click right here.

For information about Sue’s Grief Relief programs, here’s what you’ll want to look.

And that’s not all! Perhaps you’d like to join me in her Five Weeks to Grief Relief program that combines movement, writing, and sharing with other people who speak the language of grief. Best hurry on that one, though, cause early bird registration ends soon.

Here’s where she hangs out on Instagram and on Facebook.

And now, my friends, enjoy Part 1 of Growth From Grief: Stitching Stories: Grief, Memory, and the Healing Power of Art. Please check back next week for Part 2 of our chat. And now, on with the show . . .

Finding Smiles on Sheltering-in-Place Days 25 and 26

Saturday, 04 April 2020, Day 25

Gorgeous weather is the bearer of hope.

When we need more supplies to make masks, there is no choice but to go out. Before we enter the store, I give The Engineer a 4” x 44” strip of fabric with instructions to cover his nose and mouth then tie it in the back of his head, and I do the same. Next we both don gloves. Back in the truck, The Engineer says – and I quote – “I felt like an idiot when you made me wear that makeshift mask and gloves . . . and I think it’s the smartest thing you ever made me do.”

I choose yoga, sketching, and short poems for my 100 Day Project, and I start early with a Yoga Nidra this morning led by my amazing friend Nona Jordan. I haven’t adjectives to tell you how wonderful it was except to say that I am now looking forward to a spot of yoga in each day. Yoga will change my life. That much I’m sure of.

man pushing grocery cart

Small pleasures: walking through the grocery store downwind of the blue hyacinths that will soon grace our home.

a grandfather and grandson got out for a ride on the lawnmower

On the way home, we get behind a grandfather and his grandson who apparently decided to break the bindings of cabin fever by taking the lawnmower out for a spin.

There is much to smile about well before noon.

Sunday, 05 April 2020, Day 26

Handwritten sentences: I will not be cranky today.

Affirmations help some days.

fabrics and papers

Chore charts are set aside as we all pitch in to do what needs to be done while mask-making for friends and family continues full steam ahead. The floors are a  garden of thread and scraps of fabric. There’ll be plenty of time to sweep later.

on the third day of yoga, my true self brought to me

Dahlia

Unless you have problems with your short-term memory, you may recall that on the third day of Christmas the true love came bearing gifts of 3 – count them, three – French horns. One feller who talks like he knows, says the three French horns refer to faith, hope, and charity while another fella proclaims the third day of Christmas to honor the life of St. John, who has the distinction of being the only one of the twelve apostles to die a natural death.

Anyway, in likening my third yoga class to the third day of Christmas, I see some distinct similarities. Given that I am short and round and stiff, not tall and lanky and bendy like most yoga folks, just signing up for yoga shows that I have a heaping’ helping’ of faith and hope. Charity? April (the teacher) provides that.

I tend to hang out with yoga folks online, and I have a few questions – three, in keeping with the title – that came up as I spent time on the mat today . . .

First of all, am I the only one who sweats like a big ole’ glass of sweet tea on a hot summer afternoon? This isn’t Bikram yoga, folks. This is plain ole’ yoga in the Episcopal church.

And does anybody besides me worry about passing gas during yoga class? Or having bad breath? April came over to help me with something today, and when she asked me a question, I just gave her a closed-mouth smile in return for fear I have the post-water-drinking-dry-mouth-means-bad-breath-at-least-for-me-anyway thing going on.

I tell you what, there are parts of me that touched the floor today that haven’t met with the floor in an awful long time. The floor right by the door, where I always set up for reasons I don’t feel like explaining right now. The floor by the door where people tracked in the pollen which I inhaled as the clock ran out on my 12-hour Clairin-D during the Child pose . . . which I thought for a while was “china” pose . . . which set me to thinking about digging my way there and wondering if there are still a boatload of staving children there. Yeah, you could say my mind wanders during yoga. But oh my goodness, you should’ve seen the images that went floating through while we were laying on the floor meditating. I wish I had a camera on the inside of my eyelids.

(Confession: I think I snored there at the end of class.)