How Yoga Helped Me Confront My Grief
By Kelly I. Hitchcock
The first time a yoga instructor told me that we hold a lot of emotion in our hips, and that sometimes those emotions come out when we are in really deep hip opening poses, I struggled to keep my “okay crazy lady” snicker to myself. Ten minutes later, we were in pigeon pose, and I was sobbing uncontrollably.
I have a masochistic relationship with pigeon pose, especially since I permanently damaged my hips by carrying two babies around on them, both during pregnancy and after. Being in pigeon pose always hurts, but it hurts so good. I’ve practiced yoga for more years than I can count now, but I still get giddy when I’m cued for pigeon pose because I know it’ll spawn a release of tension—physical, emotional, or both.
At one particular afternoon yoga class in February, the yo-guy I’ve been practicing with for the better part of a decade said he would play Abbey Road from start to finish, after polling the class to see if there were any die-hard Beatle-haters (thank God I don’t practice with such monsters).
We began moving as the opening notes of “Come Together” played over the speakers. By the time we vinyasa-ed our way to “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” I was actively chiding myself to keep to the poses and not go off script dancing to the playful tune. That went out the window when we reached “Octopus’s Garden.” How could it not?
Then we were standing in unison in mountain pose when track number seven began to play: “Here Comes The Sun.” My thoughts drifted briefly to her. Before I had an opportunity to dismiss the thought and focus on my posture, I felt my throat tighten and my eyes sting with the heat and salt of hot tears for only a second before they spilled out, a flood that had been hiding behind the dam I’d put up to protect myself from moments exactly like these.
Just a month earlier, I’d helped plan a Zoom funeral for her—one of my closest friends from high school—and I was still very much not okay. Her death had been sudden and traumatic after getting Covid at Christmas. I was sad that I never got to say goodbye to her. I was sad for her two children who just lost their mother.
I don’t remember her being particularly fond of the Beatles, though I have a whole playlist of songs that do remind me of her. “Here Comes The Sun” doesn’t have anything to do with death or illness or grief; it’s just a beautiful song with a message that is powerful in its simplicity.
At this point, I was powerless to stop the tears from coming and was, naturally, smack dab in the middle of the studio without a towel or even a cotton t-shirt to absorb my leakage. Luckily for me, the rest of the class went right on reversing their warrior poses and pretending there wasn’t some psycho crying in the middle of the studio.
Before I had an opportunity to dismiss the thought and focus on my posture, I felt my throat tighten and my eyes sting with the heat and salt of hot tears for only a second before they spilled out, a flood that had been hiding behind the dam I’d put up to protect myself from moments exactly like these.
When the instructor cued us to move from 3-legged dog into pigeon pose and the studio speakers played the chorus of “Carry That Weight,” I was grateful to have the bulging flesh on either side of my knee to use as a tissue as another flood of tears came, one that I’d been holding back with mountains of tasks to occupy my thoughts.
As long as my head is full of thoughts, there’s no room left for emotions, and I don’t have to feel them. But while my mind may be able to actively forget these emotions, my body remembers. Yoga has always been a way for me to get out of my head and into my body, because who can thought-spiral about the despairing state of current affairs when we’re busy trying not to fall out of half-moon pose? As I settled into the masochistic hip opener and let the familiar discomfort and the familiar tune move through me, I knew her death was going to be a weight I carried for a long time. I still do.
Instead of hastily gathering my things and sneaking out the door before anyone had a chance to engage me in conversation (like I usually do), I grabbed a towel to wipe the trails of tears and snot from my face, then walked to the front of the room to thank my instructor (and possibly even blame him for permanently ruining Abbey Road for me). I left out this last part and just said thank you, which is when he moved in for the hug and I started sobbing all over again. He didn’t ask what was up or thank me for being vulnerable. To this day he never has, pretending much like my yoga classmates that the Abbey Road ugly-cry incident never happened, which is probably best for the both of us.
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Kelly I. Hitchcock is a literary fiction author, humorist, and poet in Austin, Texas. She has published several poems, short stories, and creative non-fiction works in literary journals, and is the author of the coming-of-age novel The Redheaded Stepchild, a semi-finalist in the literary category for The Kindle Book Review’s “Best Indie Books of 2011,” and Portrait of Woman in Ink: A Tattoo Storybook. Her newest novel, Community Klepto, released June 2022, courtesy of She Writes Press. She is world-renowned among a growing readership of several folks. She is an editorial contributor to Austin Moms.