Exploring Healing Modalities for Grief

Summary
In this episode, Susan Andersen, a grief guide and yoga teacher, shares her personal journey through grief and the various healing modalities she has explored over the years. She emphasizes the importance of finding safe spaces for healing, the evolution of grief, and the integration of both traditional and alternative approaches to support individuals on their healing journey. Susan encourages listeners to remain open to different modalities and to trust their intuition as they navigate their unique paths of grief.

Takeaways

• Grief is a personal journey that evolves over time.
• Finding a safe space is crucial for healing.
• Listening is a key component in the healing process.
• Traditional approaches can provide comfort and validation.
• Alternative modalities can be overwhelming but worth exploring.
• Astrology can offer insights into personal grief experiences.
• Healing modalities should be approached at your own pace.
• Emotions can become stuck in the body and need movement.
• Every individual's grief journey is unique and should be respected.
• Healing is not linear; it takes its own path.

Thank you for listening! Visit www.sueandersenyoga.com for Yoga for Grief classes and additional resources.

Transcript

Susan Andersen (00:03.382)
Hello, I'm Sue Andersen, grief guide and yoga teacher dedicated to helping individuals navigate the challenging journey of loss. Welcome to Growth from Grief, where I aim to offer strategies to transition from the depths of grief to the path of healing. Whatever loss you are grappling with, here you'll discover support.
to ease both the physical and emotional burdens of grief. Together, let's embark on a journey towards strength, peace, and healing. I'm so glad you are here.

Susan Andersen (00:57.098)
Hi and welcome to this episode of Growth from Grief, Exploring Healing Modalities for Grief. And I'd like to take you through a personal journey through these different approaches to healing.

So one thing that I think we all realize is that grief changes over time and our openness to healing modalities or choices evolves. And that's something important to recognize because what you might feel uncomfortable doing or participating in in the early days after your loss might be something that really helps you a number of years later. 

And that's exactly what I'm going to talk about. My experience over the last 10, 12 years, and what I'm experiencing now, which is quite different than what I was even thinking about or feeling that I could approach this particular kind of healing modality, you know, way back after my son died.

The early days of grief, there were certain things that felt safe to me. You know, I initially, after my son died, I initially saw some individual counseling. I didn't really want to participate in a group, but I felt the individual counseling would be really helpful to me, and it was.

Susan Andersen (02:50.318)
It allowed me to work through certain things and my counselor was really wonderful because she was such a good listener. And of course listening is such an important part of our ability to heal. We need somebody to listen to us.  And by listening and maybe offering just a little nudge or two, just that, allowed me to get to the next step and validate my feelings. So that was really important. 

I then joined a grief group in person. And this was a grief group that wasn't specific to suicide loss, but was parents who lost children. And I decided to join that type of group because I saw myself first as a mother who lost her son. And secondly, how he died, right? So it was the child loss. 

And I found in this group that everyone had similar kinds of experiences in terms of their relationship to others, what they felt about their own capabilities, right? What they might've felt guilty about or sorry for, or, you know, the coulda, shoulda, woulda sort of things. Those all crept up with everyone, but it was still different. 

I was the only person in that group whose son or child took their own life. And so there was a little something missing there for me. I felt that my experience was different in the fact that suicide loss is just so much more complicated. 

Susan Andersen (05:13.856)
But that was really important and I would kind of classify this as a traditional approach. I felt that these were acceptable. They were safe. They felt safe to me. And one other experience that I had and the reason that these became very safe for me was I attended a day long sort of healing retreat for mothers and was given the opportunity to experience a massage for 30 minutes and reflexology for 30 minutes. And also reiki, and I never had reiki before. And reiki is the Japanese form of energy healing. And that energy healing was very new to me.

And my experience actually was very scary for me. I remember that my arms were so hot. There was so much heat sort of coming out of my fingers. And that was kind of a, that was a very strange experience for me. The who treated me, the practitioner, she also said a few things to me about my son. I mean, she didn't know, I mean, obviously she knew that I lost a child, but she didn't know it was a son. And she described some physical characteristics. She described what—he was telling her a message - that he was giving her for me. And that, I mean, I was like, I wanted to run out of the room. I was flipping out because that was just so foreign and it was not reassuring.

Susan Andersen (07:25.824)
It was scary to me. It was very scary. And so I thought, gosh, I cannot do this. I don't want to know this right now because I had lot of guilt. Guilt has been alongside me for a long time. And that guilt was very fresh, very, very fresh. And so I just did not feel...reassured by the message that she was giving me. 

So one thing to think about in the early days of grief is to find a space where you feel understood, where you feel safe, and where you feel comfortable. Because it's important that you do feel safe, that you do feel comfortable in your journey here with getting people to help support you, to listen as you move along this journey. It does not do you any good to participate in something that is a negative experience for you. You need to move from that right away. 

So if you have a counselor or practitioner that you're just not connecting with, my suggestion is to leave that person and find somebody else, which might be difficult, I understand, but you need the support that you need, not what somebody's gonna sort of say, "this is what you need". You have to figure out what you need and what you don't need.

So I talked a little bit about some of these alternative modalities, the mediums, Reiki, astrology, and how overwhelming they felt to me. The thought of going to a medium actually made me cry. I don't know why.

Susan Andersen (09:33.622)
I remember being with other people who talked about their experience, how great it was, what they learned. They felt so positive. so comforted. They were very comforted by talking with a medium. I couldn't even think about it.

I guess what I'm saying is if something doesn't resonate with you right away, one, don't do it, but two, keep it there in the back of your mind. Maybe as you move through, maybe your grief is just so overwhelming that there's other things that you need to work through first before you try some other modalities, some other healing. 

If you are a person who is very comfortable, maybe you go to mediums, maybe you do astrology and did these things before your loss, then that's going to feel very comfortable for you. I never did any of those things. I mean, astrology to me was the little piece in the daily paper, right? So I didn't think anything else of it, mediums, I didn't think anything of that either. Maybe except what I saw in a movie or something like that. 

For me the I had such a struggle and It's lessened definitely with with guilt and should have could have what is that I think the talk therapy, talking with other people that had similar experiences early in my grief just felt much better, allowed me to get that emotion out. I had so much emotion to get out, guilt, other feelings, just to get out of my body that it was more important for me to do movement,

Susan Andersen (11:47.982)
talking, some writing, because that was really what helped me get those emotions out. So my message to you is if you have a fear of something, whatever that modality is, if talking in a group gives you the chills, then don't do that. But don't discard it forever, because it might be beneficial to you at some point.

Over the last, I guess I would say, started in the pandemic. I have explored some different healing modalities. And one of those was astrology. And although astrology is not necessarily a healing modality, what my first experience with astrology sort of validated for me, maybe why I was feeling the way I was feeling or how I was relating to my grief or other things that were going on in my life. 

And my first experience was something that it was a chance to have a reading that I won. And it was online because it was during the pandemic. And it was just really, really eye-opening. It was actually very interesting, very interesting. And around the same time that I had this first astrology reading, I also started thinking more about my ancestors. 

Susan Andersen (13:45.422)
I started thinking more about ancestral grief - grandmothers, great-grandmothers, other women before me who had lost children and maybe what their experience would have been in that century or that decade that that happened to them. And you know bringing me a little bit closer to to those ancestors. 

And so the astrology part of it kind of felt okay because I was already sort of having these different, these different explorations. I guess that's a good way to put it, explorations. And so over the last four years, I've had, I guess, probably one astrology reading a year.

And I'm very, very interested in hearing about these when I have them. And it gives me a little bit more insight into my being, myself. And again, for me, was a little bit more about, OK, so I can understand a little bit more about why I'm feeling a certain way. It just resonated with me and felt okay. So, you know, that was something that...again, that I would never have thought about doing, but it was very helpful to me. 

And I think just having these astrological readings helped me think more about going to a medium and not being so afraid. So also during the pandemic, I did an online group with a medium and that was a really safe kind of space for me to do that.

Susan Andersen (15:47.906)
 It felt comfortable. I wasn't alone. There were other people in this virtual room. I could get the experience, know, understand a little bit more about what this might be like if I was going to do it myself. And, you know, it, it felt okay. And so that's something that I will explore a little bit more.

I also, over this last month, so in January, I took time off from teaching and I explored a couple of other healing modalities. And one was a very different kind of massage. was a very light massage, but it also had Myofascial release and Reiki. So I'll be talking about that in another episode. 

And the last thing I did in January was a particular kind of breathing and about 90 minute workshop.

And again, I'll be talking a little bit more about that, something that I never experienced before. And wow, it was so powerful. Both of these things were very powerful for me. So.

Susan Andersen (17:33.822)
I, you know, the message here that I'm leaving with you is don't discard anything. Every grief journey is different. What works for one person may not work for another.  Giving yourself permission to explore new approaches when you're ready is really just a gift. So you may decide to try something that you didn't want to try before. I think about early on in my grief, now this was 12 years ago, I didn't really know about a lot of the things that I'm experiencing now. So there's a lot more things in the mainstream than there might have been you know, 10, 20, 30 years ago. 

And if your loss or multiple losses were years ago, but things are cropping up again, because that does happen, you may want to explore something different rather than talking. You know, emotion gets stuck in our body. A lot of these past hurts, past traumas, stuck in our body. And so some of these healing modalities that deal with energy movement, breath work, those can help move some of these emotions. 

You can think about balancing the things that are traditional with these alternate or alternative healing modalities. It's another way to think about it. So you might like to go to a group or individual counseling and then also do some something else, breath work, sound healing, you know, get an astrological reading, go to a medium, all kinds of things, special massages that can help with grief. 

Susan Andersen (19:50.838)
I think it's important to stay open and just trust your intuition. Like me, when every time I thought about going to a medium, I started crying. Well, clearly I wasn't going to go to a medium because I wasn't ready for it.

Susan Andersen (20:12.664)
So in closing, I'd just like to say that healing isn't linear. We know that this grief just takes whatever path it's going to take. We can allow ourselves to move through it, move with it, and our needs are gonna change over time. As you find what works right for you, know, explore, just explore different techniques, but do it at your pace. Do it when it feels best for you.

Susan Andersen (20:54.626)
And I'd love to hear about other healing modalities that you have experienced. So I invite you to message me, let me know about those. It would be really wonderful to hear what you've experienced, what you've tried and how it felt. 

As a reminder, sharing this podcast with others and also maybe writing a review on Apple or Spotify just helps share with others who are grieving, right? It gets the word out that this podcast can be helpful. And if you're listening and it's helpful to you, again, sharing with others. 

So I thank you for being here and may you find the healing path that resonates.
with you.