Grieving the Old Normal, An Approach by Monique Minahan, author of The Grief Practice

Layers of grief continue to surface as COVID presses on. “New losses pull at old losses, so there are many layers that can be surfacing now,” said Monique Minahan, author of The Grief Practice and polyvagal-based, trauma-informed yoga teacher based in Encinitas, California. 

In addition to the humans who lost loved ones to illness and COVID this past year and a half, Minahan adds this: “Many of us lost layers of human connection, jobs, businesses, dreams, and a sense of internal and external safety; some more than others depending on our level of privilege.”

Minahan’s own journey in grief is tied to loss as a young adult. She became a widow at 25, left religion, and a few years later, discovered yoga. She credits the self-discovery in the practice for taking her from surviving to thriving, which inspired her to combine her grief experience with yoga to help others.  

Here’s what Minahan wants you to know if you are grappling with grief and wondering if it is, in fact, grief. 

“Grief doesn’t necessarily manifest in tears, depression, withdrawal, or in ways you might typically expect. “Grief can feel itchy, smooth, rocky, bubbly, burning, constricted, paralyzing, sticky, strong, smooth, energizing, heavy, and more. We might feel these sensations in our organs, muscles or skin.”

When left unattended or ignored, grief creates tension patterns in the body, such as tightness in the chest or challenges with breathing. This state can affect our body systems, possibly creating discomfort or disease, according to many medical journals and studies. But, there’s hope. “Hope in the body moves along the same physiological networks as grief,” she adds. The National Institutes of Health found that, among other therapies, movement supports healing. ‍

National Grief Awareness Day is August 30th, so we asked Minahan to explain what we might be experiencing together. Everyone grieves differently, for different reasons, but we can all benefit from more awareness and knowledge of this dimension of the human experience. She also gave us this video to help you with a short practice.

Minahan shares how to handle the stigma of grief, the threats we can’t see, and what we have to do before we can process grief at all.

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Christine Chen: Is COVID-related grief a public health crisis? 

Monique Minahan: Labeling grief a public health crisis makes a normal human experience feel like an abnormal one, when really it happens to us all. We love, we lose, we survive. Grief is painful, hard, and we’re not meant to endure it alone, but it is not a public health crisis. 

CC: Is collective loss normal? 

MM: Yes. Collective and public tragedy pulls the legs out from under our sense of normalcy, sobering and softening up even the most hardcore among us. Unlike personal loss, collective loss does not hide from public view. It is harder to turn away, to ignore it, to stuff it down.

CC: What is the stigma of grief, and why is it important to acknowledge a stigma at all? 

MM: Stigma is the negative or discriminating attitude that makes grief something "those" people have instead of pulling grief into the fold of our undeniable and often painful humanity. It makes humans feel more alone, isolated, misunderstood and unaccompanied in what is already an overwhelming and devastating experience. Many people retreat rather than try to fight the spoken and unspoken societal stigma they feel from family, co-workers, and their communities. 

CC: Is this stigma the same across cultures? 

MM: No. Many cultures have beautiful, acknowledging practices around individual and collective loss. Outside the United States, cultural rituals around death and loss often recruit community support, embodied expression of love and pain, and ongoing acknowledgement of grief and the humans who have lost.

CC: Why is grief in the body misunderstood? 

MM: We live in a top-down society that favors the intelligence of the mind over the intelligence of the body from the neck down. Thanks to polyvagal theory we now have beautiful science to confirm the soulful, embodied experience of grief we have always sensed as humans. For many people this is the only way they will acknowledge the intelligence of their bodies and begin to listen.  

CC: How do our bodies respond to threats that we can see versus can’t see? 

MM: Threat registers in our bodies through a subcognitive process called neuroception. The same cascade of protective biological responses ensue for a seen or unseen threat; the initial alert or startle, trying to orient or see the threat, fighting or fleeing, and then freezing or collapsing. Because we can't fight or run away from unseen threats such as grief or COVID, the energy that is mobilized often has nowhere to go and needs to be processed in other ways, often therapeutically.

CC: What comes before grief in this cycle before we can process grief? 

MM: Grief can be hard to access when we are trying to survive or are in shock. This is why it can be helpful to process the trauma first when we have experienced traumatic loss and grief. Many layers of grief require a container of softness to flow, which the body feels into when it's ready. This is why we may grieve decades later or why new loss may re-open old loss.

CC: What can we lean into when grief is hard? 

MM: Community is our biggest resource and our first line of defense when tragedy hits, physically and emotionally. If other humans are there to support us it changes the way we can carry our pain. If no one is there for us our biology drops us into other lines of defense and self-preservation.  

CC: If grief is different for individuals based on what we lost, what kind of range might bodies experience? 

MM: Many people experience grief as a sense of contraction in their chests, bellies, posture, and behavior. This is a very protective and normal response that does not need to be changed or rushed, simply supported. These are also the same places we can sense softening and ease in our bodies when we feel supported, welcomed and accompanied.

Resources

The Grief Practice  

• Book 
• Events and Offerings 
• Instagram
  

Additional Support 

• CDC: Grief and Loss During COVID
• SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration)

Griefshare: Find a Support Group