I didn’t go to Bali to grieve. In fact, it was quite the opposite. As I sat in front of my laptop, ready to submit the payment for a 200-hour yoga teacher training, the last thing that was on my mind was grief. Or so I thought. Just a year after my dad passing away, I thought I had my grief “under control.” I thought I felt it all, acknowledged it all, and understood the experience. But little did I know, I was nowhere near truly feeling grief and loss. And this is where Bali came into the picture and changed my life forever.
One week in, and there I was on a rooftop in Uluwatu, Bali, crouched over like a potato, tears rolling down my cheeks as I was trying to catch my breath. I was confused. Why was my body reacting like this? Why am I crying right now during a yoga training? I’m meant to do yoga right now, not cry. Although yoga (or what I thought yoga was) was a part of my life for about two years leading up to this moment, I only related to yoga as a form of workout or stretching. I never truly understood that there’s a depth to yoga. That it’s a physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual experience. So as I crunched over on that rooftop, my head on the ground, there was finally no way to escape my grief.
Nothing can prepare you for grief. No book, no podcast, no previous experience can give your body some sort of preparation for the heart-wrenching feeling that enters one’s life when they lose a parent. The person that gave them life. Grief pulled the earth out of my feet. Losing my dad shook my whole world in every direction, and I found myself frozen in time. My body started experiencing such deep and raw emotions. Emotions that were too scary and intense to feel or process. So as I sat on that flight to Bali, I felt numb. Like a zombie, I was slowly placing one foot in front of the other, dazed and completely detached from my body. And as that plane hit the ground, on a tarmac surrounded by green trees and Balinese waters, I had no idea what was about to unfold.
Doing a yoga training is an incredible experience to walk through. It takes commitment and openness to jump into practicing full time yoga with the intention of embodying the lessons and possibly teaching them one day. But choosing to do a yoga training in a place far from home, in a world that’s so unfamiliar, puts the experience on a whole different level. Bali was the most unfamiliar part of the world for me. Yes, I saw some pictures and videos on Instagram as I was preparing for my trip, but social media can never compare to a real life experience. I stepped into a world that I have never seen before. A world that, unknown to me, would hold my grief in the perfect way I needed.
The yoga retreat center sat on the hills of Uluwatu, Bali. Surrounded by water and trees, this southern part of Bali is filled with a sense of slowness and peace. My mornings began on the rooftop. An opened space with a full view of the Indian Ocean hugging the tip of the island. As we began our mornings with a half hour of breath-work and meditation, the sun slowly joined us as it rose over the ocean line. The perfect breeze then accompanied us into a one hour vinyasa yoga flow, and then into a full day of learning.
Being thrown into full days of deep breath and movement, my body wasn’t sure how to process and manage all these new experiences. Something was going on inside of me, and I wasn’t sure what it was. Feelings that have been stored in my body were finally being brought to the surface, and my reality was taken over by all the emotions that I’ve been locking up. Emotions that desperately craved to be held and listened to. A deep sadness that needed to be released. And the more I did yoga, the more I physically opened my heart and hips day after day, the louder my emotions became. My body was completely taken over, and I finally started feeling my grief.
The hills of Uluwatu, Bali weren’t the only thing I needed in order to go through this transformation. Nature and yoga weren’t enough. I needed to feel safe enough to allow myself to feel such raw emotions. A safety that can only be created by other human beings. And not just any human beings, but the right ones. The ones that know how to hold a space of love and permission. The ones that have held themselves in their rawest and deepest emotions and can therefore hold someone else too. And these are the human beings that were brought to me in the exact time that I needed them. To hold me in the exact way I needed to be held.
Surrendering into this safe space didn’t happen overnight. I walked in guarded, unsure if I was safe to share and connect to a group of 25 strangers. I was afraid to share about my grief. Afraid that if I did share, my emotions wouldn’t be welcomed. Leading up to this moment, my body didn’t know what it felt like to be in a safe space. A space where feeling and crying was not only allowed, but encouraged. And about one week in, when I finally gathered the courage to share about my dad passing away, something happened. Something I was the least expecting. I felt closer, more connected, to a group of strangers I just met. And not only was I feeling more comfortable within this group, but my deepest and truest emotions were being welcomed to join as well. And this gave my body the permission to feel safe. To feel safe enough to allow someone else to hold me in my grief. To hold me in a way that didn’t require the “right words,” but rather the right feeling and energy that gave me space and permission to grieve.
Traveling doesn’t have to be a form of escaping. Sometimes we choose to travel in order to find ourselves. To find out something that’s so deeply buried within us that we may need to step into a different reality to discover it. Without even knowing it, our bodies get called to certain places in order to peel away the layers that we build up within ourselves over time. Bali peeled away my layers. It peeled away my rawest emotions and gave me the space that I needed to start feeling and processing my grief. It introduced me to the power of breath and body movement, and the sacred role that it can play in releasing grief. And as I sat there on my return flight, on that same tarmac I landed on 3-weeks ago, I couldn’t recognize this new version of myself. This version that was feeling grounded in her body for the first time since losing her dad. I came to Bali to do a yoga training, and I was leaving with myself. I was leaving without the need to escape from my grief anymore. Because it finally felt safe to be felt. Yoga brought me to Bali, and Bali brought me back to my body. Back home to myself.
Life Lovers Magazine® 