When your world is already upside down

Warning: this post talks about the loss of a loved one to suicide.

In November of 2021, we lost a family member to suicide. The shock, pain and grief in those first few weeks regularly brought me down to my knees. Literally. Raised by agnostic parents, I’ve carved out my own spirituality in my adulthood that fits me. It involves ritual, silence, slowing down and being in nature, attuning to a beyond, but it rarely involves praying. Yet in the days around this sudden and earth-quaking loss, my hands often found themselves clasped together in prayer. Tears flowing, forehead to thumbs, repeating the word, “please please please please please please please please.” I don’t know who I was asking, but the gesture and the words were born unto themselves, unconsciously.

After two months of being very very still inside my body, I realized one day that I hadn’t done a single downward dog in all that time. It struck me as odd. My forehead wrinkled in confusion as it did a quick fact-check on this statement.

Having taught yoga since 2003, downward dog for me is like brushing my teeth. It just happens, even when you’re tired and you don’t feel like it because you know it feels worse if you don’t. So the realization that I hadn’t gotten down on the floor to stretch into downward dog even once in 60 days seemed really ….. weird?

But it slowly dawned on me, why would I put my body upside down when everything in my world was already upside down?

Just the thought of lifting up my sitting bones and dropping my head down made me slightly ill. No thank you, not now.

During this time, I was trying to just find my feet on the ground. Actually, I was trying to figure out if there is a ground. Because many times during the day, I sincerely questioned this as I found myself free-falling through space and time. I thought covid times were bad when it comes to the slipperiness of basic physics, but now I can tell you this is much, much worse.

So after two months of holding still, when my spine started to feel as if it was made out of porcelain, I found myself ready to move a little bit. 5 minutes here, just rolling around on the floor. 5 minutes there, with some therapy balls under my back. And it actually felt good to feel my body move again. It felt like returning to a long lost home. And oh, how I missed it!

My relationship to going upside down stayed distant for a few more months. Until one day, the ground felt a little more secure underneath me and I could try it out. But until that moment, downward dog was not for me. My world was still upside down.