Creating & Holding Space For Grief & Loss - by Aleks Slijepcevic

COURSE

Creating & Holding Space For Grief & Loss

With Aleks Slijepcevic

Over the next 10 days, you will begin the journey of forging a new relationship with the concepts of grief and loss. This new relationship will give way to a new mindset, teaching you how to swim the waters of grief with more grace, surrender, and allowance. Likewise, you will learn how to define grief, make sacred space for it, extract wisdom from it, and use it to honor the ones you’ve lost. Through the use of creative exercises and meditation, you will learn how to honor all of the emotions that come with loss; as well as regain your own footing and come back into the right relationship with yourself. In this way, you will begin the journey of swimming in these turbulent waters with less fear and more trust. Death is a natural part of the life cycle, but that never makes it an easy experience. Rather, the grief of losing someone is strong enough to swallow us whole, spitting out a mechanical version of ourselves who simply survives through each day. So often, we collect the sorrow, sadness, anger, and fear of grief, and tuck them into the corners of our hearts, hoping that’s where they will stay. But it never does. Our grief always finds a moment, a memory, or a picture, and pours out in tears and words left unsaid. And there we are, trying to catch all of our sadness and lock it back into our dark corners. We now know how futile that is, but we can finally do something about it. This course will offer a different path: a path to establishing a new relationship with grief. It has been said that grief is just love with nowhere to go. In our time together, we are going to explore ways in which to give our grief expression, autonomy, and space in which to exist. We are going to honor all of the emotions that come with grief, so that we are living and breathing from a space of awareness and acceptance. At the end of the day, grief doesn’t leave. It changes and evolves over the course of our life, but it’s always there. We can choose to ignore it and wait for life to begin again; or we can invite it in, learn from it, and use it as an opportunity to love deeper and live fuller. Every day, we will meet the many emotions and faces of grief, while welcoming reflection and understanding through the mediums of meditation, visualization, creative imaginative writing, and somatic movement. There is no wrong way to approach this course or its material content; all you have to do is show up with an open heart and explore what lies within.


Meet your Teacher

Aleksandra Slijepcevic is an international vinyasa and hatha yoga and meditation teacher, known for her authenticity, humor, and real-life approach to the body-mind-spirit connection. She is a Croatia-native living in the United States since 1998, where she graduated from Towson University with a Master's Degree in Professional Writing, before obtaining her yoga certification under the tutelage of One-Yoga's Susan Smith. She has contributed health and wellness content to Elephant Journal, Elite Daily, and Sivana Spirit, on the topics of yoga in the real world, as well as spirituality and self-development in the age of anxiety and depression. She regularly contributes to Lifehack, and was the founder of a free online publication for eager creatives, Souhl. Aleksandra is also the host of a number of meditation sessions on Insight Timer, as well as life-inspired episodes on her podcast, Soul Sessions.

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10 Days

1.5k students

4.8 stars

12 min / day

Authenticity

English


Lesson 1

Exploring What Grief Is & Isn't

In Western culture, there is an unspoken, societal, and cultural approach to understanding and processing grief and loss. On Day 1, we are going to explore this approach and how it has often kept us from truly sitting with our emotionality. Likewise, we’re going to reflect on the societal “rush hour” of getting through grief, and how this approach and similar practices have left us incomplete and unwitnessed in our own healing.

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Lesson 2

Creating Your Own Definition Of Grief

On Day 2, we’re going to use the creative power of word clouds and journaling to begin to extract the mental and emotional vocabulary associated with the word grief. While we may all experience grief, the manner in which we do is unique and individualized. Having your own definition of grief to lean onto is just as powerful, and this exercise will allow us to track our own meaning and assign a definition that feels right.

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Lesson 3

The Importance Of Making Space For Grief

The more we push grief away, the stronger we feel it. Grief comes with a host of emotions: sadness, anger, resentment, guilt, shame, fear, etc. We can either choose to ignore these emotions and see them as something to fix and overcome, or we can choose to walk the path of darkness and extract the wisdom that sits within each emotion. This is how we make space for grief: by walking into our own pain with a lantern. On Day 3, we’ll discuss why this journey is worth taking.

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Lesson 4

Honoring & Understanding Your Emotions

It is said that all emotions branch out from two main roots: love and fear. While love is the effortless, unconditional expression that brings us joy and peace, fear is simply the shadow side of this same coin. Therefore, on Day 4, we’re going to explore this concept of light and dark as it relates to love and fear. Additionally, we will explore the benefit of welcoming the heavier emotions associated with grief, and how this practice can bring us closer to our own authenticity.

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Lesson 5

Making Space For Grief: Somatic Movement

On Day 5, we’re going to explore how grief and the emotionality around it get trapped and lodged as stagnant and dense energy in our physical body. We will use meditation to ground and tune into our energy, and we will also use gentle and simple somatic (physical) movements to help move this energy through and out.

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Lesson 6

Making Space For Grief: Expression Through Writing

Grief is love with nowhere to go. On Day 6, we’re going to channel all of the deep, raw love in our heart into a writing exercise. The intention behind this writing exercise is to express our emotionality onto paper and outside of our body and energy. This way, we’re not holding all of our emotions, and we’re better able to gain perspective, clarity, and gratitude for the words which are now doing the holding for us.

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Lesson 7

Making Space For Grief: Your Boundaries

On Day 7, we’re going to switch gears and reflect on how we are supported (or not) in our grieving process. We’re going to evaluate our social and family circles to learn where we can pull back our energy, so that we are filling our own cups first. Boundaries are often the least talked about challenge in grief, and we can often get caught up in “saving mode,” trying to help everyone else but ourselves. We’ll visit some practices that we can implement to protect our space, energy, resources, and time.

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Lesson 8

Making Space For Grief: Connecting With Your Loss

On Day 8, we begin to tenderly touch the vulnerability of our loss. Whether we have lost a person, a job, a pet, an opportunity, or even some part of ourselves; we will now begin to connect with our loss. Through Metta meditation and letter-writing, we will take everything we’ve learned about grief up until now, and energetically connect to our loss. We will also discuss creating altars to honor our loss and grief, as well as creating sacred time to share stories of our loss.

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Lesson 9

Share Your Love

Now that we know what our grief is, how it feels, and how to make space for it, it’s time to let it flow. So much of what grief entails is the overflowing love that we have for someone or something we lost. Now that we know what that love is, it’s time to share it. On Day 9, we’ll explore some unique, sweet, and heartfelt ways to share our love, even in grief.

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Lesson 10

How To Live Life After Loss

Congratulations on making it to Day 10. On this final day of our course, we’ll reflect on our journey; touch back on recognizing our grief and how making space for it has changed our mindset. We will also explore the idea of a “new normal,” and living life after loss. The intention behind our last day together is to empower you to live the kind of life that aligns with the magnitude of love that you have in your own heart.

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4.8 (53)

Recent Reviews

Sara

September 16, 2024

Thank you for the course. I wonder if you can address ambiguous loss, living with someone with dementia.

Jon

July 2, 2024

Incredibly soothing and helpful during a rough time.

Andrea

April 4, 2024

This was a very helpful course, as I grieve my father. Helped me create the space to work through and make sense of this very difficult time. Thank you. It touched my life deeply at a time I so needed it. I felt less alone in the pain.

Alexandria

Alexandria

March 19, 2024

This course has been so helpful for me. The length of each session was perfect and it really felt like a safe space for me to feel my grief. Thank you so much.

Allison

Allison

February 8, 2024

Thank you so much for this course. It has given me a sense of hope and connection that were desperately needed

Lori

Lori

January 21, 2024

I will listen to this series again. Many good ideas to start the healing process. I realize that we all are uncomfortable with the process of grieving and need to see what helps us remember and express the love.

Ms

Ms

July 27, 2023

Very helpful thank you♥️

Barbara

June 28, 2023

Thank you I have just lost my best friend, the letter writing was so helpful as I never got to say goodbye x

Jenny

June 22, 2023

This course has helped me move through a very difficult & personal journey. I will return to it as needed. Thank you.

Scott

April 30, 2023

Thank you!

Rebekkah

Rebekkah

April 2, 2023

This was a very helpful course highly recommend 💗

Colin

Colin

March 31, 2023

This is a wonderful course. While it can’t take away the pain of grief, it sheds a little light in the darkness. Many thanks 🙏❤️‍🩹

Antonio

Antonio

March 20, 2023

Helpful and worth listening to again.

LoriAnne

February 13, 2023

Alejsandra’s Insight Timer course has truly been life-changing for me. The tools & support were beyond measure when needed most during a difficult time. Blessed & grateful! 🙏😇🌟💞

Supafly

Supafly

December 20, 2022

The first few episodes I disliked but then I realized I was just angry and that was my grief. I continued listening the remainder of days and ultimately so grateful now this was VERY HELPFUL. Thank you for the tools advice perspectives & resources shared here. I feel more centered & peaceful now.

Shanti

Shanti

October 24, 2022

Beautiful and empowering

Donna

October 4, 2022

Great course!

Jim

Jim

September 17, 2022

This is a remarkable course, full of wisdom and insights. Thank you for doing the work to create it!

Patricia

September 14, 2022

Thanks a million times over. Now I will begin your class again!

Margaret

September 14, 2022

This is a very profound course that needs to be spread to anyone you know grieving. It is very unique and current. If you are looking for tools that will really help, that you can use over and again, then you have found your course. There is a lot of depth to this work, which is exactly what you need when your love is deep.

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