[Live Streamed] Collective Grief with Alyssa Pizarro

This offering will be online via Zoom. Preregister to receive your link in your email.

Objective: To create a container for grieving the collective pain (no counseling or resolutions) using the tools of breath, mediation and the movement of our bodies and our energy.

What we will do: We offer an honest space to speak about collective loss and grief; so where there are death cafes, and grief conversations taking place in our culture, this grief workshop will offer space and quiet meditation with energy work and yogic movement to process the collective human pain we are all experiencing. We will create a space where we can gather in community to embrace our human grief with the opportunity to show up as you are right now. In the world, the collective pain is creating a human culture of numbing, anger and/ or overwhelm. Much like individual grief, when faced with grief and loss we often feel that we need to either push feelings down, ignore or deny how we feel (sometimes for ourselves just to make it through the day), and sometimes for others. This space of acknowledging collective grief and loss is an offering to sit with yourself and others who although their grief or loss might look different, they “get” it.

What we are not: a therapy; I am not a therapist. If you are currently seeing a therapist or mental health provider regarding this grief/loss, please consult with them before attending. Triggering is real and while I want to offer a safe space, some topics might bring up feelings. I want YOU to feel you have all the support you need, so if there are any questions around this, feel free to reach out to me directly.

Who am I: I am an energy worker and yoga instructor with a social justice lens. I have volunteered in Respite and as a yoga instructor in spaces with grief and loss for 5+ years and have taken death doula courses with Ashley Benem and multiple trauma informed yoga teacher trainings. I have seen people stuck in grief throughout their lives and holding it in their bodies. I can see it, because I am too this person. For the past four years I have felt stuck in a state of suffering, where I can’t watch the news due to a deep felt sadness. My yoga practice, energy worker and community continue to help support me. It is this experience that inspires me to invite people into this same space. This will be a place for people who are looking to show up unapologetically and be in support and in community. The intention behind this workshop comes from a place of acknowledging our humanity and as yoga teaches us, what effects one of us, affects all of us. How do we learn to hold this and to rather than react, move this energy so we can be healthier and make decisions from love, not reaction? This is our yoga, and this is what the Collective Grief workshop will face.

Workshop Outline
✓ Intro
✓ Arriving (share-out)/ Altar items
✓ Movement, strong yoga poses with sustained holds into soft restorative
✓ Energy work/ Reiki
✓ Journaling/sharing (will build on journaling questions to ask attendees i.e. what is the ideal, bare minimum of what I need to accomplish at this workshop (2 things) )
✓ Closing meditation/ walking meditation
✓ Final Resting

Date & Time: May 3rd, 2020 @1pm – 4pm

Cost: $45

About the instructor: Alyssa Pizarro

After leaving a 10 year corporate career in New York and moving to Seattle, she was able to pursue her passion for yoga which began in 2011.

Alyssa likes to emphasize patience and self-acceptance in her classes with an approachable and welcoming tone. Even though she takes yoga seriously, she likes to balance her classes with both humor and playfulness.

In 2015, Alyssa completed a 200 hr yoga certification in Nairobi, Kenya through Africa Yoga Project with Live Your Yoga, which is a part of the Baptiste lineage. She is a Development Coordinator and teacher with Yoga Behind Bars, and has attended both Street Yoga and multiple Off the Mat, Into the World trainings. Alyssa is certified as a Level II Reiki instructor and as a Death Doula, and is training to be a Hospice volunteer.

Her time practicing yoga has taught her the power behind discovering self-love and she is committed to making yoga accessible to all. While yoga and seva are her passions, Alyssa also enjoys reading, running and spending time with friends and family.