The Sacred Darkness: Why Your Grief Might Be Your Greatest Teacher
On transformation, shadow work, and the courage to let go of who we used to be
As I was recording this week's episode of the Finding Harmony Podcast with author Sara Avant Stover, something she said stopped me mid-conversation: "Heartbreak is mandatory, but transformation is a choice."
It's been nearly seven months since we lost Sharath Jois, and I've been watching our global Ashtanga community navigate the disorienting terrain of grief.
The questioning.
The fracturing.
The desperate search for what comes next when a beloved teacher is suddenly gone.
But Sara's words made me realize this isn't just about losing a teacher. This is about something much more universal—the profound challenge of letting go of who we think we are in order to discover who we might become.
The Death That Lives Inside Every Transformation
Over the past six years, I've been undergoing my own metamorphosis. Moving beyond my identity as solely an Ashtanga teacher into integrating Spinal Energetics, energy healing, and business coaching for other spiritual entrepreneurs.
On paper, it sounds like natural evolution.
In reality, it's felt like a series of small deaths.
Twenty years of identity—the certainty of belonging to a specific lineage, the clarity of a defined practice, the comfort of knowing exactly who I was in the yoga world—all of it had to be released to make space for something new…
And grief, I've discovered, is the price of admission to transformation.
This is what Sara calls "the sacred darkness"—that fertile ground where our deepest growth happens not despite our pain, but because of it. It's the paradox at the heart of spiritual development: We must be willing to lose ourselves to find ourselves.
The Seduction of Spiritual Bypassing
In spiritual communities, we're often taught to transcend difficult emotions rather than inhabit them.
We meditate to escape anxiety.
We practice to avoid depression.
We seek enlightenment as a way out of the messiness of being human.
But what if our shadows—our grief, our rage, our terror—aren't obstacles to overcome but gateways to walk through?
After Sharath's passing, I watched our community's responses with fascination and heartbreak. Some rushed to find new authorities. Others clung more tightly to tradition. Many simply checked out, unable to navigate the uncertainty.
What fewer people were willing to do was sit in the unknown.
To feel the full weight of what it means to lose not just a teacher, but an entire way of understanding ourselves within a lineage.
This is spiritual bypassing in action—the unconscious tendency to use spiritual concepts to avoid psychological and emotional pain.
We skip over the messy work of grieving in favour of more palatable practices like gratitude, forgiveness, or "letting go."
But true letting go isn't a spiritual technique. It's a descent into the underworld of our own psyche, where we must face everything we've been avoiding.
The Internal Family System of Grief
One of the most powerful frameworks Sara and I discussed comes from Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy—the understanding that we all contain multiple parts or aspects of ourselves, each with their own needs, fears, and wisdom.
When we experience loss, it's rarely just one part of us that grieves.
There's the part that feels abandoned.
The part that's terrified of the unknown.
The part that's angry at being left behind.
The part that wants to close down and never risk loving again.
In my own transition over these past six years, I've had to get acquainted with the part of me that was terrified of losing my yoga community if I expanded beyond Ashtanga. The part that felt like a fraud for exploring energy healing. The part that worried I was betraying my teachers by evolving beyond what they taught me.
Instead of trying to silence these parts or shame them into submission, IFS invites us to welcome them with curiosity. To listen to their concerns. To understand what they're trying to protect us from.
When I began approaching my internal resistance with compassion rather than force, something shifted.
The parts that were holding on so tightly began to relax. They didn't disappear—they simply found new roles in my expanding identity.
This is the magic of shadow work: When we're willing to befriend the parts of ourselves we've been rejecting, they stop running the show from the unconscious and become allies in our growth.
The Alchemy of Allowing
Here's what I've learned about grief through both personal experience and witnessing our community's journey: It's not a problem to be solved but a portal to be entered.
Grief strips away everything that isn't essential.
It dissolves the identities we've constructed, the future plans we've made, the stories we've been telling ourselves about who we are and how life should unfold.
This dissolution feels like death because, in many ways, it is.
The person you were before loss is gone.
The question becomes: Who will you choose to become in the aftermath?
When I finally stopped fighting the death of my old identity as "just" an Ashtanga teacher, I discovered something unexpected: Relief.
The rigid container that had once felt like home had actually become a prison. My expansion into energy healing and spiritual coaching wasn't a betrayal of my yoga roots—it was their natural flowering.
But this realization only came after I was willing to grieve what I was leaving behind. To honour the gifts that identity had given me while acknowledging it was no longer big enough to contain who I was becoming.
To continue in this exploration… 👉 Listen to this profound exploration of grief as a doorway to transformation (and discover why our heartbreak might be our greatest teacher)
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Practical Pathways Through the Darkness
If you're in the midst of your own process of letting go—whether it's the loss of a relationship, a role, a belief system, or a way of life—here are some practices that have supported my journey:
1. Welcome Your Resistance
Instead of pushing through difficult emotions, get curious about them. What are they trying to tell you? What are they protecting you from? Journal with these questions:
What part of me is most afraid of this change?
What does this part need to feel safe?
How can I honour what I'm leaving behind while moving toward what's calling me forward?
2. Practice Conscious Grieving
Create rituals for honouring what you're releasing. Light a candle for the identity you're letting go of. Write a letter to the future you thought you'd have. Dance, cry, rage, or simply sit in stillness with what's moving through you.
3. Seek Community That Can Hold Paradox
Find people who can witness your transformation without trying to fix it or rush you through it. Look for communities that can hold both celebration and grief, expansion and contraction, certainty and mystery.
💌 I invite you to join our Finding Harmony Community, where you can access our monthly full + new moon meditation and integration circles for ongoing support.
4. Trust the Timing of Your Becoming
Transformation isn't linear. Some days you'll feel clear about your direction; others you'll feel completely lost. Both are part of the process. Your only job is to stay present to what's alive in you right now.
The Rebirth That Waits
Seven months after losing Sharath, I'm watching our Ashtanga community slowly begin to find its footing in new ways.
Some are creating innovative approaches to traditional practice.
Others are weaving the physical postures with different philosophical frameworks.
Many are discovering that their relationship with yoga is actually deeper and more personal than they realized.
This is what happens when we're willing to grieve: New life emerges from the composted remains of what we thought was solid.
In my own journey, the identity I was so afraid to release has transformed into something more spacious and authentic.
I'm still deeply connected to the Ashtanga tradition—it remains the foundation from which the seeds were planted for my practice and teaching. But now it's one note in a much larger symphony rather than the only song I'm allowed to sing.
This is the gift hidden in every loss: The invitation to discover who we are when everything we thought defined us is stripped away.
To find the essence that remains when all the external structures dissolve.
Your grief—whether it's for a person, a relationship, a career, a belief system, or a version of yourself—is not punishment. It's initiation.
It's the sacred darkness that precedes every authentic rebirth.
The question isn't whether you'll experience loss—that's guaranteed. The question is whether you'll be willing to let that loss transform you.
Are you ready to discover who you become when you stop trying to remain who you've always been?
This reflection was inspired by my conversation with Sara Avant Stover, author of "Handbook for the Heartbroken: A Woman's Path from Devastation to Rebirth," on the Finding Harmony Podcast. If you're navigating your own process of loss and transformation, I encourage you to listen to our full conversation where Sara shares practical wisdom for moving through grief with grace.
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If you're seeking community support during times of transition, I invite you to join the Finding Harmony Community where we gather monthly for New and Full Moon meditations and hold space for each other's journeys—both the shadows and the light.