Chapter 2: Finding Ground
Welcome to chapter two,
The fact that you're here, moving through this at your own pace, matters more than you might realise.
This chapter builds gently on what you've started in Chapter One. You'll find four new movement sessions to continue developing your practice, a grounding practice from Dr Anna Galloway, and your first downloadable guide, a practical CBT-informed resource to help you recognise and gently shift the thought patterns that can make difficult feelings harder to carry.
We've also included expert guidance from Dr Panna Morgan, a GP, on what's normal after loss, and when it's worth reaching out for additional support. It's the kind of honest, practical information that can be hard to find, and harder still to ask for.
As before, there's no right order and no pace to keep. Come back to anything that helps, as often as you need to.
Movement
All of your movement sessions have been specifically built to support your healing body. In every chapter you’ll find that movement sessions are divided into two types, strengthening, for days when you feel stronger and like you want to move, and focused which target specific areas where you may be holding tension or experiencing stiffness.
Everything in this chapter has been designed to start gently. You'll notice that many of the exercises include progressions and regressions, allowing you to adapt each session to how you feel on any given day.
There is no right way to work through these sessions, and you do not need to complete an entire session in one go. Pilates is a practice, and much of its value comes from returning to it again and again. Rather than working through each session once, we encourage you to revisit them throughout these first few weeks, noticing how they feel in your body each time.
If you're not sure where to begin, start with the focused session for your neck and shoulders. Many of us carry tension, stress, and grief in our neck here, and even one gentle session can help to start to ease it.
This video is G2M2
This is the first main video G2M1
This is G2F1
This is G2F2
Your Toolkit
Sometimes thoughts and feelings can arrive so fast and so intensely that it's hard to know where to start. Grounding techniques work by gently interrupting that overwhelm, anchoring your attention to the present moment before it pulls you under.
In this video, Anna guides you through the 5-4-3-2-1 technique, a grounding practice that uses your five senses to bring you back to the present when anxiety, grief, or overwhelm takes hold. Simple enough to use anywhere, effective enough to return to again and again.
This video is delivered by Dr Anna Galloway, our Perinatal Clinical Psychologist. Anna specialises in supporting women through pregnancy loss, birth trauma, and the emotional complexity that follows.
This short guided meditation from Sarah, invites you to pause, breathe, and simply be with yourself for five minutes.
Stillness can be hard when you're grieving. If you can't get through it today, that's okay. Come back to it when you're ready.