Grief, Motherhood & Movement as Medicine

In conversation with Susie Newson.

Susie is stewarding a season of loss and overcoming, alongside great beauty, motherhood, and marriage. She is the owner of Mocean Yoga and has been leading Yoga Teacher Trainings for the past decade. A dear friend and long time collaborator, we reflect on profound heart openings, the lived integration of yoga as a lifelong practice, and what gives her hope.

SM: Tell us a little about yourself. How did you come to practice yoga?

SN: The toddler mom in me wants to start with “Once upon a time” I was a dancer. I started dancing when I was 3 years old and I went on to dance professionally.
That definitely created this relationship with my body and movement as expression. Eventually, though, it broke my body down and I had an injury that no one could really figure out. I had made the choice to end my dance career and turned down a contract with the Les Grands Ballets Canadiens in Montreal. I was working for Lululemon at the time, and they would pay for you to go to yoga twice a week. I started going to yoga, and my body started to feel better. And that just felt like magic to me. That was in the era where Shakira's “Hips Don't Lie” was big and I used to sing this song “My hip hurts bad, na, na, na, na, na, na, na.”

So, I was recognizing that yoga was making my body feel better and it made me feel very curious to learn more about it. I must have been 25, turning 26, and I was given the book Eat Pray Love. I remember thinking “26 is the year where I need to do something big and exciting” and that's where the idea of teacher training came to me. I was travelling to Maui and asked the yoga teacher that I was seeing, Debbie McDougall, if there was anywhere she would recommend going to yoga, and she was like, “I'm not sure how close you are to Nicki Doane and Eddie Modestini, but I would walk for miles to get to them.” They had an Ashtanga teacher training, and that was the type of yoga I was practising at the time, so I signed up. It changed everything. I fell in love with chanting and I ended up doing many trainings with them after that. I figured out what my injury was, and I learned yoga poses to help heal it. So between that discovery, my experience of healing through asana and then the experience of really finding my voice through chanting – both the expression of singing, but also the capacity to speak my truth – really came through the chanting and that was really, that was it for me.

SM: You referenced Shakira, and when we chant, you often say “channel your inner Shakira”. That's a fun full circle moment.

SN: Y'know my hip hurts bad, na, na, na, na, na, na, na.

SM: Becoming a mother to twins is a profound initiation. How has motherhood shifted your relationship with your body and movement?

SN: Oh, my God. It humbled me. Iiiiit humbled me. My body was a tool, but it could also be a show pony. I had such a strong relationship with my body being able to kind of perform on command and do the thing that I'm asking it to do. I did manage to practice pretty much the whole way through my pregnancy. Well, except in the beginning I had to pull back because of those chorionic haemorrhages. And then I sloooowly, slowly, slowly found my way back to the mat at about 16 weeks pregnant. It really started to change my relationship with the practice. I had to pull back but I was still moving my body and practising all the way to like pretty much the end. And then coming back to my body postpartum was unlike anything I've ever experienced. It was very humbling, very humbling. I now had this C-section scar. I had way more weight on my body than I had ever experienced and it wasn't like, “oh, the babies are nursing and it's just melting off of me!” There was no ‘bouncing back’. But that's the beauty of the humanness in that I wasn’t able to reclaim everything, it was different. It changed. And motherhood is meant to change us.

SM: And how old were you when you had your twins?

SN: I was 40 when we conceived, I turned 41 two months after they were born, and now I'm 44. 

SM: You’ve been gifted with a series of grief during this human experience. In what ways has grief become a teacher for you, and has it expanded your capacity to guide others?

SN: Hmm. Grief.

SM: Still in it. 

SN: Still in it. It makes me teary just acknowledging it. I don't want to say that I’m on the other side of my resistance, but I'm in a deeper awareness of the resistance that I had for my grief – maybe still have. I really fought it. I really wanted answers. I desperately wanted a crystal ball. It's definitely brought me to my knees – especially alongside parenting twin toddlers. They were such a gift in that first year in the way that sitting on the couch and reading books was enough. Thank God for that, because that has changed. On the couch and reading books is still a thing, but not for the same extended periods of time!

In some ways, grief has expanded my capacity and in other ways, it has made my world smaller. My energy became way more precious, but again that was like, grief alongside toddlers. And then there’s the imposter syndrome. I was questioning myself, and it felt hard to show up and teach. But when I'm in the moment, it becomes this really beautiful place to authentically share from – to be genuine in my humanness.
And that's where I felt really grateful for the community that just continued to show up. Even for that. 

SM: And a gift from grief is to know that we’re never actually alone in the experience of it. So when you’re teaching and speaking authentically, there is a part in us that resonates, whether it's through a very personal or universal understanding.

SN: Yeah. And it just, it’s humbling, and it's also human. I think the realness is the piece that people are drawn to.

SM: This next question is important and controversial. You’ve been walking the yogic path for over 20 years... Are you team Matcha or Coffee?

SN: Coffee. But I will say, I didn't start drinking coffee until I was 37. I mean, I did have a matcha season, but I was more of a mate girl. Heavy mate girl actually. But when I met Hans, I wanted to make his coffee. I would open up the bag, I would put my nose in there, and I was intoxicated by the scent of the beans. That's what started to tip me. Now, I'm heavy on the coffee.

SM: Your favourite way to share yoga is through Yoga Teacher Trainings. What do you love most about holding people through this threshold from student to teacher, self-doubt to embodied leadership?

SN: I mean, it really is my favourite because I love seeing the transformation. There was a season where I was teaching a lot, like 18 classes a week. People would be like “you changed my life! Everything you said was exactly what I needed to hear!” and I just very much was like, “it's not me, it's the yoga”. That's the thing I love about a teacher training – it's this intensive, immersive experience where the yoga works its magic, and I love seeing people transform. I love seeing people come into a deeper awareness and a deeper relationship and understanding of themselves. And I can relate, because that's what it did for me.

"Imagine if we could love ourselves enough that we could figure out how to stop hurting each other."

I say it all the time that this practice is an opportunity to get to know and understand yourself on a more intimate level, and when we are in this immersive experience, we're really there for it. The poses are revealing. They will stir the pot. There will be discomfort, and that is also life –  there is discomfort. It's a safe environment for people to unravel everything that we keep wound up, bound up, locked up inside... 
And because we're all doing it together, it creates this safe container for people to truly let go. Yeah. It can be very liberating. And it's really beautiful to witness.

SM: For someone feeling the quiet pull to teach, but unsure if they’re “ready,” what do you believe truly qualifies someone to begin a teacher training?

SN: Well, I guess I firstly want to say that not everyone that comes into teacher training ends up teaching. I would almost even say 60% of the people that come through our trainings don't teach. They're doing it for themselves. For their own personal growth. Deepening their relationship and their understanding of yoga, and not just the asana but the philosophy and the wisdom. I really believe that there's so much medicine in the sutras.
And then there's the people that come in who have aaabsolutely no intention of teaching at all and they turn around and end up teaching. So… I think that it's the curiosity.
If you're curious about it, you qualify. If you want to know more about the practice, the poses, the philosophy. If you want to use it as a tool to develop a more intimate relationship with yourself. If you just want to do it for fun because we're a really good time! But it's a life enhancing experience that will give you the tools to expand your awareness – not just about your physical body, but about life.

SM: Yeah. As you know, I took a Mocean Yoga Teacher Training in 2018 and can attest to it being much more a rite of passage than a program.

SM: What do you hope each participant walks away having remembered about themselves?

SN: The meaning of life is love. And that all the illusions can melt away and we can come back to the wholeness that is our birthright of just being. And as I say that, I also want to own that that is still my own practice. Wholeness without attachment to the external sources.

SM: Yeah. How to lean in and love deeper, while not attaching along the way.

SN: And this is why we call it a practice. It's not perfection – it's a life practice. I feel like the training is just laying the foundation with a deeper awareness to then build upon. And it's never too late to start. I was blessed that I got to do my first training at 26. But like, I look at my mom and she was I don't know, probably in her 50s when she started.

SM: There have been a few people in their 50s take your 200hr training.

SN: Oooh yeah.

SM: Last question. What is a piece of wisdom that you carry and come back to?

SN: I mean, I just said it but the meaning of life is love. We can get really caught up in grief. The hardship. Whatever the dangling carrot is. Especially the season that I’m in with little people – they can be really demanding. But yeah. Keep loving ourselves. Keep loving each other. I heard something really beautiful yesterday. Imagine if we could love ourselves enough that we could figure out how to stop hurting each other.

I think that’s also part of the beauty of the yoga practice is that it does create this deeper relationship with our body. And I think a lot of us are just sort of walking around like “our body is the tool and we’re living in our brains”. But what if we could actually listen to the wisdom of our bodies and let that help lead us?

SM: Mmm. I love you.

SN: I love you a latte!!!

Read more about Mocean Yoga here.

Photos by Meredith Rose.

This conversation has been condensed for clarity.