YogiViews
About Me
Antonio Sausys MA, IGT, C-IAYT, CMT is a somatic psychologist and yoga therapist specializing in grief counseling and grief therapy.
Professional Associations
During his career, Antonio discovered a key correlation between modern body-oriented psychotherapy and ancient yogic teachings, integrating the best practices from both worlds. He applies specific yogic applications working with individuals to create a yoga ‘sadhana’. this is a specific and personalized yogic routine that best serves teh individual’s needs and abiliteis, integrating mind, body and spirit to fully embrace the experience of life.
He studied with Hugo Bilsky and Yoga masters and teachers such as Indra Devi, Swami Maitreyananda, Swami Shankaradevananda, Swami Ekananda, Babashi Singh, Ram Dass, and Swami Pragyamurti. He has continued his professional development with training in Integrative Grief Therapy with Lyn Prashant, Foot Reflexology, Swedish Therapeutic Massage, and Reiki. Antonio presents his work both nationally and internationally at Schools and Universities and leads retreats at Ashrams, Retreat Centers and Yoga Studios; is a faculty member at Yoga Therapy Trainings, the former Honorary Secretary of the International Yoga Federation for USA and a member of the World Yoga Council, the International Association of Yoga Therapy, and the Association for Death Education And Counseling.
He created a ‘Yoga for Grief Relief’ program to induce self knowledge and personal transformation by addressing and working on the physical and emotional symptoms of grief. He also developed a ‘Yoga for Cancer’ program based on the premise ‘Spirit can’t have Cancer’, that draws elements from Yoga and Psychotherapy to integrate techniques, and thoughtful insights in a very dynamic program intended to provide practitioners with tools to better understand and cope with life with cancer. It is designed to accept all types of Cancer and all levels of experience and rather than presenting random series, the program emphasizes the relationship between the physical techniques and their mental and spiritual correlates to empower those with cancer towards personal realization.
He is a faculty member at Yoga Therapy Trainings, the former Honorary Secretary of the International Yoga Federation for North America, and a member of the World Yoga Council, the International Association of Yoga Therapy, and the Association for Death Education And Counseling. His work has been published in several health related national and international journals.
Antonio Sausys resides in Marin County with a thriving yoga practice throughout the Bay Area and globally online. He is frequently featured in journals, magazines, podcasts and blogs, is a TV producer and host of his own TV show YogiViews, and the founder and Executive Director of ‘Yoga for Health’ the International Yoga Therapy Conference He is the author of Yoga for Grief Relief – Simple Practices for Transfrorming your Grieving Mind and Body (New Harbinger, 2014) and a contributor for Yoga and Science in Pain Care – Treating the Person in Pain(Edited by Shelly Prosko and Neil Person – Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2019) and New Techniques of Grief Therapy: Bereavement and Beyond Robert Niemeyer (Routledge 2019). Antonio is fluent in four languages: Spanish, English, Portuguese and Italian.
My Approach
Lyn Prashant affirms that “we don’t get over our losses, we transform our relationship to them,” and I agree with her one hundred percent. Grief is a powerful source of information about who we are, when we dare to look. We identify ourselves through the persons and things we are attached to; when we lose them, we lose part of who we are. Yet we continue being, only in a way that is not known to us. If we are able to transform our relationship to grief in a way that results in improved self-knowledge, then we can establish a new identity. The process of finding out who the new “one” is is multilayered. It involves understanding and dealing with the physical symptoms of grief; actually completing the grieving process; and re-identifying ourselves, not based on preconceived or pre-learned notions but instead on our true essence, the one we’ve come so much closer to thanks to having been stripped of our previous identity. For that to happen, we must work. The sadhana I’ve developed offers a practice—the foundation for the work we must do—the tools to help us reap the benefits we are after.
The practice I have developed for transforming grief from a painful experience into a conscious source of self-knowledge is a six-part sequence: breathing exercises, body movements, cleansing techniques, relaxation, mental reprogramming, and meditation.
The breathing techniques help bring back a sense of control to the individual by manipulating the prana, or vital force, which helps unite the gap between the conscious and the unconscious. The body movements serve to manage the body’s physical symptoms of grief, particularly addressing pain and other acute symptoms. The cleansing techniques help reset the endocrine system, affecting the fight-or-flight response, which plays an essential role in the grief reaction and the feelings associated with it. Relaxation is included with the intention of diminishing the stress levels that increase during grief. The powerful yogic principle of Resolve helps reset mental patterns and focuses the mind toward the transformation of grief. Finally, meditation is used to address the Spirit: once the body is still and the mind is calm, that which is neither body nor mind can manifest more clearly.
The main asana (physical posture) of the Yoga for Grief Relief practice is called the Windmill. Symbolically, the windmill serves as an analogy for the process of transformation of grief into a new identity. The forces of the unknown—the wind—power the mechanisms of the windmill, just as the mystery of loss creates a churning in the depths of our own selves. As the windmill utilizes the sometimes wild and destructive force of wind energy to mechanically transform hard grains into edible flour, the techniques in this sadhana can transform our Spirits, left vacant by loss but open to receiving the knowledge that exists within us. Just as the grain being pulverized results in a finer quality of flour, the yoga exercises shared here operate at a neurochemical level, improving our mood and strengthening our resolve in the face of insurmountable loss.
My Grief Story
When I was twenty years old, my mother died of a stroke. For two and a half years, I lived in a state of denial, completely disconnected from my feelings. When I was finally able to be with my pain, I discovered, to my astonishment, that my body had created an additional calcium deposit between one of my ribs and the breastbone—what the body will sometimes do in response to a fracture. In essence, what my mind had been hiding, my body showed with pristine clarity: I had a broken heart.
As life continued after the loss of my mother, I began training with Lyn Prashant, an outstanding grief counselor and therapist and creator of the Degriefing process, a comprehensive mind-body approach to grief therapy. She helped me learn that grief is one of our least-tapped sources of self-knowledge. Sometime after starting to work together, Lyn asked me to develop a yoga practice to address the body-centered effects of grief, which can range from feelings of lethargy to dull aches, tightness in the chest cavity, shortness of breath, and sleeplessness. I was well equipped through my training as a somatic psychotherapist and yoga teacher. But it was my own personal experience of grief that led me to build a sadhana, or spiritual discipline, that eventually became a holistic practice I call Yoga for Grief Relief.
CONTACT ME
VISIT ME
My studio is located at
412 Redhill Ave. Essex Building, Suite 22,
San Anselmo, CA 94960
