Why do you feel so much better after a yoga class? What is it that takes yoga beyond being merely a way to physically exercise the body, and instead renders it a tool for effectuating deep and lasting emotional change? In Yoga Saved My Life psychotherapist and yoga teacher Sasha Bates demystifies both yoga and psychotherapy, exploring the links between them and showing how each can be transformational. This sits alongside personal stories from members of the Fierce Calm yoga community - people who have experienced all manner of difficulties, whether due to neglect, addiction, abuse, anxiety, depression, stress or any of the other myriad ways in which we all struggle with modern life. Here they tell their stories of finding yoga, and thereby discovering a path through the beliefs and behaviours that had been holding them back and keeping them miserable. If you've ever wondered why you feel so much better after a yoga class, then the explanations of how any why yoga works will enlighten you. Written using down to earth language and in a warm conversational tone, you will come to see how yoga is doing what psychotherapy does: providing a safe, containing, reflective space in which you can access your unconscious, develop self-awareness and find ways to relate to yourself better. This new relationship with your self offers new ways to work with the automatic habits you do without thinking, but which hold you back, practically and emotionally. 'Yoga Saved My Life shows us gently and persuasively that healing the mind is as important as healing the body, and yoga is a great way of doing this' - Vex King, author of Good Vibes, Good Life and Healing is the New High

'This is a book that takes you by the hand and promises the gentlest comfort in the darkest of times.' Tamsin Greig A Grief Companion offers us practical help to use alongside the theory of Sasha Bate's debut book, Languages of Loss. This guide gives us the starting points to begin our journeys of managing grief, providing us with space and pages to explore and process our feelings with Sasha's expert guidance. Sasha offers some optimism to let you know that you will find light and courage from out of this darkness, and you will be transformed by it. Your grief will not leave you, but you will arrange yourself around it differently. Split in to four sections, that can be read in any order - Mind, Body, Spirit and Everyday - this book explores the non-linear grief that you may be feeling and gives you permission to do your grief, your way. Filled with suggestions, resources, advice for friends of the bereaved and a guiding hand, we hope this book will help you see some light in the darkness of grief. 'Explaining how the mind and body work together, A Grief Companion offers insights into the process of grieving. The writing is energetic, down-to-earth and honest as Sasha Bates helps readers cope with the many layers and levels of grief. A useful as well as a moving book.' Cathy Rentzenbrink, author of A Manual for Heartache

'This is the most startlingly honest book about grief I have ever read. Its immediacy hits you on the first page and takes you on an unforgettable journey. No one has set out so clearly the stages we go through as we try to come to terms with facing the enormity of death.' - Dame Penelope Wilton, DBE 'Sasha writes exquisitely and honestly, the sheer rawness of what she has gone through and is still going through, sitting in balance with the calm and clear-sighted objectivity of the therapist, who is also her.' - Hugh Bonneville One person, two perspectives on grief. Plunged unexpectedly into widowhood at just 49 years old, psychotherapist Sasha Bates describes in searing honesty the agonisingly raw feelings unleashed by the loss of her husband and best friend, Bill. At the same time, she attempts to keep her therapist hat in place and create some perspective from psycho-analytic theory. From the depths of her confusion she gropes for ways to manage and bear the pain - by looking back at all that she has learnt from psychotherapeutic research, and from accepted grief theories, to help her make sense of her altered reality. Languages of Loss starts a necessary and overdue conversation about death and loss. It breaks down taboos and tries to find humour and light amidst the depressing, bewildering reality. It is an essential companion to help support readers through the agony of those early months, giving permission for all the feelings, and offering various methods of living with them.This book's overriding message is that everyone's experience of grief is different, but knowing more about the theory, and learning a new vocabulary, while not necessarily easing the grief, can help you feel less alone, and at some point enable you to reflect back and see how far you have come. 'This is a useful as well as a moving book. The writing is energetic, down-to-earth and bracingly honest, and many readers will feel consoled and enlightened by Bates's take on her experience.' - The Times 'Bates's skill as a psychotherapist is married to her deft ability to use language and metaphor to create this vital treatise on loss. As much as Languages of Loss is an essential text on grief, it is also a story of love.' - Sunday Business Post Review 'This book will give anyone grieving the death of their partner an insight into their experience, and help those around them understand the difficult and painful process of grief.' - Julia Samuel, author of This Too Shall Pass and Grief Works 'A really powerful book. I hadn't read a book before that melds the professional, as a psychotherapist, and the personal, as someone that lost their partner. Sasha's book covers the course of one year since she lost her husband Bill, where she describes how she feels and tries to apply what she has learnt as a therapist. She explores the times when that really exposes the shortcomings of grief counselling, and how incapable anything is really at helping you navigate this absence. I've never read anything like that, a mixture of the practical and the emotional.' - Pandora Sykes

'This is the most startlingly honest book about grief I have ever read. Its immediacy hits you on the first page and takes you on an unforgettable journey. No one has set out so clearly the stages we go through as we try to come to terms with facing the enormity of death.' - Dame Penelope Wilton, DBE 'Sasha writes exquisitely and honestly, the sheer rawness of what she has gone through and is still going through, sitting in balance with the calm and clear-sighted objectivity of the therapist, who is also her.' - Hugh Bonneville One person, two perspectives on grief. Plunged unexpectedly into widowhood at just 49 years old, psychotherapist Sasha Bates describes in searing honesty the agonisingly raw feelings unleashed by the loss of her husband and best friend, Bill. At the same time, she attempts to keep her therapist hat in place and create some perspective from psycho-analytic theory. From the depths of her confusion she gropes for ways to manage and bear the pain - by looking back at all that she has learnt from psychotherapeutic research, and from accepted grief theories, to help her make sense of her altered reality. Languages of Loss starts a necessary and overdue conversation about death and loss. It breaks down taboos and tries to find humour and light amidst the depressing, bewildering reality. It is an essential companion to help support readers through the agony of those early months, giving permission for all the feelings, and offering various methods of living with them.This book's overriding message is that everyone's experience of grief is different, but knowing more about the theory, and learning a new vocabulary, while not necessarily easing the grief, can help you feel less alone, and at some point enable you to reflect back and see how far you have come. 'This is a useful as well as a moving book. The writing is energetic, down-to-earth and bracingly honest, and many readers will feel consoled and enlightened by Bates's take on her experience.' - Cathy Rentzenbrink, The Times 'Bates's skill as a psychotherapist is married to her deft ability to use language and metaphor to create this vital treatise on loss. As much as Languages of Loss is an essential text on grief, it is also a story of love.' - Sunday Business Post Review 'This book will give anyone grieving the death of their partner an insight into their experience, and help those around them understand the difficult and painful process of grief.' - Julia Samuel, author of This Too Shall Pass and Grief Works