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Rachel Brathen had to learn about trauma, loss, and grief before most. In a new book, To Love and Let Go, out today, the Swedish yoga instructor known as Yoga Girl recalls one of her earliest brushes with death when, at age 4, her mother tried to die by suicide.

Brathen, along with her brother and her dad, got there just in time to save her mom. While she survived, so did Brathen's devastating memory of that experience. She would go on to spend much of her adolescence unsure about who she was and compromise her own happiness to make sure her mom felt happy. Not only that, but more loss was just around the corner.

In 2014, at just 25, Brathen lost three of her closest loved ones: her best friend Andrea, her grandmother "Mormor," and her rescue dog Sgt. Pepper.

To Love and Let Go: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Gratitude

Brathen says so much loss at one time was almost too much to handle. She cried, she screamed, she shut down. She self-medicated with partying and alcohol, all while trying to pick up the pieces of her broken family. It would be years before Brathen turned inward, finally ready to face a well of trauma, pain, and loss.

"When I think of destructive things like turning to alcohol, I always think what is the reason behind this?" Brathen tells Prevention.com. "We continue the destructive behavior if we do not pause and try to figure out why we're not feeling well and get to the root of the problem."

A combination of yoga, meditation, and journaling helped Brathen process her losses. The healing process has been difficult and is ongoing, but today Brathen is choosing to move forward and trust that day-to-day life will get better with time.

"I dont think you can grieve incorrectly," she says. "Trauma and grief suck and its not fun, but were going to be faced with things that are hard but open us up. It usually is a gift, you get something good out of it that makes you stronger."

Though she emphasizes that everyone's situation is different, here are her best tips for overcoming loss:

It's normal to wonder whether you will ever recover after losing a loved one. When Brathen's best friend Andrea died in a car crash in 2014, the yoga instructor was rushed to the hospital with appendicitis at the same exact time and didn't get to say goodbye. Brathen says a part of her died along with her best friend that day. And for a long time, Brathen did not think she was going to be able to make it through her lowest points. Now that she can say she has, her advice is that you have to trust your own grieving process.

"I think so much of grieving is trusting that everything's going to be okay," Brathen says. "As human beings, we want to know what all of that stuff is that helps people grieve and process emotions, but it depends on the persons experience and personality. We get caught up in how we should be feeling, but its different for everyone."

But don't say she's moved on. "I dont like that term," she says. "It implies I put all that behind me. I think its more learning to live in a new reality. Anyone whos been through loss will know that the person will always be with you. And people who havent will experience it at some point."

Brathen says she had an amazing support systemher family, a tight-knit friend group, her husband Dennis, and the yoga communityas she recovered. She also began opening up about her experiences on Instagram, where many followers said they related to her pain.

Despite the support she was receiving, Brathen still shut down emotionally. "I made it impossible for anyone to reach me in my relationships," she says. "It made those hard moments harder. I felt very alone and like no one understood or heard me."

"Anyone in the middle of a depression knows thats what we do," she continues. "Were not able to identify that we have support. I was the luckiest person in the world. I had a million people every day showing me loveincluding family, friends, and [my social media] followers. I eventually hit a wall and everything got much worse. It was hard to see things [clearly]."

It wasn't until she asked for help that things began to shift. "If we ask for help, something will open up and you will begin to feel better," she says. "Thats why therapy works. And if you dont have a therapist, find a friend or someone in your yoga class, anyone who can provide a sense of relief."

They don't call her "Yoga Girl" for nothing! Brathen practices yoga, meditates, and journals by her altar each day. She emphasizes carving out time to turn inward, whether you're suffering from a loss or not. If you are grieving, she says doing so can help you process your pain.

"Any form of self-reflection each day is important," she says. "Were not trained to take it easy and to be intimate with ourselves. But knowing our behavior, what works for us and doesnt, helps us to figure out what we're feeling. If we feel good about where we are, we are going to want to get up and move our bodies, pursue a passion, and be nice to other people. And the times when we're not and get triggered? We have to pause and ask, how can I release this?"

When grief feels overwhelming, you don't exactly want to take a long walk in the park or make a hearty salad. But Brathen makes a case for doing what little you can.

"When were grieving or going through a hard time, our bodies get put on the back burner because we dont have the energy," Brathen says. "But we need to eat normal and move our bodies. When something falls apart, things get way harder if we stop taking care of ourselves."

Brathen also believes in sharing intimate thoughts and feelings to help process emotions. "A lot of people arent aware that they have these thoughts and feelings from situations that happened when they were younger," she says. "I think any trauma or repressed emotion should be addressed."

During her retreats, she has students practice sharing by having a conversation with another partner in which one person reveals something they're bottling up while the other simply listens.

"You have to tell them something youre struggling with, a traumatic thing that happened to you, or how youre feeling right now," she says. "We go a little bit deeper until we know there is something untouched that comes out of our mouths. I love that its not someone giving advice or telling us what they think, but just sitting there connecting and listening."

She also believes in the power of community service. "Volunteering gives you some perspective on your life and situation," Brathen says. "Not that we need to be reminded that people are suffering, but just so we can feel connected to others."

Brathen admits that in 2014, after the loss of so many loved ones, she considered suicide. "It was my lowest point and I walked into the water. Then I had this thought that no one would bring my dogs home," she recalls. "I like to believe that it was the grace of something bigger than me, but something pulled me back, and I was like 'my dogs are here at the beach, I have to go home.'"

It was a pivotal moment where she had to reflect on her family history. "My mom was suicidal all of my life," she says. "Even my sister had really dark thoughts as a child and wondered what would life be like if she wasnt here." Brathen's mom attempted suicide for the second time in early 2015, while Brathen was on a girl's trip in Thailand. Brathen intervened and saved her mom once again.

It was not until 2017 that Brathen would make peace with her mother and their past. Her mother continued to heal and became sober. Something "shifted" in her mom, she says. That same year, Brathen worked through her anger and pain regarding her mom at the Path of Love yoga retreat. And when she became pregnant with her first baby at 28, she says she finally felt that her family was going to be okay.

"In the end, I've learned to be comfortable with the uncomfortable," she says. "I was nervous to release To Love and Let Go because I wrote things about my mom, but I had to put my truth out there in order to let everything go."

As Brathen still copes with the losses in her life, she's learned that there's so much love in the world around her: in her family, in her husband, in her daughter, and in her heart. "Everything that happens is meant to happen," she says. "I need to shorten the gap between the situation occurring and understanding that it happened for a reason. Thats what I want."

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Rachel "Yoga Girl" Brathen Says There's No Such Thing As Grieving Incorrectly - Prevention.com