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“Your body will tell you the truth, even if your mind can’t.”
“Change is felt in the body first.”
“Presence in the moment is only possible if you’re connected to the body.”

At first mind-body-life connection language resonates only if you’ve personally experienced it. If not, it may sound like a thing to believe in. Or like something only people who do a lot of yoga and meditation say. But really?

Well, let’s look. How about the effects of stress on the body? Stress is an emotional and mental experience, and the physical implications of ongoing stress on the body are well-understood.

When we go through a time of grief, loss and change, our stress levels are through the roof. The primary loss creates stress as do the often-accompanying losses of security, finances, family or community support, companionship, and attachment.

It’s no wonder the physical effects of grief and loss mirror the known physical effects of stress on the body.

Moreover, the physical and psychological effects of the loss of a primary attachment are well documented. Our brains literally have to rewrite themselves in the years after a loss of someone we love, neuron by neuron, pathway by pathway.

The parasympathetic nervous system handles rest, digestion, breathing. It becomes unsteady.

The limbic part of our brain handles much of our emotional, attachment, personal recall and memory integration. It too becomes unmoored, like a loose wire with nothing to plug into, dancing, scattered, homeless.

When we lose a primary attachment no part of our brain, psychology or whole Selves are left untouched.

It’s possible, then, that the ways we comfort our physical bodies during stressful times could help during times that we grieve, too.

That’s why touch and body work hold some promise here.

“When we’re grieving, it’s very easy to get stuck in our heads. It’s easy to get stuck in our hearts. What’s hard is staying connected to our bodies, and that’s where a massage can be helpful.”
– Aimee Joy Taylor

When your limbic system is reeling from the loss of a primary bond and attachment, could comforting touch help?

What effect might a more-steady heart rate, a more-steady respiration-rate, more-steady physical contact have on a person whose body and mind are in pain?

A massage is such a small, humble thing. Even so, the hope is that a small comfort could make a big difference for a body and heart in pain.

RESOURCES

American Psychological Association: How Stress Affects Your Health

How Grief Manifests in the Body & Why Body-Based Approaches to Bereavement Support Improved Therapeutic Outcome :: A literature review by Liz Gleeson

How Grief Can Make You Sick: The loss of a loved one can impact survivors’ mental and physical health by Sanjay Gupta

Limbic System: GoodTherapy.com

The Institute for Grief Massage


The American Institute of Stress

In response to the birth of a child, the thing to say is often, “oh, how beautiful!”

In response to someone who is grieving or going through a transformative time, the tone shifts: “oh, that’s so hard.”

Birth and death (or a person, hope or relationship) feel like opposites, at completely different ends of the spectrum of human life experiences.

But what’s there to discover is that it’s just not true: each are both.

Grieving and giving birth are both beautiful and intensely difficult.

Grief and loving are opposite sides of the same coin.

Grief is simply the form love takes after the beloved is gone.

In the same way, we receive and we lose parts of our hearts over time, and the experience changes us.

In both birth and grief we want to rush through the hard parts and get right to healing.

As a doula, it’s my job to remind you that you can try to bypass pain, but it’s like skipping over many miles between here and there. If you stop too soon, you don’t end up where you wanted to go. You end up somewhere else, stopped along the way.

And there’s no epidural for the loss of someone you love. It honors the person, relationship or hope you’ve lost when you give them the love and mourning they’re due. When you tend the recognition of loss, you honor what’s gone in a quietly profound way.

Yes, it is extraordinarily painful to look at and be with what hurts.
Doing so may fundamentally change who we are, a frightening prospect from the outset.

But look, life has already changed. Life asks that we change ourselves in order to stay with what’s true and real.

How does that happen?

• A day, a moment, a breath; one contraction or one wave of grief at a time.
• Getting connected with your body, as it is, and as it isn’t, right now. Then losing it, and reconnecting a thousand times or more.
• Using comfort measures to keep your head above water. Enjoying the sunshine and ease when it comes, for as long as it lasts.
• With patient and loving support.

Some of these things, I can help with. Others, I can help you find if you need.

Blessings to you, your grief, and your (re)birth, beloved.