12/08/2025
The Quiet Weight of Grief
Today I am attending a family funeral for someone very dear to us, and it has brought grief to the forefront of my heart. When loss touches our lives, it reshapes everything within us in ways words rarely capture. It felt right to share a few thoughts on grief, on how it moves through us, and on how we as bodyworkers can hold space for those navigating its weight.
Grief is not just an emotion. It is a full-body experience that reshapes physiology, breath, muscle tone, and the quiet rhythms of the nervous system. When loss enters a life, the body becomes its instrument. The chest tightens. The throat narrows. The diaphragm forgets how to descend. Sleep becomes shallow—appetite shifts. The immune system falters. Heart rate variability collapses as the vagus nerve withdraws from its soothing role. Even the heart itself can suffer. Researchers have identified “stress cardiomyopathy,” a condition so intense it can mimic a heart attack. The body does not simply witness grief. It participates in it.
Fascia responds to grief like a shoreline under heavy weather. The front line of the body contracts, especially around the sternum, ribs, scalenes, and sternocleidomastoid. Breath grows sharp and high. The back line becomes overworked as it tries to hold the person upright when the emotional weight would rather fold them inward. The neurochemical signature of grief, rich in cortisol and inflammatory cytokines, ripples through connective tissue, giving it a denser, almost waterlogged feel. Clients often describe themselves as heavy, fogged, brittle, or braced from the inside out.
For bodyworkers, grief is one of the most delicate landscapes we are invited into. We are not here to fix what is unfixable. We are here to support the body as it learns to breathe around the unchangeable. Our hands become a place where grief can soften its edges, even for a moment.
Work begins with breath. Guiding a client into a slow 4-7-8 pattern invites the diaphragm to move again and cues the vagus nerve toward a sense of safety. Breathe in, hold, exhale. The nervous system follows the pace we create. When breath steadies, the emotional tide has somewhere to settle rather than surge.
One of the most effective points for grief sits roughly at the level of the first intercostal space, slightly below the clavicle and lateral to the midline of the chest, known in Chinese medicine as the middle palace. Gentle pressure here helps the chest release its invisible armor. Many clients feel emotion rise, not because we create it, but because the body finally relaxes enough to let it move. When combined with slow myofascial work along the ribs, sternum, diaphragm, and anterior neck, the body begins to reclaim the space grief has collapsed.
Lymphatic support can also be profound. Grief thickens the fluid systems. Encouraging drainage through the clavicles, jawline, and anterior neck often brings a sense of clarity and lightness. Craniosacral holds, especially at the occiput and sacrum, offer a quiet invitation for the nervous system to reorganize. Sometimes this work creates soft tears. Sometimes it creates silence. Both are healing.
Essential oils can also support this landscape. A blend of rose, bergamot, and frankincense offers emotional steadiness and a sense of being held. Rose speaks directly to the heart. Bergamot lifts the weight from the lungs. Frankincense grounds the mind and supports deeper breathing. When used with intention, scent becomes another form of touch.
Grief asks us for patience, presence, and reverence. It cannot be hurried. It cannot be reasoned with. But it can be supported. As bodyworkers, we offer the body a place to rest while the heart learns how to live inside its new shape. We hold space for what is tender, overwhelmed, or wordless. And in these quiet sessions, grief becomes less of a burden and more of a companion the body knows how to carry.
If you are moving through grief right now, please know this: nothing about your ache makes you broken. You are not meant to rush this, silence it, or make yourself smaller to carry it. Grief is love trying to find its way in a world that suddenly feels unfamiliar, and your body is doing the best it can to hold what your heart cannot yet name. Breathe gently. Let softness come where it can. Allow others to steady you when your own strength trembles. And remember that you don’t have to walk through this alone. Your healing will not be hurried, but it will come, one tender moment at a time.
