Grief, Love, and the Body: A Somatic Approach to Processing Loss
Grief, Love, and the Capacity to Feel
The depth of our grief often reflects the depth of our capacity to love.
Grief is not limited to the loss of a person. It can emerge when something shifts internally, when new truths begin to reorganize our understanding of a relationship, a life path, or a version of the future we once held. In this way, grief is not only about what has been lost, but also about what will never come to be.
It lives in the quiet, often unspoken places: the “what could have been,” the conversations that were never had, and the version of someone we had hoped they might become for us. These experiences are felt, invested in, and held within our fascia. And when we begin to make space for healing, when the body begins to process and “let go” something real is lost.
Grief arises in proportion to our attachment, our care, and our willingness to feel. It is not separate from love, it is a reflection of it.
Grief and Joy Are Not Opposites
Grief and joy are deeply intertwined….
The same capacity that allows us to feel joy, connection, and openness is the capacity that allows us to feel loss.
For those who feel deeply, the heart that breaks is the same heart that once loved with sincerity, openness, and even a bit of innocence.
But over time, that heart may begin to protect itself. It may tighten, brace, or become more cautious in how it engages with others. These are what we call protective patterns….they are adaptive responses shaped by our survival nervous system and our lived experiences.
Without the opportunity to process grief, these protections can become rigid, limiting the very openness that connection requires.
What Grief Work Actually Is
Grief work is not about “getting over” something.
It is about creating the conditions for the body to process what has been held.
This often requires a gradual, titrated approach…allowing small amounts of feeling to surface and move, rather than overwhelming the system all at once and then oscillating away from it.
It can also involve something called orientating. Orienting back to something in your environment (or even internally, if you are resourced enough) that your senses track as safe, comforting, or even neutral.
Grief is inherently relational. We grieve in response to connection
You may notice that even when you are enjoying your time with others, someone else comes to mind….someone you wish were there too….and suddenly, you can no longer enjoy the moment. This is often when people reach for vices, addictions, or behaviours in the body’s attempt to regulate itself, but it often ends up heightening the intensity of it.
Or when you are with close family that you love, you may suddenly experience waves of something very uncomfortable. Your mind goes to “them.”
That “something”-that “them”-is often grief.
When you’re with close family, your nervous system is often in a state of relational activation. Old attachment patterns, memories, and unmet emotional needs can come online. Even if the present moment is safe or loving, your body can still be responding to older layers of experience that were shaped within that relational context, and it can also link into “them”-the heartache and grief connected to romantic love.
The grief you feel isn’t necessarily about what’s happening right now. It’s often about what is no longer available, what was missed, or what cannot be fully accessed in the way you once needed…even if you still love the people you’re with….
A few common layers underneath that kind of grief that I’ve seen:
Grief for what didn’t happen: the emotional attunement, safety, or closeness you may have needed but didn’t consistently receive
Grief for time passing: noticing how relationships have changed, or how roles have shifted
Grief triggered by contrast: being in a loving moment can highlight what feels absent elsewhere in your life
Attachment activation: your system remembers the full relational history, not just the current interaction
In the context of somatic work, this is your body holding multiple timeframes at once, the present moment, and older emotional imprints that get reactivated through closeness, familiarity, or even love.
So the wave of grief isn’t a contradiction to the connection you feel with your family. It’s often part of the depth of your capacity to feel connection at all, and the places where that capacity has been shaped, stretched, or limited over time.
A Somatic Approach to Grief
Somatic work offers a pathway for grief to be honoured, held with care, and processed in a titrated way.
Many emotions are layered, and we often struggle to trust their impulses, but grief often sits at the root of them.
It’s not just an emotion; it’s a deeply felt, energetic experience. It is directly connected to our life force energy and therefore becomes a gateway to creativity, love, and joy.
And I believe it’s only those who have truly met the depths of their grief and allowed it to move through them who can now attest that grief does not take us away from life; it actually returns us to it.
So rather than analyzing or suppressing, somatics focuses on gently bringing awareness to the body and allowing sensations to be felt in manageable doses.
Practices such as:
Placing one hand over the heart and the other over the lower ribs. Gentle touch over the organs that hold emotion provides a subtle way to connect with what is stored there. Grief often constricts the chest and diaphragm, and this practice can help bring relief to that holding pattern.
Engaging in gentle rocking movements. You can wrap your arms around yourself or hold a pillow against the front of your belly and heart to create a sense of boundary with the outside world. Nothing goes out, and nothing comes in. This can provide safety that may not have been received during developmental years and helps the body metabolize waves of grief that feel too overwhelming to hold while still.
Shifting attention between areas of discomfort and areas of neutrality, either internally or externally, using both your felt sense and physical senses. Moving back and forth between these allows you to stay present with your grief while maintaining vagal regulation and a sense of stability in your environment.
All of these practices require relational attunement, meaning not every approach is right for everyone. The intention, as somatic practitioners, is that when we can witness and feel another, we can offer tools and resources that support clients in being with their grief while also oscillating back to foundational regulation.
This approach orientates pacing, safety, and body awareness, allowing the body to move through grief rather than become consumed by it.
Resourcing: Supporting the Body While Feeling
An essential part of somatic grief work is resourcing that I briefly mentioned above.
Even in the presence of grief, we look for what is ALSO here.
This might be:
a sense of warmth in the body
the feeling of your feet on the ground
a subtle sense of steadiness or neutrality
You might ask yourself:
Where in my body feels even 5% okay right now?
Is there a place that feels supported or neutral?
When grief and resource are allowed to coexist, the nervous system begins to build resilience.
Grief no longer needs to take over the entire system, it can be held alongside moments of stability.
