Grief Lives in the Body Too: How Therapeutic Massage Supports Healing After Loss

Grief doesn’t just happen in the mind. It lives in the body. And it changes you.

After loss, you might feel tired in a way you can’t explain. You might notice your posture folding in on itself, your breath staying shallow, your neck and chest tightening up as if your body is trying to hold back the weight of what can’t be said.

This isn’t weakness. This isn’t something to fix. This is your body processing grief the only way it knows how... by holding, bracing, protecting.

And at some point, it might be time to let it soften.

That’s where safe, intentional bodywork comes in.

Grief Is a Whole-Body Experience

Science now confirms what many of us have felt intuitively for years: grief has physical consequences. The loss of someone you love, whether sudden or slow, impacts the autonomic nervous system, immune function, sleep, digestion, and muscular tension.

Some common physical responses to grief include:

• Chest tightness, shallow breath

• Neck and shoulder tension

• Chronic fatigue or numbness

• Digestive disturbances

• Insomnia or over-sleeping

• Foggy thinking, low motivation

• Feeling “out of your body” or disconnected

These aren’t separate from the grieving process.They are the grieving process.

What Happens When the Body Holds Grief

When we experience loss, the nervous system often shifts into survival mode, alternating between fight/flight and freeze.

We might:

• Hold our breath unconsciously

• Tense muscles to avoid crying or collapsing

• Feel emotionally shut down as a way to cope

• Disengage from sensation altogether

Over time, these protective patterns become embedded in our fascia, posture, and nervous system wiring. They don’t mean we’re doing grief wrong. They mean we need care that includes the body, not just the mind.

How Massage Therapy Can Support Grief Recovery

Massage~when offered with skill, consent, and emotional awareness~ can help the body process grief in a non-verbal, deeply respectful way. It doesn’t “fix” the grief. But it can:

• Offer a safe container to feel and release held emotion

• Calm the nervous system and activate parasympathetic rest states

• Loosen chronic tension in the chest, diaphragm, neck, and shoulders

• Gently reconnect clients to their breath, body, and presence

• Provide a moment of being nurtured without needing to explain

In times of grief, clients often say:

“I didn’t even realize how tightly I was holding myself until I felt it let go.”

That moment of awareness is powerful. It doesn’t erase the loss, but it makes space for the living.

My Approach: Grief-Informed, Nervous-System-Aware Bodywork

As a massage therapist, my role isn’t to push through or analyze your grief.It’s to meet you where you are, support your nervous system, and offer touch that honors your lived experience.

In our sessions, that may look like:

• Gentle, grounded contact—especially around areas where emotion tends to live (jaw, chest, abdomen)

• Slower pace and full permission to pause, cry, or feel nothing at all

• A space where you don’t have to talk unless you want to

• Support for breathing deeply again~sometimes for the first time in a while

Whether your grief is recent or long-held, you deserve care that acknowledges all of you—not just your body’s tension, but the life story it’s holding.

You Don’t Have to Go Through It Alone

Grief can feel isolating. But you're not alone.Your body still speaks. Your breath still matters.And with support, you can return to yourself gently, one layer at a time.

Massage therapy isn’t a cure for grief—but it can be a companion on the path through it.A place to lay it down. A way to begin again.