Somatic Support for Grief and Loss: Healing through Feeling through the heart's wisdom

I’m so glad this resonated 🤍
Here is the refined version with your corrected HOPE Method — keeping the tone and structure intact, and strengthening the “Pivot and Practice” section.

Gentle Somatic Support for Grief

Being with what is. Softening into the heart. Healing through embodied presence.

Grief does not need to be solved.
It needs to be witnessed.

In the gentle somatic practice I recently shared, we begin with something very simple: placing a hand on the heart, slowing the breath, and allowing ourselves to feel what is here — without rushing it away.

This is not about analysing the loss.
It is not about “staying positive.”
It is about being with what is.

When we connect to the heart centre and soften the body, we send a message of safety to the nervous system. And when the body feels safe enough, emotions can begin to move.

Grief lives in the body.

It can feel like tightness in the chest.
A hollow ache in the belly.
A lump in the throat.
A heaviness through the shoulders.

Somatic practice invites us to gently turn toward these sensations with compassion. To say, “I see you.”
To breathe with them.
To let the wave rise and fall in its own time.

This is how healing begins — not by bypassing pain, but by staying present with it.

Being With What Is

One of the most powerful shifts in grief work is moving from resistance to presence.

When we fight what we are feeling, the body tightens. The nervous system mobilises. We brace.

But when we soften and allow — even 5% more — something changes.

The heart centre becomes an anchor.
The breath becomes a bridge.
Self-compassion becomes medicine.

Being with what is does not mean collapsing into despair.
It means gently acknowledging reality.

And from acknowledgement, integration becomes possible.

The HOPE Method: An Embodied Framework for Grief

Within my work in Occupational Therapy and somatic practice, I teach the HOPE Method as a compassionate structure for navigating loss — especially when grief is intertwined with functional decline, illness, identity shifts, or major life transitions.

HOPE offers a grounded pathway:

H — Honour the Loss

We name what has changed. We acknowledge the rupture. We allow grief to be real and valid.

O — Orient to the Present

We stabilise the nervous system. We use breath, grounding, and heart connection to create safety in the now.

P — Pivot and Practice

We begin gently creating a new way forward.

Pivot does not mean abandoning what was lost.
It means acknowledging that life is different now.

We ask:
What matters most now?
What is possible within my current capacity?
What small, meaningful practices can support this next chapter?

We practise living into new rhythms.
We adapt occupations.
We reshape identity.
We move forward — not in denial of the loss — but in relationship with it.

E — Engage in Meaningful Occupation Again

Over time, we re-engage with life in ways that feel aligned with our present reality. Purpose evolves. Capacity may shift. Meaning deepens.

HOPE is not about rushing to the “positive.”
It is about walking steadily forward with tenderness.

Worden’s Four Tasks of Grief — Through a Somatic Lens

Psychologist William Worden described grief not as stages to complete, but as tasks to move through. When integrated with somatic practice, these tasks become embodied processes rather than purely cognitive ones.

1. Accept the reality of the loss
   In the body, this may look like breathing with the ache instead of denying it. Allowing tears. Letting the truth land gently.

2. Process the pain of grief
   This is where somatic work is powerful. We feel sensations. We track the waves. We offer self-touch, humming, slow exhalations. We allow emotion to move rather than suppress it.

3. Adjust to a world without what was lost
   This includes practical shifts, relational changes, identity adaptation, and nervous system recalibration.

4. Find an enduring connection while moving forward
   Love does not disappear. It transforms. We carry memory in the body and heart while slowly allowing new meaning and new life to emerge.

These tasks are not linear.
They circle.
They revisit.
They unfold over time.

The Nervous System and Grief

Grief can move us into collapse (freeze), agitation (fight/flight), or numbness. Gentle somatic practices — hand on heart, orienting, soft eye gaze, humming, slow breathing — support the vagus nerve and help widen the window of tolerance.

From regulation comes resilience.
From compassion comes integration.

When we feel safe enough, the body releases what it has been holding.

A Gentle Invitation

If you are grieving — whether it is the loss of a loved one, a diagnosis, a relationship, a dream, or a former version of yourself — may you give yourself permission to move slowly.

Place a hand on your heart.
Breathe in.
Exhale longer than you inhale.
Whisper something kind to yourself.

You do not have to rush your healing.
You do not have to be strong all the time.

Grief moves in waves.
And with presence, compassion, and embodied support — those waves can be carried.

Healing does not mean forgetting.
It means allowing love and life to coexist with loss.