Grief & The Body: What Your Physical Self is Trying to Tell You

Summary:

In this episode of Growth from Grief, Susan Andersen explores the intricate relationship between grief and the body. She emphasizes that grief is not just an emotional experience but also manifests physically, affecting our nervous system and overall well-being. Through various techniques, including breathing exercises and body awareness practices, Susan guides listeners on how to navigate their grief journey while fostering healing and self-care.

Takeaways:

• Grief is a physical experience as much as an emotional one.
• The body holds onto grief, leading to physical symptoms like fatigue and pain.
• It's important to address the physical aspects of grief to prevent long-term issues.
• Creating a safe space for emotions can aid in processing grief.
• Breathing techniques can help alleviate the physical burden of grief.
• Gentle movements and stretches can release tension caused by grief.
• Self-kindness and compassion are essential during the grieving process.

Thank you for listening!   Visit www.sueandersenyoga.com for Yoga for Grief classes and additional resources.

Transcript

Susan Andersen (00:03.382)
Hello, I'm Sue Andersen, grief guide and yoga teacher dedicated to helping individuals navigate the challenging journey of loss. Welcome to Growth from Grief, where I aim to offer strategies to transition from the depths of grief to the path of healing. Whatever loss you are grappling with, here you'll discover support.
to ease both the physical and emotional burdens of grief. Together, let's embark on a journey towards strength, peace, and healing. I'm so glad you are here.

Susan Andersen (00:54.734)
Hi and welcome to this episode of Growth from Grief. Today I want to talk about grief and the body. So I've written about this in blog posts, I talk about this in my yoga classes, but you know, our bodies remember what our minds are trying to forget.

And the somatic experiences of grief, the tightness, the fatigue, the numbness, that's a real thing. You know, we tend to think about grief just in our emotions, our head, you know, the crying, the sadness, maybe anger, other emotions that go along with loss.

But physical aspects of grief are real and they can actually be quite debilitating if you don't move that grief out of your body. So we'll talk a little bit about that in this episode today. 

And you know, just try to understand a little bit more about those subtle or not so subtle signals that grief sends to our bodies. It's fatigue, right? You can hardly get out of bed. Getting out of bed feels like you have to climb up a mountain, right? It's just feeling impossible some days.  Sometimes your body shouts at you. Stomach aches, headaches, joint pain.

Susan Andersen (03:06.249)
Even sometimes what we might think about as just, it's a normal ache and pain, gets really exasperated because of grief. It's just deeper, it's prolonged, because we are holding on to those emotions and they settle into the body. Grief is a stress response, right? It activates our nervous system. It releases stress hormones. Sometimes we might feel hyper alert. Other times just completely shut down. it's grief affects our nervous system.

So you might feel tightness. And tightness could reflect that you're holding in the emotions, or you're bracing against the pain. Sometimes we notice that, or we can see it in someone else, right? Fatigue, it's exhausting, exhausting to process your loss and grief. And it can even be more exhausting, depending on what you have to do to get simply get through the day, right?

Susan Andersen (04:44.011)
You can feel numb, you know, you feel numb and that's the body's way of protecting. It's the body's way of protecting us until we feel that we're ready. We're ready to go to the next step.

One thing that you can do is take a moment sitting in a chair, sitting on your bed, lying down, wherever you're comfortable. If you are yoga practitioner, maybe you're on your yoga mat and you're breathing, taking some nice cleansing breaths and maybe to calm those thoughts in your mind, you are saying a mantra as you breathe.

Susan Andersen (05:49.49)
Inhaling, exhaling - just those two simple words to allow you to concentrate on your breath

And then you take that time and you just begin to let the body soften. So as you're breathing, your mind begins to relax as you're concentrating on this breath and the body begins to relax a little bit. then, and then maybe you notice what's going on with you now at this moment.

Susan Andersen (06:45.129)
Maybe you feel tense. Maybe you feel exhausted, maybe again, tightness in the chest. So maybe you have the opportunity to react to that, act, I should say, not react, but to act. You can try a few things. First, getting back to that noticing, right? 

So we're not trying to fight these sensations, we're trying to listen. We just want to know what's happening. We want to listen to these, to what our physical body is saying. And we can get a little closer to that listening with this body scan that I just mentioned where you can notice what's happening and then begin to move slowly. So one of the things I like to do right away and I encourage the people that are taking my classes, is to bring your hands to a place that feels tight or tense or sore or needs to be soothed. And just begin slowly massaging that area. You can bring the hands together first and create some heat by rubbing them together, create some friction, and then place the hands on that spot. That'll feel good.

Susan Andersen (08:37.663)
Maybe you want to just gently stretch. So if you're seated, that could be rocking, rocking, circling.  A rocking motion. It's very calming. Circling, again that can be calming can soothe tension. Gentle twists. So any of those nice gentle stretching arms overhead.

Susan Andersen (09:21.362)
I talked about finding that breath when you first want to investigate what's going on. You come to the breath so you can relax the mind, relax the body and the breath helps us do that.

Once you do that initial breath work, you can come into different type of breath awareness practices. And one that might feel really nice is just to put one hand on the belly and one hand on the heart. That's nice to do if you're laying down and you can feel the breath move in the chest, you can feel the breath move in the belly. You can feel your body release. So that's another thing you can do. 

Four options here to connect with the body to notice where you're feeling any of these tension:

Do that kind of a body scan, can do it laying down, you can do it sitting up, where you're noticing what's going on. You take a couple of breaths and then you settle into noticing what's happening and where you might feel heavy.

You can take some light touch, rubbing the hands together and then massaging that area that feels tight or tense, just massaging it, letting it feel the warmth, feel that comfort. 

Maybe some movement might be nice. Rocking, stretching, circling. Circling the hips if you're seated, maybe circling the knees if you're laying down on your bed or your mat. 

And then breathing a little bit deeper. So maybe you're taking a breath awareness practice starting by just putting one hand to your heart and one hand to the belly and taking those nice deep breaths, inhaling through the nose, exhaling slowly through the mouth maybe or the nose.

I've written before and talked before about my own experience where I felt like I couldn't breathe early on the early days, weeks after my son died. I felt there was a cloud on my chest and I couldn't breathe. somebody had suggested a counting breath to me which relieved some of that. 

Susan Andersen (12:45.738)
And then slowly I noticed other areas of the body, what they felt like. And through yoga, I was able to release and relieve some of this. There's always the tension in the stomach, know, tightness in the throat.

Take time to notice what your body is telling you. What is your physical body trying to tell you? Because one of the things that we don't want to happen is we don't want that grief to get deeper into the body, to be stuck, because that is going to
potentially create physical issues that we have. 

If we are not able to release the emotion that's settling in our physical body, we will end up with some other ailments and we don't want that. You don't want that. So I invite you today if you are feeling the heaviness of grief, especially if you're in the early days, that you just take a moment to pause. Close your eyes.

Susan Andersen (14:38.57)
Come to your breath.

Susan Andersen (14:44.978)
and draw your awareness to your physical body.

Susan Andersen (14:51.666)
Notice what it might be telling you.

Susan Andersen (14:57.128)
and then offer it a moment of kindness, a breath, a stretch.

Susan Andersen (15:10.566)
even just a soft word.

Susan Andersen (15:17.706)
So thank you for joining me in today's episode. Please share it with someone who may need a reminder to listen to their body, to their heart, and their healing.

Susan Andersen (15:35.688)
I invite you also to leave a comment on Apple or Spotify. And if you are looking for movement and yoga type classes to help you while you're on this grief journey, please head over to my website, sueandersenyoga.com. You'll find upcoming
classes and programs. There's some new information on my website for the months of September and October of 2025. I will see you in the next episode.