The Body Remembers: Somatic Signs of Seasonal Grief

Summary

In this episode of Growth from Grief, Susan Andersen explores the somatic signs of seasonal grief, emphasizing how our bodies respond to grief during the changing seasons. She discusses the physical symptoms associated with grief, the importance of connecting with our body's memories, and offers practical techniques for self-care and mindfulness. The episode encourages listeners to listen to their bodies with compassion and provides resources for further support.

Takeaways

• As the seasons change, our bodies may respond before our minds do.
• Fatigue, tightness, and restlessness are common physical signs of grief.
• Listening to our bodies without judgment is crucial for healing.
• Compassionate self-care is vital during the grieving process.

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

Transcript

Susan Andersen (00:56)

Hello, welcome to this episode of Growth from Grief. My name is Sue Andersen, and if you are new here, welcome to you. I hope that you find that these recordings, the topics that I talk about with my guests and the solo podcasts are helpful to you as you move through your grief journey. And if you are a returning listener, I thank you for coming back and listening to this episode.

If you're looking for additional material to help you as you move through grief and loss, head over to my website to download the free guide. My website is sueandersenyoga.com/guide In today's episode, I wanna talk a little about the somatic signs of seasonal grief. So this is about the body, right?

How does our body respond to grief?

And this is a topic that I've talked about before because as a yoga teacher, I find that movement along with breath work, along with meditation are just so helpful in terms of relieving grief symptoms. But this time of year, we're in the holiday season and the seasons are changing, right? So as the seasons change, sometimes our bodies respond before our minds do, right? It's a little bit like, you know, the animals going into hibernation. They automatically know what they need to do during this ⁓ season of autumn to winter. 

And so sometimes our bodies shows the signs or symptoms of grief like fatigue, tightness, heaviness, even restlessness. So we're gonna explore a little bit about these somatic, somatic means body, so somatic signs of seasonal grief and how we can shift how we're feeling and do that with compassion.

So I invite you to sort of set the stage for yourself, if you will, right? So take a moment right now. Maybe relax the shoulders, breathe and notice how your body feels. Notice what's coming up.  Do you recognize the shift that's happening in your body as the seasons change?

You know, sometimes in grief, we're in our head. We're worried, we're concerned, are ⁓ just, you know, monkey mind, can't think, we're just living in our head. And when we give ourselves that moment, we can then notice what's happening in the body.

And as I mentioned earlier, you know, the body often feels this transition, this shift before we consciously recognize it.

So, you know, why does this happen? Why is our body react to seasonal change? Well, one explanation is looking around at nature, right? Shorter days, cooler temperatures, less sunlight. Our nervous system kind of shifts here. There's the change in the circadian rhythms. We're more tired, right? Just getting that feeling about slowing down, moving inward. We already recognize that days are shorter, so there's a lot more darkness. And we can feel this. We can feel it in the body.

And you know, if our system, our body, our mind, our spirit is already under strain because of our loss, these seasonal changes may feel just a little bit heavier. We might feel them more acutely, sharper.

So let's talk a little bit about what are these physical signs or what is the physical experience:

·      Fatigue or heaviness in the limbs. Tight chest. Maybe breath is shorter, right?

·      Maybe your system, your digestive system is slow or you're nervous or your stomach's in knots.

·      Maybe your neck and your shoulders are constantly tense. Maybe you're walking around like with the, you know, that kind of turtle neck, right? Except your neck is covered up by your shoulders.

·      Maybe you feel very restless in the evening.

·      Or maybe you're noticing more eagerness that accompanies emotional feelings.

So these are a few things, they're completely normal, right? Completely normal. And sometimes, especially if you are further along in your grief. So the loss is a few years back. You know, you might not even recall a particular time, like there's an anniversary coming up or a birthday coming up or a special occasion coming up and you don't actually remember it. But your body remembers it. You feel it in your body and you might be thinking why am I feeling this way? Why am I so tired? Why am I weepy? Why am I achy? yeah, yep, your body knows. Your body knows. 

And so it could be you could be feeling that way because of the holidays, right? The holidays are here. They're tough to get through when you're grieving. when it's cold out, when it's dark out, dark early. Sometimes that feels like grief, right? I mean, even in a normal time for you when you're not in the midst of grief, these sensations, this coldness, the darkness, that really can affect your emotional state, your physical state.

You know, I am always amazed that my body is telling me that something is wrong before I realize it. You know, it's been a while. It's been since 2012 since my son died. But I can still feel, even if I don't recognize a date, I can still feel it in my body. I know something's coming up and it might take a little second or a minute to connect the dots and say, ⁓ OK, his birthday, for example, is in October. You know, it might be the beginning of October, but I might not be thinking about the date. And yet my body knows, hey, it's coming up. His birthday is coming up. 

And of course, the holidays, Thanksgiving, even Halloween, Thanksgiving.  You know, as we get towards in December with Hanukkah and Christmas and other celebrations that you might have in your family. You know, the body feels these things. The body knows the body remembers. You know, one way to connect with the body and maybe listen with compassion, is to just kind of sit there for a moment and ask yourself, what am I feeling?

What am I feeling?

Take a moment, sit, breathe. Notice, notice where you feel this.

So we're tuning in to the body.

Where am I feeling it?

And what's it connected to? 

Remember that you could also be grieving a previous loss. You could be grieving a loss that's, you could call it a secondary loss. So something that's related to a current loss. Memories are coming up from a long time ago, your childhood or young adulthood or whatever. So it's important to maybe connect with it.

One way you can do this is just coming into the breath, bringing one hand to the belly, one hand to the heart. Tune in. Notice.

Softening the breath. So take a longer exhale. Inhale to a count of three, exhale to a count of five.

It's important that when you take the time to sit with what's going on in your body, that you do it without judgment. We're always very hard on ourselves, aren't we? And so having this opportunity to listen to ourselves, to listen to our body, to notice what we're feeling and just let it be. Treating ourselves like we would treat someone else. So we're not trying to judge. We're just...noticing.

And one other thing that we can kind of focus on is pausing or resting when the body is telling you to slow down and I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. You are exhausted. You are feeling pain. You are feeling discomfort. And you might be thinking, ⁓ it's okay. I'm just gonna do this one last thing or, it's okay. I really should do X. I need to keep myself busy. I don't wanna think about these things. You're not doing your body anything good, nothing. You're not helping it. You need to allow. to pause, slow down, rest. Yep, that's it. Resting. 

I'm not a good rester. I really, have to say I'm really not. And it's important for me to take the time to do that with meditation or when I have the opportunity to take a restorative class or take a nice hot bath. I love a hot bath.

I'd like to offer you some simple practices that you can do. Now you can find examples of these if you head over to my website, and click on blog posts. And there are a number of blog posts there where I give you some examples of practices that you can do, there's links to videos where you can try some of these practices.

But let me just tell you about a few things that you might want to try. So one thing might be to stand barefoot on the floor and feel the support of the earth. So grounding yourself. Feel connected to the earth. Walk barefoot outside. I know it's cold out, but I don't know. Sometimes that feels kind of good to feel that connection to the earth.  You can lie down on your mat on the floor and just imagine, bring your awareness to a moment where you were lying on the grass or on the sand, right? Connecting to the earth.

Another thing that's really nice right now is restorative practices - child's pose, such a wonderful practice. Or lying on your back with your legs against the wall or a couch. You might also enjoy taking reclined butterfly pose.

And if again, you're not sure what these practices are, head over to my website, go to the section blog, and you can scan through those blogs to find some videos of these practices. Or you could go to my YouTube channel, which is also sueandersenyoga.

Sometimes movement is helpful, especially I feel like if you're already restless, it might be hard to move right into stillness. So maybe a little bit of movement. You can take it slow. Maybe it's just ⁓ walking slowly, like a meditative walk, nice and slow. Maybe it's just rocking side to side on your back or standing shoulder rolls. 

Sometimes I like to take forceful movements. So that could be something like a woodchopper pose where you are making strong movements and using voice could be goddess pose with a roar. Sometimes those poses, for me anyway, taking those first gives me the opportunity to release anything that feels like it's stuck or built up. And then I'm able to go into a more relaxing kind of poses.

Sometimes it's nice just to sit in the sun, especially during this time of year. So if you are in the Northern Hemisphere and we're getting closer and closer to that solstice. the darkest time of the year. You might want to find a sunny spot and just sit there. Maybe have some candle nearby and concentrate on that candle, the light.

If you like to journal, then maybe just using this prompt, what is my body remembering right now? What does it need?

I think it's important for us to recognize that what we're talking about here in terms of this body remembering these somatic experiences, that this is not a problem, but the body is the messenger. The body is telling us something that we need to listen to. So these are signals that we need to make a change.

It means we need to pay attention.

And we need to gently turn inward.

I invite you to close your eyes unless you're driving, of course, or walking. In that case, maybe do this when you have the opportunity to sit in quiet location.

Close your eyes and inhale to a count of four, one, two, three, four, and exhale to a count of five, one, two, three, four, five. You can keep this going, you can do it at any time.

And while you are doing this gentle breath work, calming the body, calming the nervous system, maybe affirm, my body is wise. It holds my story with care. My body is wise. It holds my story with care.

I thank you so much for listening to this episode. Again, if you're looking for other resources to help you during this time of year or anytime, check out sueandersenyoga.com. You'll find a guide to help you as well as in the blog post section, links to videos and recordings for practices and meditations.

If this episode was helpful to you, I'd appreciate it if you would leave a review on Apple or Spotify.

Thank you once more and I'll see you in the next episode.