Grief & Somatics
moving through grief with love, openness, and aliveness
Grief Lives in the Body
Both grief and death happen in the body. The body is the vessel that already knows how to grieve and how to die. In order to meet those natural processes of life, we have to learn to meet the body and follow the body’s wisdom.
When we work with the body, we can fully move through the grief rather than allowing it to get stuck (prolonged grief or long-term grief disorders). Instead of getting stuck and layering on more suffering, we can move through grief in a direct, simple, and easeful manner. Aligning with nature’s wisdom about how to move through the grief in a natural process.
Working with grief brings us back to our body as a place of peace and stillness. We can get a deeper sense of who we are in the body. A sense of coming home to ourselves.
Grief & Trauma
Trauma can be defined as a stuck experience that never got to fully move through the body. Experiences of trauma can often get trapped in the body. In the space of deep presence, the body will heal itself, and moving grief is a part of that healing process. Through bodywork, we can bring presence to the body for it to complete the experience with awareness. Through this process, we can help the body come back into resourcefulness and aliveness.
Death and the Body
Bodywork can help ease the dying process to aid them in coming into harmony with the body’s natural process. We are taught to be scared of death and the fear lives in our minds. Bringing presence to the body can bring ease and help one let go. Bringing completion to a process - mental, emotional, physical, psychological. Making peace with one’s life and death.
Who is this for?
What does the body need to come back into harmony and balance?
Book Shiatsu if:
you need physical relief and are seeking balance in the body
touch, movement, and stretching in the body
Book cranialsacral if:
you want to work with the nervous system
Book Daoist healing energy session if:
you want to balance the organs and flow of Qi in the body
you orient toward the 5 elements and meridians
Rates
Single Sessions
45 min / $75
90 min / $140
2 hours / $180
3 hours / $270
Monthly Support
4 sessions
45 minutes each
includes text support
$300
3-Month Comprehensive Support
12 sessions
45 minutes each
includes text support
$870
Empowered Living Grief Work
There are times when we enter a portal of grief, called into the depths of our being to release and transform. In these liminal spaces, who we thought we were begins to dissolve. Grief becomes an opening—a chance to let go of fear and trauma, and to surrender into our own becoming. Here, the heavy lead of pain and loss can be alchemized into the radiant gold of soulful aliveness more fully embodied.
In this deeper work with grief, we take time to go slower into the depths together.
Grief Altar ~ Virtual Grief Ritual
Grief Altar is a virtual community grief space and ritual held monthly for people to come and grieve at the altar. It’s an open invitation where a space is held specifically for you to meet your grief in whatever way you feel called. It is held as a communal offering, free of charge.
Community Grief Rituals
‘Communal grieving offers something that we cannot get when we grieve by ourselves. Through validation, acknowledgement and witnessing, communal grieving allows us to experience a level of healing that is deeply and profoundly freeing. Each of us has a basic human right to that genuine love, happiness and freedom.’ ~ Sobonfu Somé
There is no other way but through. Grief is the price we pay for loving. The opportunity to surrender to love, allow grief to move through our bodies, and alchemize our losses in a community and ritual container is a healing and kind act towards ourselves and the world we live in.
Community Grief Ritual revolves around a beautiful co-created grief altar, live drumming, and community singing. Inspired by the grief rituals from the Dagara peoples of Burkino Faso brought to the U.S. by Sobonfu Some, infused with the wisdom of Francis Weller, this ritual was created and has been lead in Santa Cruz, CA by Dana Schlick since 2017. Mikyö Black-Wangmo joined her in 2021. Since then Mikyö has brought grief ritual to Taos, NM, holds monthly online grief rituals, and holds grief ritual space in other retreats and events.
‘Don't run away from grief, o’ soul
Look for the remedy inside the pain
because the rose came from the thorn
and the ruby came from a stone.’
~ Rumi
