A guiding support for processing grief…
Be healthy healing and whole
Somatic Movement Therapy for Trauma, Loss and Grief.
To grieve is a very human experience. In many traditional cultures, there is an abundance of rituals and wisdom to guide us, but in our modern world, we have lost the art and knowledge of how to grieve.
Without guidance on how to be with our grief, many of us just fumble through. We may even add more challenges with bad habits that can affect our physical and mental health, long into the future.
To make things worse, society quickly forgets our tragedy. The compassion fades and if you haven’t moved on, you may start to feel judged. For many, it seems like there is an unspoken grief timeline that you are failing to keep up with.
A guiding support for processing grief…
Be healthy healing and whole
Somatic Movement Therapy for Trauma, Loss and Grief.
To grieve is a very human experience. In many traditional cultures, there is an abundance of rituals and wisdom to guide us, but in our modern world, we have lost the art and knowledge of how to grieve.
Without guidance on how to be with our grief, many of us just fumble through. We may even add more challenges with bad habits that can affect our physical and mental health, long into the future.
To make things worse, society quickly forgets our tragedy. The compassion fades and if you haven’t moved on, you may start to feel judged. For many, it seems like there is an unspoken grief timeline that you are failing to keep up with.
Do you feel?
- Forced to suppress your feelings of loss to fit back into your previous life.
- Isolated, misunderstood or hurried to “get over it.”
- A disconnection between mind and body.
- The need to seek relief with drugs, alcohol, food, or exercise.
- Angry, bitter, depressed, or numb with shock.
- Constipated in grief - like you just can't really feel it.
Somatic Movement Therapy for Trauma, Grief or Loss - in Pioneer Valley and Online
My name is Donna Brooks, and for over 25 years, I have been helping people process grief because of traumas, loss of loved ones, illnesses such as Parkinson's Disease, stroke and MS, loss of body function or feelings of loss due to aging, climate change and covid.
I have grieved my own losses in life, including the sudden death of my 36-year-old son.
When my son died, I actually felt I was at a fork in the road… I could either collapse into unending suffering or find the richness of life in the shadows.
I chose the latter, my daily embodiment practice allows me to feel my emotions while also having my life.
Somatic movement therapy connects your body and brain. It is an experience of feeling alive, aware, present, and whole. It is gentle, powerful, grounding, and healing.
I like to think of our body as an eco system within us. when we engage the subtlety of how the whole and the parts of this system need to express we give ourselves energy, resilience, unexpected power, possibility and courage we may not have know we have.
"Facing grief is not about ending the sadness, it is about allowing the grief to be present in your mind, body, and soul. Only when we truly stop resisting and avoiding, do we open the door to awakening."
- Donna Brooks
In my grief journey, I traveled through different states mentally, emotionally, and in my body. When my son died, the first state I encountered was a frozen, suspended reality. I was completely disoriented and felt detached from myself.
Accepting, modulating, and recognizing this experience as part of my response to grief saved me. An embodiment practice coupled with the expression of sounds and emotions helps my sadness move and flow. It moves through me in waves.
You can have a full and happy life, even while you experience grief. You can feel joy, even as you are suffering.
Grief does not have to look a certain way. With somatic movement therapy for trauma, grief, and loss you find your own way through.
You can experience joy and grief at the same time.
With somatic movement therapy, you will create the space for peace and joy to co-exist with the intense pain of loss and grief. It's actually quite a natural place to be.
With somatic movement therapy you can:
- Calm overwhelming thinking and emotional storms
- Distinguish between sadness and depression
- Feel healthier and more resilient during difficult times
- Subvert the need for excessive sugar, coffee, alcohol, shopping, or over-exercising
- Keep your nervous system balanced so it can regulate in the face of grief
- Allow grief and gratitude to coexist
- Make peace with the presence of grief in your life.
"The body is the place, the only place, where we live —,
it is the seat of consciousness, without which there is nothing.
And yet we spend our lives turning away from this elemental fact — with distraction, with addiction, with the trance of busyness —
until suddenly something beyond our control —
a diagnosis, a heartbreak, a pandemic —
staggers us awake."
- Maria Popova