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.
We often keep our sorrows hidden and feel that somehow our grief is not worthy of the attention of others. We push it away only to have it arise when we are least able to make room for it.
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.
We often keep our sorrows hidden and feel that somehow our grief is not worthy of the attention of others. We push it away only to have it arise when we are least able to make room for it.
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.
- A sense shame around your grief or a judgement saying your grief is less important than others.
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. Even though grief, loss and trauma are painful they offer powerful gatewways into living a full, authentic and expressed life.
With somatic movement therapy you can:
- Calm overwhelming thinking and emotional storms
- Allow sadness without depression
- Subvert the need for excessive sugar, coffee, alcohol, shopping, or over-exercising
- Allow grief and gratitude to coexist.
- Release shame for feeling grief
- Connect authentically with others through the heart centeredness grief can offer.
- Live a full life in the face of loss.
Donna's work helped open my mind to different ways of letting grief run through my body. It was new to me and not always easy to understand. But by the end of our work little seeds were sprouting and I was able to put it in my bag of tools and come back to it. It was great to learn that there are ways we can use our mind and body to calm our hearts, give us hope and lessen the fear of grief and loneliness. I always felt comfortable speaking to Donna. She has a very gentle and non-judgmental way. Deborah Hutchinson
"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
