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.
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 practise allows me to feel my emotions while also having my life.
For you, I combine this embodiment therapy practice with decades of experience, intuition and therapeutic techniques to help you integrate your experience of grief. It is gentle, compassionate, and liberating.
It may mean the difference between thriving or collapsing. For many of my clients, it is the first time they have allowed themselves to be truly present in body and mind.
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.
"Facing grief is not about ending the sadness,
it is about allowing the grief to be present in your mind,
allowing the grief to be present in your body
and allowing the grief to be present in your 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.
Now, I understand that this freeze response was my nervous system protecting me from the avalanche of feelings to come, and with the feelings came an activation of fight and flight. I wanted to jump out of my body or go into it so deeply that I could only tire out with extreme exercise.
Accepting, modulating, and recognizing this experience as part of my response to grief saved me. Since the death of my son, I have realized that my voice was crucial to my healing. Crying, wailing, and speaking about him keeps my emotions flowing to this day. It is important to remember that sadness is part of loss, but depression is not.
An embodiment practice coupled with the expression of sounds and emotions helps my sadness move and flow. It moves through me in waves.
Finally, the experience of stillness and space has been a profound healer for me. It allows me to feel connected to a greater unity - one that encompasses life and death. I have found that it is only by allowing the other stages to come and go that I deepen my access to this stillness.
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. You can experience happiness and grief at the same time. With movement therapy, you will learn how to create the space for peace and joy to co-exist with the intense pain of loss and grief.
"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