Gentle Touch for Grief
What is Grief Massage?
Grief Massage is a specialized form of gentle massage that utilizes therapeutic presence, touch, and felt safety to support grievers. Many grieving clients enjoy silence during sessions. A place where space is held for you to just be and be supported.
Grief massage provides a unique and peaceful massage for people in their early days, weeks and months of grieving. This type of massage can be a powerful component of self-care during a stressful and sensitive time in your grief journey. It provides a safe, nurturing space with no intention of fixing your grief. A peaceful place that provides pockets of quiet calmness in the midst of your bereavement storm. It is hoped that it gives you a little more strength and resilience to ride the inevitable waves of grief that will come in the days, weeks and months of your grief journey.
Grief Massage is not counselling. Clients are always welcome to talk during a session, but there is very little speaking by the therapist. Recommendations can however be made to local mental health professionals for clients seeking talking therapy or other additional bereavement support.
Why Grief Massage?
Life changes dramatically physically and mentally with loss. While you may anticipate the emotional impact, the physical aspect of grieving can often be unexpected. A loss can trigger increased stress responses in the body that can include:
- Feeling lethargic
- Numbness
- Increased anxiety
- Muscle aches and pains
- Sleeping difficulties
- Loss of concentration
- Headache
- Compromised immune system
Massage therapy can be beneficial in the early stages of grief, particularly the first 6 months, helping you to continue moving through the process of bereavement and providing a holistic mind-body-spirit support for your loss.
Loss is a huge part of the human experience which affects everyone and should be embraced and supported. Through the basic human need for touch, massage allows the grieving person to reconnect to themselves and feel connected to another human. Massage can support the release of emotions within a space you can fully experience whatever it is you are feeling in the moment without judgement or need to fix it.
While massage doesn't alleviate the sense of sadness, despair and hopelessness associated with grief, it will allow you to feel more physically relaxed and less anxious. Massage can help to alleviate some of the physical discomfort associated with early bereavement, having a restorative effect on the nervous system, providing respite and strength for the body amid the overwhelming emotional, mental and physical pain of loss.
What to expect.
Grief Massage Therapy uses a combination of established massage modalities to create groundedness, lightness of being, and relaxation. The session incorporates techniques such as Swedish Massage, gentle rocking, comfort holds and reflexology. Grieving clients often experience increased sensitivity to pressure and a firm or deep massage can be overwhelming. Massage for the grieving client therefore is slower and lighter than the normal Swedish Massage.
Before the session, an intake is completed via telephone which is a little bit different than the standard initial consult that focuses on injuries, illnesses or medications. The intake allows the therapist to get an idea of what is going on for you in your body as part of your physical response to loss and how you would like to focus your treatment.
The gentle relaxation grief massage can focus on these areas and is tailored to your individual needs if you know them:
- Scalp and face
- Neck and back
- Arms and hands
- Calves and feet
A nurturing touch massage may prompt expressions of sadness. This is a normal response and is welcome in the space. The treatment duration is 60 minutes however an extra 30 minutes is allocated to a grief massage session. This provides space for you to process whatever comes up for you within the session.
My Grief Story
The impact of Therapeutic Massage has been life changing. It’s the reason I am a Massage Therapist today. My passion is to share healing touch and support people in their healing and wellness journey..
After the traumatic and untimely death of my mother and sister to Covid-19 during the Pandemic, my physical and mental health began to suffer . I was experiencing anxiety and depression which had never been issues I had to manage previously and my body felt like it was breaking down. The symptoms of peri-menopause that I had been experiencing before bereavement seemed to be ramping up and making what was already a difficult time even more tricky to navigate. Massage has always been a staple part of my self-care regime and I knew the benefits of having this type of treatment for my body and mind.. In my desire to seek out peaceful places, finding connection with massage was important to me during my journey through the early weeks and months of navigating life after the loss of my family members.
I had almost completed my training as a Massage Therapist shortly before the Pandemic shut down the country so I was unable to finish the final case studies for my certification. When I was finally able to complete my training I was not sure if I would be able to support the wellbing and healing of others when I felt so broken myself, but I pressed on with my plans to establish Chill & Tonic not knowing how healing it would actually be for me. When I was offered the opportunity to train with the wonderful Aimee Taylor, Founder of The Institute for Grief Massage it felt like a full circle moment. I know first hand how integral to my own healing, massage has been and the training has provided me with the tools and words to bring an offering to my clients that seemed destined to be part of my journey as a holistic practitioner..