The Body Remembers: Somatic Signs You May Be Grieving (Even If You Haven’t Named It That Yet)
- Weaving Grief
- 4 days ago
- 7 min read
Our life experiences move, shift, and change us. Sometimes it arrives with clear cause—death, divorce, diagnosis. But other times, it comes wrapped in mystery, clothed in silence, hidden beneath the routines of our daily life. It might not look like sobbing on the floor or speaking eulogies. It may show up, instead, as fatigue that clings to your skin, a throat that tightens when you try to speak, or an ache in your chest that no amount of stretching relieves. This is grief too, and it lives in the body.
Grief Is Not Just Emotional—It’s Somatic
We often associate grief with emotions such as sadness, anger, and despair. But grief is also a somatic experience, meaning it is felt in our body. It lives in our muscles, our breath, our heartbeat, and the rhythms of our nervous system.
In Western culture, we tend to separate the mind and body—as if our grief could be "felt" but not embodied. But trauma-informed research and ancestral wisdom tell us otherwise. When we do not express, ritualize, or process our grief, it doesn't just vanish. It moves in, and gets gets stored in our body, in our tissues. We become heavy, tense, numb, disconnected, and disembodied, and we may not even know why.
Grief is clever like that. If it cannot cry, it will find other ways to speak—through sensation, physical pain, tension, and discomfort. The question is: are we listening?
What Is Somatic Grief?
The word soma means “the body in its wholeness”—not just a physical body, but a living, breathing, sensing, being. Somatic grief refers to the way grief expresses itself in our physical form. This includes sensations, symptoms, and nervous system responses that reflect unmetabolized loss. You might feel perfectly functional on the outside, yet your body is holding tension like a clenched fist. You may not even consciously feel grief, yet your gut is off, your sleep disturbed, your breath is shallow, or an old injury is flared. This is not a sign that something is wrong with you, it’s a sign that something is longing to be witnessed.
Why We Don’t Always Recognize Grief
Many of us grew up in environments where grief was silenced, rushed, or minimized. Maybe no one knew how to grieve openly. Maybe survival didn’t allow for softness. Or maybe your losses weren’t seen as “valid” enough to grieve—like the loss of a dream, an identity, a community, or a sense of safety. But the body does not care whether your loss has a name or a funeral. The body only knows something is missing. Something has shifted. Something hurts.
Less "obvious" losses you may be grieving:
A version of yourself that no longer exists
A relationship that ended, changed, or never began
A future you once imagined - hopes and dreams you held but that have since faded
The innocence you lost in childhood
An animal, a home, a season of life
The disconnection of living in a culture that denies grief altogether
The state of our collective world
The impact of human behavior on the natural world or the disconnection from more natural ways of being
These griefs are no less worthy. No less sacred. And often, the first signs that something is stirring come not through words, but through the body.
7 Somatic Signs You May Be Grieving
Below are seven common ways the body may express grief. You do not need to experience all of them. Grief is deeply individual. Trust your own rhythm, and let these reflections be a mirror—not a map.
01. Chronic Fatigue or Heaviness
You’re sleeping plenty, but you wake up tired. Moving through the day feels like dragging yourself through thick fog. There's a weight you can't explain.
Grief is heavy. It saps energy. This isn’t laziness or lack of motivation—it's the body's response to emotional overload. It’s carrying what hasn’t yet been felt or expressed.
This kind of fatigue often shows up when we’re unconsciously trying to hold ourselves together. The constant internal bracing consumes immense energy.
02. Tightness in the Chest or Throat
Many people describe grief as a tightness in the chest—a constriction around the heart—or a lump in the throat. These are places the body holds emotion when it feels unsafe or unsure how to release it.
The chest, especially, is where we feel both love and heartbreak. If you've experienced loss or abandonment, you may unconsciously guard this area—protecting it from more pain.
The throat is linked to expression. When grief hasn’t been spoken—when you’ve “swallowed” emotion—the body may clamp down, making it hard to speak, cry, or even breathe deeply.
03. Digestive Issues
The gut is often referred to as our "second brain." It’s deeply connected to the nervous system and extremely sensitive to emotional stress.
Grief can trigger:
Nausea
Bloating
Constipation or diarrhea
IBS and/or other digestive issues
Loss of appetite or emotional eating
The body may be reacting to stress, shock, or emotional suppression. It may also be protecting you—slowing things down, redirecting energy to what feels most essential: survival. Tending to grief gently, with rituals of nourishment, can be powerful medicine.
04. Restlessness or Insomnia
Some people don’t feel heavy—they feel wired. Sleep is disrupted. Rest feels impossible. The nervous system is on high alert.
This is a survival response. When a loss feels unsafe or overwhelming, the body stays vigilant. Even if the threat is over, your system may still be scanning for danger, trying to protect you.
If you’re waking in the early morning hours with an ache in your chest, know this is common. Grief doesn’t follow a neat schedule. And the quietest hours are often when it speaks the loudest.
05. Random Aches, Pains, or Inflammation
Grief can be surprisingly physical. It may manifest as:
Shoulder tension
Jaw clenching
Headaches
Back pain
Flare-ups of chronic illness
Flare-ups of an old injury site where the body has previously been hurt
This isn’t “in your head.” The body often stores grief in tight or vulnerable areas. It may contract as a way of bracing against further pain.
Movement, breathwork, massage, or somatic therapy can gently invite release—but there’s no rush. These signals are requests for tenderness, not fixing.
06. Numbness or Disconnection
Perhaps you don’t feel anything—not sadness, not anger, not even anxiety. Just a flatness. A going-through-the-motions. You might feel detached from your body, from others, even from yourself.
This is a grief response, too.
When a loss feels too overwhelming or unsafe to process, the body may protect you by numbing out. Dissociation is a wise survival strategy—especially if there was no support available at the time of loss.
But over time, numbness can turn into stagnation. We can become stuck, not because we’re broken, but because we’ve been trying to survive something alone.
Healing begins with presence—with gently saying: I’m here now. I’m listening.
07. Postural or Breath Changes
Check in for a moment. How are you sitting? Where is your breath?
Grief has a posture. It can make us shrink, slump, collapse inward. It can take our voice, shorten our breath, make us feel like we’re walking through life with a thousand-pound heart.
These postural shifts are meaningful. They are part of grief’s language. They are also invitations—to stand softer, to breathe fuller, to meet ourselves with curiosity instead of judgment.
Tending to the Body During Grief
Grieving is not something we think our way through, its an invitation to be, to be in our bodies and to feel our way through.
Here are a few gentle ways to tend to grief somatically:
Somatic check-ins: Pause and ask, What am I feeling in my body right now? No need to analyze—just notice.
Breathwork: Use long, slow exhales to signal safety to your nervous system. Even a few minutes a day can shift your state.
Grounding rituals: Walk barefoot, touch a tree, place your hands on your heart or belly. Grief needs anchoring.
Movement: Gentle stretching, dancing, shaking, or intuitive movement helps move stagnant grief through the body.
Touch and warmth: Weighted blankets, your favorite oversized sweater, warm baths, or self-massage can help the body feel safe and soothed.
Voice and sound: Humming, sighing, moaning—these are primal ways the body releases held emotion. Let them be welcome.
Somatic grief therapy: Grief needs a witness, and the body needs support in navigating what feels like "too much" to hold.
Unspoken Grief Still Deserves a Voice
You don’t need to have the “right” words or a clear story.You don’t need to justify your loss to feel it. You don’t need to explain why your heart feels heavy. Grief is not linear. It is not always loud and sometimes, it moves like water—slow, deep, and powerful. Your body is not betraying you. It is revealing what has not yet been witnessed. Let this be your permission to listen, to soften, to stop bracing, and to begin befriending your grief.
An Invitation to Be With Your Body’s Grief
In a world that rushes us to “move on,” being with our grief—especially in the body—becomes a radical act of care. This is how we revolutionize grief work.
If you recognize yourself in any of these signs, know this: You are not alone, you are not broken, you are being spoken to—by the wisdom of your own body. This is not the end of your aliveness.This is the portal into your aliveness.
Grief, when honoured somatically, becomes a sacred threshold back to the fullness of life. A way of remembering who you are. A way of reclaiming your breath, your voice, your ground, your aliveness. Take your time. Let your body show you the way.
Want more support? Download our free guide Being with Grief — a gentle invitation to tend your grief with somatic practices, rituals, and journal prompts. Or join the Weaving Grief email community for reflections, tools, and upcoming offerings.
About Us:
Weaving Grief specializes in compassionate grief therapy for individuals navigating loss of any kind - death, breakups, relationship transitions, chronic illness, loss of self, and more. By addressing these profound experiences, Weaving Grief empowers clients to grieve freely and live fully. Through somatic practices and meaningful reflection, we’re here to help you navigate these tender moments and rediscover the fullness of life.
Specific areas of focus: death of a loved one (recent or past), life changing transitions, relationship transitions and break ups, pregnancy loss, grief around family planning, chronic illness, loss of Self, and supporting entrepreneurs through the grief that comes with growth.
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