The Silent Echoes of Grief in the Body
Grief often arrives in unexpected ways. It’s easy to think of it as an emotional burden that resides solely in the heart or mind, but in reality, it permeates the entire body. Have you ever felt the tightening in your chest after hearing a difficult piece of news? Or the sudden wave of exhaustion that hits without warning, making even the smallest task feel like a mountain? These physical sensations are not just by-products of your emotions; they’re your body’s way of processing the loss, and they’re deeply tied to the way grief shows up in the nervous system.
Grief isn’t just an experience of sadness; it’s a full-body response. Modern neuroscience and trauma-informed approaches have shown that the experience of grief affects us on a physiological level — it doesn’t just stay in the mind, but can manifest as physical symptoms that we carry with us, often unknowingly. Whether it’s tightness in the chest, a constant sense of fatigue, or difficulty focusing, the body remembers what the mind cannot always express.
In this post, we’ll explore the profound connection between grief and the nervous system, how grief lives in our bodies, and why healing requires more than simply talking about it. True healing starts with understanding that grief must be felt, moved, and released — in the body, not just the mind.
1. What Grief Does to the Nervous System
Grief is more than sorrow — it's an alarm in the body. When we lose someone or something deeply meaningful, our nervous system interprets it as a threat to safety, not just emotionally, but biologically. This is why grief often triggers what we know as survival responses: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.
You might notice irritability or bursts of anger (fight),
A compulsive urge to stay busy, avoid feelings, or escape emotionally (flight),
A sense of paralysis, numbness, or disconnection from the world (freeze),
Or a desperate need to appease, people-please, or make sure others are okay while you ignore your own pain (fawn).
These responses aren’t flaws or weaknesses — they’re natural reactions to emotional overwhelm, wired into us for protection. And at the center of this regulation system is the vagus nerve — the main communicator between the brain and the body.
The Vagus Nerve: Grief’s Quiet Witness
The vagus nerve plays a vital role in regulating how we respond to stress, including grief. It controls heart rate, digestion, and the calming signals that help us return to a state of rest after emotional upheaval. But when we experience profound loss, the vagus nerve can become underactive or overly strained, leaving us in a prolonged state of dysregulation.
This is why you might find yourself weeks, months, even years after a loss feeling:
Exhausted, even after sleeping.
On edge, like you can’t fully exhale.
Emotionally detached, as if watching life through a fog.
Or struggling with digestive issues, chronic pain, or inflammation — all signs that the body is still processing grief, even if your mind is trying to move on.
Grief, especially when unsupported or unacknowledged, can lead to chronic dysregulation of the nervous system. This not only affects your emotional well-being but can deeply impact your physical health, relationships, and ability to feel safe in your own body.
But there’s hope — because the nervous system is not fixed. It’s responsive. It can heal. And that's where somatic practices and vagal toning techniques come in — tools to help us return to ourselves, slowly and gently.
2. The Body Keeps the Score: Somatic Symptoms of Grief
Grief doesn’t just break our hearts — it speaks through our bodies.
Many people come to coaching or therapy confused about symptoms that appeared after a significant loss. They may say things like “I feel off but I can’t explain why” or “I’m so tired all the time, but nothing’s physically wrong.” What they don’t realize is that the body holds onto grief, sometimes long after the initial event has passed.
Common Physical Manifestations of Grief:
Chest tightness or heart palpitations: The feeling of pressure in the chest is a classic grief response — hence the term “heartache.” It's not just poetic. Studies have shown grief can increase the risk of cardiovascular issues, especially in the early stages.
Digestive issues: When the nervous system is dysregulated, digestion often slows or becomes erratic. You might experience nausea, constipation, diarrhea, or a loss of appetite. Grief can literally take your gut — your second brain — offline.
Brain fog and fatigue: Grief consumes energy. The mental toll of loss, combined with the body’s stress responses, can lead to profound tiredness and difficulty concentrating. You may feel like you're moving through molasses or forget simple things.
Muscle tension and migraines: Emotional pain often lodges itself in the body — the neck, shoulders, jaw, or back become repositories for unprocessed grief. This can result in chronic pain, tension headaches, and even migraines.
Sleep disruptions: Whether it’s difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, or waking up too early, grief often disrupts the body’s natural sleep rhythms. Some people also experience vivid dreams or even nightmares related to their loss.
This Isn’t “All in Your Head”
One of the most important things to remember is this:
These symptoms are real. You’re not being dramatic. You’re not weak. You’re grieving — and your body is doing its best to help you survive it.
Too often, society asks us to “get over it,” when in truth, our biology simply doesn’t work that way. Grief needs time, space, and movement — not suppression.
Your symptoms are not signs that you’re broken.
They’re signs that you loved. That you’re human. That your body is still holding the weight of what you’ve lost.
And when we begin to acknowledge grief in the body, we can also begin to gently release it — through somatic awareness, movement, breath, and connection.
3. Why Talk Therapy Isn’t Always Enough
For many people navigating grief, talk therapy offers a safe and validating space to make sense of their experience. And for some, that’s enough. But for others, the words start to run out while the pain remains lodged in the body.
You can understand why you’re grieving.
You can analyze the relationship, name the loss, even recite the timeline of events.
But still — you might feel frozen. Numb. Disconnected. Or overwhelmed by emotional floods that don’t seem to match the story you've told.
This isn’t a failure. It’s a sign that top-down processing — working only with the mind — has its limits.
Healing the Body to Heal the Heart: Bottom-Up Work
Grief, like trauma, often bypasses the thinking brain and settles deep into the nervous system. When the body still feels unsafe, unheard, or dysregulated, no amount of logic can calm it. This is where bottom-up healing becomes essential.
Instead of beginning with thoughts and trying to reach the body, bottom-up work starts in the body — through breath, sensation, movement, and nervous system awareness — and gradually opens the door for emotional release and integration.
“The body keeps the score. If the memory of trauma is encoded in the viscera, in heartbreaking and gut-wrenching emotions, in autoimmune disorders and skeletal/muscular problems...this demands a radical shift in our therapeutic assumptions.”
— Dr. Bessel van der Kolk
Somatic therapies and nervous system regulation practices — including vagal toning, breathwork, and trauma-informed movement — help us access the parts of grief that live beyond words. The heavy sighs. The trembling. The collapse. The ache that language just can’t hold.
Why This Matters in Grief Work
If you’ve ever felt like you should be over it by now…
If you’ve ever said “I’ve talked about it a thousand times but nothing changes…”
If your body still reacts as if the loss is happening now, even years later…
You are not stuck.
You are not broken.
You may just need to approach your grief from a different entry point — one that honors the intelligence of your body.
Because true healing doesn’t just happen through talking — it happens through feeling, sensing, and releasing.
4. Reclaiming the Body Through Somatic Practices
When grief lives in the nervous system, healing asks us to go beyond mental understanding — and begin building a relationship with the body again.
Grief can leave us feeling unmoored, disembodied, or even afraid of the physical sensations we carry. Reclaiming the body means slowly, gently returning home to it — learning to feel without becoming overwhelmed. It’s not about fixing the grief, but about creating safety to be with it.
Here are a few foundational somatic tools that help the body metabolize grief:
Body Scanning: Listening Inward Without Judgment
A body scan is a simple yet powerful way to tune into your inner landscape. By gently moving your awareness from head to toe, you begin to notice where grief may be showing up — in tight shoulders, a clenched jaw, or a hollow belly. You’re not trying to change anything — just noticing.
This practice is a quiet rebellion against emotional numbness. It teaches us that feeling is safe, that the body’s messages deserve to be heard.
Grounding: Creating Safety in the Here and Now
Grief can yank us into the past or catapult us into the future. Grounding brings us back.
It may look like pressing your feet firmly into the floor, holding onto a weighted object, or placing your hands over your heart and belly. These tactile anchors signal to your nervous system: “I’m here, I’m safe, I can breathe.”
Over time, grounding helps you be with the waves of grief, rather than drown in them.
Movement & Shaking: Letting the Body Speak
Grief often gets stuck when we suppress the urge to move — to cry, to tremble, to collapse.
Movement practices such as shaking, intuitive stretching, or slow mindful walks offer the body a channel for release. In somatic trauma work, this is known as “completing the stress cycle.”
You don’t have to dance beautifully or follow any structure. The goal is simply to allow motion — and let the body speak what the mind cannot say.
Breathwork: Bridging Body and Mind
The breath is one of the few systems in the body that we can consciously influence, making it a powerful tool in somatic grief work.
Gentle, trauma-informed breath practices — like slow diaphragmatic breathing or humming to stimulate the vagus nerve — can calm the system without bypassing the emotion.
Each breath becomes an invitation: to feel, to soften, to stay with yourself — even when the ache is raw.
Somatic work doesn’t remove the grief.
But it gives you something just as important: a way to carry it with more presence, more ease, and more self-compassion.
5. Vagal Toning: Resetting the Nervous System
When grief lingers in the body, it often dysregulates the nervous system — keeping us stuck in cycles of shutdown, anxiety, or emotional flooding. This is where the vagus nerve becomes one of our most powerful allies in healing.
What Is Vagal Toning?
The vagus nerve is the longest cranial nerve in the body, connecting the brainstem to vital organs — including the heart, lungs, and gut. It’s a key player in the parasympathetic nervous system — what we often call our rest-and-digest or social engagement system.
When toned and regulated, the vagus nerve helps us feel safe, grounded, and connected. But grief can weaken this tone, leaving the nervous system on edge or in collapse.
Vagal toning is the practice of gently stimulating the vagus nerve to bring the body back into balance and support emotional integration.
Here are a few simple techniques you can begin using today:
Humming or Chanting
Humming activates the vagus nerve through vibration in the throat and chest. You don’t need to chant in any particular way — even soft humming to a tune you love can signal safety to your system.
Try this: hum for 30 seconds with your lips closed, feel the vibration in your chest, and notice how your body responds.
Vagus Massage
Gently massaging behind the ears or down the sides of the neck where the vagus nerve runs can help bring relief when tension or sadness becomes overwhelming.
Extended Exhales: Breathing Into Safety
Long, slow exhalations signal to the body that it’s safe to relax. Try inhaling for a count of four and exhaling for a count of eight. This simple breath ratio taps into the parasympathetic nervous system, inviting calm into the places grief has stirred chaos.
Over time, these breaths become like anchors — helping you stay present with the pain without being consumed by it.
Safe Social Connection & Co-Regulation
We are wired to heal in connection. Co-regulation — the calming of one nervous system through another — is one of the most powerful ways to restore safety after grief.
This might look like:
Sitting with a friend in silence
Calling someone who makes you feel seen
Even holding eye contact with a pet
These moments of safe relational presence help tone the vagus nerve and remind the body that it's not alone in its pain.
Why This Matters in Grief Recovery
When your vagus nerve is regulated, your body becomes more capable of processing intense emotion without shutting down or spiraling.
Grief doesn’t get erased — but it gets held with more capacity, more breath, and more softness.
Vagal toning isn’t about pushing grief away — it’s about creating the inner conditions where grief can move, integrate, and eventually transform.
6. Making Room for Grief in the Body
So often, we are taught to manage grief — to keep it tidy, intellectualized, or tucked away where it won’t disturb the flow of daily life. But grief doesn’t follow linear rules or polite timelines. It’s not a wound to be patched up. It’s an experience to be felt through.
Stop Fighting, Start Feeling
When we try to push grief out of the body, it only digs deeper — surfacing as fatigue, anxiety, numbness, or tension.
But when we turn toward it — breathe into it, move with it, create space for it — something powerful happens:
Grief softens. It shifts. It tells the truth it’s been holding all along.
The body isn’t betraying you with these sensations. It’s trying to speak.
Pain is often a message — there’s something here that needs your love, not your resistance.
Grief Doesn’t Need to Be Fixed
One of the most radical acts of healing is learning that you don’t need to fix grief. You only need to be present with it.
When you give grief permission to exist in the body — without judgment, without urgency — you offer yourself something incredibly sacred:
validation, compassion, and somatic witnessing.
Whether it comes in waves of tears, stillness, shaking, or deep sighs — this expression is not a problem to solve. It’s a sacred passage.
The Surprising Gifts of Somatic Grief Work
Clients often tell me that when they finally allowed themselves to feel grief in the body — not just talk about it — something shifted:
A heaviness lifted from their chest
They cried for the first time in years
They felt closer to the memory of the one they lost
They breathed deeper, slept better, or laughed unexpectedly
Grief, when witnessed and moved somatically, has a way of making space for life again. Not in a way that replaces what’s been lost, but in a way that honors it — by allowing love to continue flowing, even in absence.
Grief lives in the body. And so too does healing.
When we stop resisting and start reverently feeling, we reclaim a deeper relationship with ourselves — and with those we’ve lost.
Final Thoughts: A Path to Wholeness
Grief has a quiet way of sneaking into our most significant moments — not to steal the joy, but to remind us of love. The moment it rose in my own body — the dull ache in my chest, the lump in my throat, the weight behind my eyes — I wasn’t just feeling sad. I was remembering. I was missing. I was trying to carry something far too heavy, alone.
But we don’t have to carry it alone. And we don’t have to carry it forever.
Grief isn’t a life sentence. It’s a natural and necessary response to loving deeply. When we make space for it in our bodies, when we meet it with breath, movement, and compassion — we make space for wholeness to return, too.
You Deserve to Feel Safe in Your Body Again
You are allowed to grieve in the ways your body knows how. You are allowed to shake, sigh, rest, cry, rage, dance, collapse, and begin again.
This is what somatic grief work offers: a return to yourself, piece by piece, breath by breath.
If you’re ready to explore this path — to move grief gently through the body and reclaim a sense of grounded safety — I’d be honored to support you. In my coaching practice, we weave together nervous system regulation, somatic practices, and trauma-informed care to help you reconnect with your inner resilience.
Because your body remembers, yes — but it also remembers how to heal.