When most of us hear that someone is grieving, we picture the obvious: a death, a funeral, the kind of loss everyone agrees is hard. But grief is much bigger than that — and the body usually knows it long before the mind catches up.
In the Summer 2026 issue of Massage Therapy Journal, AMTA published a thoughtful piece on working with clients who are grieving. Reading it reminded me of how much of this work I’ve been doing quietly for years without always naming it. I want to share some of what the article surfaced, alongside what I’ve learned in my own practice at Active Muscle Health.
Grief Is Bigger Than You Think
The article makes the case that grief can accompany any event that upends your sense of who you are or what normal feels like. Yes, the death of a loved one. But also divorce, retirement, infertility, miscarriage, financial setbacks, family estrangement, even a chronic diagnosis. Some of these losses are technically chosen, and they still hurt. A relief can also be a loss.
This matters because so many of my clients walk in carrying something they haven’t fully named. They tell me their neck hurts. They tell me they aren’t sleeping. They tell me their digestion is off. And sometimes, after a few minutes on the table, they mention a parent who passed last year, or a divorce that finalized in March, or a child who moved out and won’t return their calls.
The body is keeping the score.
What Grief Does to the Body
The article describes grief as one of the most demanding stress responses the body can go through — and that lines up with everything I see in my treatment room.
When we’re under sustained emotional strain, our bodies are flooded with cortisol, adrenaline, and noradrenaline. Serotonin and dopamine get suppressed. The nervous system camps out in fight, flight, or freeze, even when there’s no actual bear in the room. Over time, this can show up as:
- Poor sleep
- Headaches and muscle pain
- Digestive disruption
- Brain fog and trouble concentrating
- Anxiety and depressed mood
- More frequent colds, flu, and infections
- An uptick in accidents and injuries
If any of that list felt like it was written for you — you’re not imagining it. Loss has a physiology. It doesn’t just live in your heart. It settles into your jaw, your shoulders, the small muscles between your ribs.
Why a Grief-Aware Session Looks Different
This is where the article got especially useful for me as a practitioner. Grief-centered massage is not the same as a deep tissue or orthopedic session. When someone is already in pain — physically and emotionally — the goal isn’t to dig in and aggressively “release” anything. The goal is to calm an overstimulated nervous system and create a place where the body can finally exhale.
In practice, that means lighter, sustained, intentional contact. It means working with the breath. It means knowing when not to use deep myofascial or trigger point work, because more discomfort isn’t what someone in active grief needs.
It also means giving you permission to be exactly however you are on the table. You can talk. You can stay quiet. You can cry — tissues are within reach. You can ask me to pause or stop. You don’t owe me any details of your loss. You don’t have to perform being okay.
What I’ve Seen in My Own Practice
I’ve been a licensed massage therapist since 2014, and I’ve worked with people through the full range of human seasons — wedding planning, pregnancy, divorce, parents in hospice, kids leaving home, jobs lost, jobs left, hard diagnoses, beloved pets gone. The clients I think about most are the ones who told me, sometimes years later, that their massage hour was the only place they let themselves cry that month.
That kind of work is sacred. It’s also boundaried. A massage therapist isn’t a therapist or a grief counselor, and I’ll be the first to say when someone needs more support than I can offer. The article emphasizes this, and I want to underline it: there’s no shame in needing more than one resource. Massage works beautifully alongside therapy, support groups, and professional grief work — not instead of them.
A Few Things I Won’t Say
The article includes a useful list of phrases to avoid, and I appreciated it because they’re the things we all default to when we don’t know what else to offer. “Give it time.” “Keep busy.” “I know how you feel.” “They’re in a better place.” Even when well-meant, these can land sideways for someone in the thick of it.
What I will say, in my own words: I can’t know exactly what you’re carrying, but you’re welcome here. You don’t have to explain. We’ll work with what your body needs today. That’s usually enough.
If You’re Carrying Something
If life has handed you a loss — named or unnamed, recent or still echoing — and your body has been telling you it’s tired, you don’t have to wait until you “should” feel better before coming in. Massage isn’t going to fix grief; nothing fixes grief. But it can give you ninety minutes where your nervous system gets to rest, where warmth replaces tension, and where you’re allowed to just be a body for a little while.
At Active Muscle Health, all of my sessions include complimentary hot stones on the back — gentle, grounding warmth that pairs especially well with the slower, more nurturing work that grief calls for. If you’d like to talk through whether a session is the right fit, I’m always happy to answer questions before you book.
Schedule a session, or reach out to me directly. Whatever you’re carrying, you don’t have to carry it alone in your body.
Inspired by the Summer 2026 Massage Therapy Journal feature on working with clients who are grieving.