Alan Davidson is a contributing author to Healing the Heart of the World, a compendium of essays by such authors as HRH Prince Charles, Caroline Myss, John Gray, Andrew Harvey, Naomi Judd and Neale Donald Walsch. Alan, a Registered Massage Therapist since 1988, is the owner and director of Essential Touch Therapies in Houston, Texas. He has a Bachelor’s of Science degree from the University of Houston, Downtown, with an emphasis on psychology, sociology, philosophy and religion.  Alan is fascinated with the intersection of bodywork, psychology, ritual and spiritual practice.  Having taught massage, meditation, yoga, and human transformation since 1990, he is currently on the teaching staff at NiaMoves Studio. Alan sums up his years of study with one wholehearted belief:  “Life is for the fun of it!”

Embodying Grief
Using Our Bodies to Heal Our Grief

I had been looking forward to and bracing myself for seeing The Names Project Quilt, which was recently on display here in Houston. It was my fifth time to see a display of The Quilt, and the experience has always been a healing, as well as painful, process for me as I faced the many panels that have come to represent the agony of grief and the poetry of life for our community. The upstairs display at the convention center—the new additions to The Quilt that reflect the lives and deaths scarred by AIDS—have always been especially moving for me.

Having bartended in the gay community for 11 years, it didn’t take long for me to recognize the panels of friends, acquaintances, customers, and community leaders. It also didn’t take long for the familiar sensations of shallow breath, contractions in my chest, and the clenching of my belly that accompany my feelings of sadness, helplessness, anger, and grief. The journey downstairs to the main exhibit, I knew, would only intensify these sensations and feelings.

I have seen larger displays of The Quilt in Washington D.C., but I had not seen such a concentration of panels from Houston and Texas. I soon found panels that I remembered seeing the first time The Quilt came to Houston—men that died eight and nine years ago…men that I had not thought of for years. These rapid images collided  with the more immediate memories of recent deaths and the many friends who have died over the years. I felt overwhelmed. Fortunately, a friend was there to comfort me, to stand and walk silently with me as I viewed the powerful testament to life.

Processing these kind of powerful emotions is not something for which our culture prepares us. In terms of grief, our society prefers to ignore the inevitability of death and the suffering of loss we survivors feel. We simply are not schooled in the simple process of grief. The casualties of AIDS include the decimation of our community and the shock of continual loss we survivors experience. A decade of loss has numbered many of our emotional responses, and most of us are unaware that there is so much unfinished work. John James, co-founder of The Grief Recovery Institute, states that every unresolved loss we carry decreases our capacity to feel joy and happiness. At this point our community has had so many unresolved losses, that we often rely on gallows humor and the momentum of our lives to carry us through the day. We often realize that something is missing, but it is too elusive to grasp. Life doesn’t feel as crisp and pleasurable as it once did. Perhaps we attribute this to growing older, but often it is simple grief that has dulled our experience.

When people think of grieving or emotional healing, they rarely think of their physical bodies. The body is often thought of as the cart that delivers the mind to its next point of expression and is usually forgotten until the mind is ready to move on to the next place. Even with the emphasis on aerobic and finely sculpted muscles, we rarely view our bodies as portals to healing and transformation. Somatics is a growing school of thought that explores the relationship between the mind and body. This powerful modality blends psychology, touch, meditation, breathwork, and movement into its understanding of the body-mind relationship. The teachings of Wilhelm Reich and Gestalt therapy are two of the more popular somatic psychological, and both emphasize the use of the body in breaking through the dominant behaviors of the mind.

Other somatic techniques include meditation, breathwork, and movement. Meditation trains the attention and brings discipline to the ricocheting thoughts of the mind. Breathwork is subtle, yet primary, movement of the body and an excellent focus for the attention. And, conscious movement focuses that attention on the sensations of the body. As these processes are combined, an entire life of the body, previously ignored, comes to life, while whole levels of emotions become available. The use of somatic techniques greatly increases the depth of perception we have and makes available more profound levels of experience. By using the body as an anchor, we can regain access to long-buried feelings and memories.

Somatic techniques, coupled with emotional grieving processes, make available change in the way we experience loss and death in our lives. Grief processes include traditional therapy, support groups for friends and lovers of PWAs, or steps found in such grief manuals as The Grief Recovery Handbook. All of these techniques can explore our personal relationship to grief, offer guides to cope and process our personal relationship to grief, offer guides to cope and process our intense feelings, and reframe death and loss as a healing aspect to life. Jean Houston, in her book In Search of the Beloved, talks about “wounding”—a psychological trauma that shatters our previous contentment with the world. These wounds can also be the basis for growth into our greater human potential. What Carl Jung calls “legitimate suffering” calls us forth as human beings, making available to us more powerful states of existence.

Included here are some simple somatic techniques. You can use them to train your attention to include your body in your own healing process. The intention is to use the body as a partner to healing instead of as a cart to deliver the all-important mind to its next destination.

Meditation Exercise:
Sit comfortably in a chair or cross-legged on the floor. Close your eyes and notice how you feel, both mentally and emotionally. Now, bring your awareness to the physical sensations of your body. Your tailbone on the chair or floor. Your feet and/or legs on the floor. The feel of fabric on your skin. Any breezes on your skin. Any aromas you may smell. The sounds that come to you. The rising and falling of the abdomen and chest as you breathe. The flow of air through your nose and throat. All of these are sensations you may use to anchor you in the present. Whenever you find that your mind has wandered and that you are thinking, gently return your attention to any of the above-mentioned bodily sensations. The body always exists in the present moment, so anytime you bring your attention to it, you bring yourself into the present moment. Sit like this for 10 to 30 minutes. As a closing, notice how you are feeling mentally and emotionally. Are there any differences from the time you began the exercise?

Movement Exercises: Spine and Neck Rolls
Stand comfortably with your feet spread about shoulders width beneath you. Bend the knees slightly. Notice any prominent sensations throughout your body. Feel your feet on the floor. Slowly bend the chin down to the chest. Continue the motion as your spine curls forward. The idea is to get a sensation of each vertebra moving one at a time. Move slowly until your belly rests on your upper thighs and you are relaxed. You may gently shake out the hands or roll the neck from side to side.

The challenge now is to reverse the process. Slowly contract the abdominal muscles and begin to move each vertebra, one at a time, to an upright position. Finally, the torso is upright and the head to its uptight position and then slowly let the head fall back so that the throat is stretched open. Hold this stretch for a moment, then gently let the right ear roll to the right shoulder. In a counter-clockwise rotation move the chin slowly to the chest, rolling the head to the left ear and stretching to the left shoulder. Continue the movement by rolling the head fully back with the throat stretched open and slowly come back to center with the head in its upright position. Repeat the head roll in a clockwise rotation.

As the head comes back to center, pause and notice fully all the subtle sensations of your body. What, if any, are the changes in your mental and emotional state? Repeat the full exercise three times.

Alan Davidson is a registered massage therapist (RMT) and teaches somatic tough at The Winters School. He is director of Essential Touch Therapies and leads small Grief Recovery seminars. Call 713-942-9023 for more information on upcoming seminars.