Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/867515
I I've realized that the biggest surprise about grief is just how much it hurts physically. After a loss, the new normal often includes an aching body with sore shoulders, crippling headaches, and a painfully clenched jaw. Insomnia and appetite changes can lead to endless fatigue and irritability. Grief actually hurts. We know enough about grief to dread the emotional, mental, and spiritual pain of a loss. It's the physically painful aspect of grieving that can catch us off guard. How can it be fair to suffer on so many different levels simultaneously? Combining Grief and Massage Massage helped me. In fact, it helped me profoundly. I received weekly massage as a massage therapy student for the fi rst 18 months after my brother's death. By the time I graduated from massage school, I was intent on learning as much as I could about bodywork for grief. I wanted to specialize in this area because I had fi rsthand knowledge of how helpful massage could be. But, I was just a few years too early. It was 2008, and the fi rst research study on bereavement and massage therapy was still two years away. There weren't many grief-oriented massage training resources available at the time. So, I harnessed my own personal experience and opened a tiny grassroots project in my city. I spent two years speaking to raise awareness and offering free and discounted massage for local individuals. I devoted much of my free time to the endeavor, which I called "Massage Helps." In 2009, my mother's death uprooted my motivation to continue with Massage Helps. I took time off and started a regimen of weekly massages as I tried to cope. Like my fi rst loss experience, the second experience confi rmed that physically nourishing massage therapy can be a lifeline throughout the early stages of grief. My recovery was slow but the regular massage therapy seemed to help me continue moving through the process. Then, in June 2010, a study was published in the Journal of Clinical Nursing by Berit S. Cronfalk that showed that massage was helpful for the recently bereaved family members of cancer patients. 1 This was the fi rst study to ever document the benefi ts of massage for grief. It was truly remarkable to read. After that, a new nonprofi t organization opened in my city: The Respite: A Centre for Grief and Hope. They wanted to provide holistic mind-body-spirit support for loss. I quickly partnered with staff at The Respite to create a larger massage program for grieving people. By this time, I was calling the modality "grief massage" and was gaining confi dence that we were really on to something. I fi rmly believed that grief massage should be available to those who couldn't afford it. Loss can be devastatingly expensive and many grieving people suffer with fi nancial hardship in addition to their physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual pain. So, in 2012, I decided to use my new partnership with The Respite to apply for a community service grant from the Massage Therapy Foundation (MTF). Help for Survivors of Loss The MTF listened to my story, and heard my insistence that grieving bodies need massage therapy. They provided my program at The Respite with a $5,000 grant—the maximum amount awarded to MTF community service projects. Over the course of one year, we were able to provide 39 people with a series of free grief massage sessions. I was also able to train an entire team of volunteer massage therapists in grief-sensitive massage therapy. Our massage recipients were limited to those who had suffered a recent traumatic loss. We worked with suicide survivors, widows and widowers, bereaved parents, and even those who had suffered multiple traumatic losses. Then, in 2013, we applied for another community service grant, seeking to expand our focus to survivors of any type of loss. The MTF again granted us $5,000. We began providing more grief massage sessions to an expanded recipient base, and I provided another training session in grief-sensitive massage therapy to a group of licensed massage therapists. Over the course of these two community service grant programs, the volunteer massage therapists and I have seen similar results and heard consistent feedback from our grieving massage clients. The overwhelming majority agrees: massage helps. Massage therapist Jill Federal participated in both MTF-funded programs. Federal says grief massage calls to her because "loss is such a huge part of the human experience. We all experience it, whether it is tragic and sudden or what we consider the 'natural course of things.' I think, to be authentic, we need to embrace the 66 m a s s a g e & b o d y w o r k s e p t e m b e r / o c t o b e r 2 0 1 7