Grief in a Burning World: A Somatic Call to Compassion, Resistance, and Care

In a world shaped by profound and ongoing loss—of life, of land, of safety, of futures that no longer feel possible—grief is not just an individual experience. It is collective. It is embodied. It is political.

Whether it’s the aching sorrow of losing someone we love, the invisible tears we cry for our burning planet, or the numbness that follows witnessing war, genocide, displacement, or systemic injustice, grief lives in our bodies. It sits in our lungs. It tightens in our chests. It pulls our gaze to the floor. It even settles deep into muscles we don’t often notice—like the psoas, our core muscle that holds so much of our tension and survival response.

And often, it isolates us—especially when dominant systems teach us to “push through,” “stay productive,” or “move on.” In capitalist, colonial cultures, grief is often treated as a personal flaw to overcome rather than a sacred emotional process that connects us to our humanity and each other.

But grief is not a problem. Grief is a teacher. It shows us what we care about. It points to our capacity for love, tenderness, and fierce connection.

Grief is Somatic

Grief is not just in our minds or hearts. It is in our nervous systems. It is breathless, contracted, collapsed.

From a somatic perspective—one that understands the body and mind as inseparable—grief is both an emotional and physiological state. The body responds to loss just as it would to threat or danger: with survival responses like fight, flight, freeze, or collapse. We might feel anxious and restless, or exhausted and shut down. We might go numb or cry uncontrollably. All of it is normal. All of it makes sense.

Chinese medicine teaches us that grief resides in the lungs. When we grieve, we often feel tightness or emptiness in our chests. We sigh. We struggle to take full breaths. We might experience asthma, shallow breathing, or chest pain. According to this tradition, the lungs are also connected to letting go—of breath, of expectations, of life itself.

But grief also shows up in muscles and tissue, especially the psoas muscle—a deep core muscle that holds our fight, flight, and freeze responses. When grief gets stuck, the psoas can tighten, causing physical pain or emotional heaviness.

We Are Grieving While the World Burns

Our grief doesn’t exist in a vacuum. We are living through mass extinction, genocide, racial violence, forced migration, settler colonialism, and climate collapse. The brutality of our times is not incidental—it is systemic.

For many of us—especially those who are racialized, disabled, queer, trans, Indigenous, poor, undocumented, or displaced—grief is not episodic. It is ongoing. It is cumulative. It is ancestral.

In this context, grieving becomes an act of resistance.

To feel—to truly feel—when the world tells us to harden, numb, or dissociate, is a radical act. To slow down in the face of relentless pressure to perform is a refusal. To care for ourselves and each other amidst violence is revolutionary.

As Audre Lorde wrote, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

Somatic Practices to Support Grief

The body needs places to land grief. Below are some gentle, body-based practices to support grief as it moves through you:

Breath and Lung-Opening

Grief restricts our breath. Try this:

• Place one hand on your heart, one on your belly. Breathe in for 4 counts, pause for 2, exhale for 6 counts. Let your exhales lengthen.

• Use sound: Sigh. Moan. Hum. Let sound vibrate through your chest and throat. These small sounds regulate the vagus nerve and help release stuck energy.

Hold and Soothe the Lungs

• Place your palms flat on your upper chest just beneath your collarbones.

• Hold gently. Close your eyes. Breathe into the space under your hands.

• Say to yourself: “It’s okay to feel. I am allowed to grieve.”

Grief Ball Practice

• Imagine your grief as a ball of energy inside your chest.

• What does it look like? Feel like? How big is it?

• Gently place your hands around it—imagining you are holding it with tenderness.

• You do not have to fix or release it. Just witness it.

Vagus Nerve Rocking

• Lie down or sit with support.

• Gently rock your body from side to side, like you’re soothing yourself.

• Let your breath deepen as you do this. Allow sound if it arises. The rhythmic motion supports regulation and calms the nervous system.

Butterfly Taps for Lymphatic Movement

• Using the pads of your fingers or the backs of your hands, gently tap along your chest, underarms, and sides of the torso in a butterfly-like fluttering motion.

• This stimulates lymph flow, which can support emotional release and help clear physical stagnation linked to grief.

Psoas Release & Legs-Up-The-Wall

• The psoas muscle holds deep tension and grief. You can support its release by:

  • Lying on your back near a wall, placing your legs up the wall at a 90-degree angle.

  • Relax your legs, allowing the hips and lower back to soften.

  • Breathe deeply into your abdomen and chest, inviting the psoas to relax and release tension held in your core.

• This restorative posture supports nervous system regulation and invites the body to let go.

Shaking and Moving While Sad

• When you feel safe, invite gentle shaking or moving of the body—like a subtle dance or tremor—to discharge stuck energy.

• This natural release helps process overwhelming emotions and brings you back into your body.

Emotional Release Point on the Ankle

• In TCM, there is an emotional release point near the outer ankle, called Gallbladder 40 (Qiu Xu).

• Lightly massage or press just in front of the outer ankle bone.

• This can help ease emotional stagnation and support the flow of Qi (energy) related to releasing grief.

Acupressure Points for Grief + Lung Support

Acupressure Points for Grief + Lung Support

These Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) points can be gently stimulated through touch or massage to support grief processing and emotional release:

Lung 1 (Zhong Fu – “Central Treasury”)

• Location: On the upper chest, just below the collarbone, near the shoulder.

• Function: Opens the lungs, relieves sadness, and supports immune function.

• Use: Light circular pressure with deep, slow breaths.

Lung 7 (Lie Que – “Broken Sequence”)

• Location: On the thumb side of the wrist, 1.5 inches from the wrist crease.

• Function: Releases grief and clears emotional stagnation.

• Use: Press gently with your opposite thumb and breathe into the feeling.

Kidney 27 (Shu Mansion)

• Location: Just below the collarbones, next to the sternum.

• Function: Calms anxiety and supports breath and chest opening.

• Use: Press both points gently while breathing deeply.

Spleen 6 (San Yin Jiao – “Three Yin Intersection”)

• Location: About 3 finger-widths above the inner ankle bone, just behind the shin bone.

• Function: Powerfully regulates emotions, calms the mind, grounds the body, and moves stuck energy related to grief.

• Use: Gently press or massage while breathing slowly. Avoid in pregnancy unless under supervision.

Touching these points with care and presence can help move grief through your system—not to get rid of it, but to be with it in a way that supports healing.

A Final Word: Grieving Together, Living Forward

We are living through unbearable times.

The world is burning—through war, genocide, climate collapse, displacement, and systemic violence. We are witnessing injustice and devastation on a mass scale. And many of us are also carrying intimate, personal grief: the loss of a beloved, the slow fade of a parent’s memory, the empty chair at the table, the sudden goodbye that left no time for last words.

Grief—whether global or personal—lives in the body. It tightens our chests. It pulls us into stillness.It whispers to us at night or roars without warning.

You may be grieving someone you love deeply. You may still be in shock. You may be navigating anniversaries, firsts, or complicated family dynamics in the wake of loss. There may be a part of you that cannot yet believe they are gone. There may be memories trapped in your body, surfacing when you least expect them. This grief is sacred. It doesn’t need to be justified or compared. It simply needs a place to land.

And for many, personal loss is layered atop collective sorrow—the grief of losing a loved one in a world that feels increasingly unstable, unjust, and unsafe. It can feel disorienting, like there is no space to fully mourn when everything else is also collapsing. But both are real. Both matter.

Grief is not a problem to solve—It is your nervous system trying to make sense of absence.It is your soul remembering what mattered.

Some of us—especially those who are deeply sensitive, trauma-informed, racialized, queer, disabled, or spiritually attuned—may feel all of this more acutely. If that’s you, please know: your sensitivity is not weakness—it is wisdom. In a world so often numb to suffering, your grief is proof that your heart is still awake.

There is no one way to grieve. There is no timeline. You may sob. You may go quiet. You may feel rage. You may collapse into stillness. You may ache in your bones or forget how to move. You may need solitude, or the presence of others. You may change, again and again. It is all allowed.

In a world that asks us to harden, we soften. In a world that demands silence, we speak the unspeakable. In a world that devalues care, we turn toward it—fiercely and unapologetically. In a world that leaves little room for grief, we make space, together.

Let your grief guide you—not to despair, but to truth. To presence. To love.

May our grieving bodies become sites of resistance, remembrance, and rewilding. May we breathe, shake, wail, rest, and be held. May we not grieve alone. And may we never forget: To feel is to remain human. To love—even through loss—is a radical act.

Let us breathe, feel, move, and care—not just to survive, but to stay awake to each other.To build the kind of world where grief has a place, and where love is allowed to lead.