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What the somatic science of grief reveals about the body's intelligence in loss, and why Lomi Lomi and Aloha philosophy offer a container for grief that most Western frameworks do not

Opening

You have likely absorbed a version of grief that treats it as a problem with stages, a process to move through on the way to something called closure or acceptance. Under this model, ongoing grief long after a loss can start to feel like a sign that something has gone wrong, that you are somehow doing it incorrectly.

Here is a more accurate, evidence informed way to understand what is actually happening in your body. Grief is not the absence of love, and it is not a malfunction requiring correction. It is love that has lost its destination, still fully present in your nervous system, still reaching for a person who is no longer there to receive it. This article gives you the evidence for why grief works this way, and why Aloha philosophy offers a container for it that many Western frameworks simply do not.

Evidence Foundation

Three perspectives, spanning bereavement psychology, neuroscience, and cross cultural research, converge on a picture of grief as ongoing love rather than a process to be completed and closed.

The first is continuing bonds theory, which directly challenged the dominant twentieth century model that treated healthy grieving as a process of detachment, cutting bonds with the deceased in order to reinvest fully in new relationships. Drawing on evidence from bereaved widows, children, and parents across multiple studies, researchers found that maintaining an ongoing bond with someone who has died is common, adaptive, and genuinely comforting, rather than a sign of unresolved or pathological grief (Klass, Silverman, & Nickman, 1996). This same body of work includes cross cultural evidence, examining ongoing ancestor relationships in Japanese culture, demonstrating that continuing bonds are not a Western clinical anomaly but a widely observed human pattern. It is worth noting honestly that this theory has drawn methodological critique for relying heavily on qualitative case material rather than large scale quantitative measurement, a limitation the original researchers themselves anticipated and addressed directly in their work.

The second body of evidence is neurological, and offers a striking, literal confirmation of the love without a destination framing. Functional brain imaging of bereaved individuals found that reminders of a deceased loved one activated the nucleus accumbens, a core region of the brain's reward circuitry, the same system involved in attachment and social bonding more broadly, and this activation correlated specifically with self reported yearning (O'Connor, Wellisch, Stanton, Eisenberger, Irwin, & Lieberman, 2008). In plain terms, the brain's attachment and reward system continues reaching toward the person who has died, in much the same way it once reached toward them in life. Grief, at a neurological level, is love still actively seeking its object.

The third perspective concerns the body's regulatory response to this ongoing, unresolved reaching. A nervous system holding genuine, unexpressed longing for connection that cannot be completed is likely to carry sustained activation, and the capacity to be genuinely witnessed in this state, rather than rushed toward resolution, supports the kind of regulated processing that unwitnessed, isolated grief does not allow (Porges, 2011).

Three perspectives, one coherent and compassionate picture, drawn from bereavement research, neuroscience, and cross cultural observation. Continuing bonds with someone who has died are a normal, adaptive, and cross culturally observed pattern rather than a failure to properly grieve, documented across widows, bereaved children, and bereaved parents in multiple independent studies (Klass et al., 1996). The brain's reward circuitry continues reaching toward a lost loved one in a literal, measurable sense, correlating specifically with the felt experience of yearning rather than simply the passage of time since the loss (O'Connor et al., 2008). And a nervous system carrying this ongoing reach benefits from genuine witnessing rather than pressure toward premature resolution, since regulation depends on safety and presence rather than speed (Porges, 2011). Grief that continues is not evidence of something wrong. It is evidence of love that has not stopped, simply because its destination has changed.

Depth Layer

Here is what this means for you directly, and it deserves to be said with genuine gentleness.

If you have carried grief for someone, expecting it to eventually resolve into something called closure, and found instead that it simply changes shape over time, remaining present in quieter ways for years, this is not evidence that you are grieving incorrectly. According to the evidence above, this is the expected, well documented pattern. The bond has not needed to be severed to be healthy. It has needed to be allowed to continue, in a different form.

This is where Western frameworks, with their emphasis on stages, closure, and moving on, have often left capable women feeling quietly at odds with their own genuine experience. You may have privately concluded that continuing to feel the presence of someone you have lost, years later, means you have not done the necessary work. The evidence above suggests the opposite. Continuing bonds are the well documented, adaptive pattern, not the exception requiring correction.

Aloha philosophy and Lomi Lomi offer something many Western frameworks do not, a container for grief that does not insist on its resolution. A tradition built around genuine presence and ongoing relationship is naturally suited to holding grief as continuing love rather than a problem requiring closure. This is not a lesser or less rigorous approach to grief. According to the evidence above, it may be considerably more accurate to what grief actually is.

There is also something worth naming directly for a capable woman accustomed to resolving problems efficiently. Grief is not a problem in the sense your considerable competence usually applies to problems. It does not respond to efficient resolution, and treating it as something to be efficiently completed is likely to leave you feeling as though your own grief is somehow poorly executed. The evidence above suggests a different relationship to it entirely, one of ongoing tending rather than completion, in the same way a genuine relationship with someone living is never finished but continually tended.

Article 19 established love as a primary organising currency across a life. This article extends that same currency into loss, recognising that love does not stop simply because its destination has changed. Article 6 addressed the depth of feeling many women have learned to describe as oversensitivity. Grief, understood through that same lens, is not excessive feeling to be managed. It is depth of feeling with nowhere yet to land.

The Living Practice: The Somatic Grief Practice

This is a gentle practice, designed to be used whenever grief arises, without any expectation of resolving or completing it in a single sitting.

Find a quiet, comfortable position. Bring to mind the person you are grieving, without trying to direct the memory toward any particular feeling. Simply notice what arises in your body, warmth, tightness, tears, stillness, without judging any of it as more or less appropriate than another.

Place a hand gently on your chest or another part of your body where you feel the grief most clearly. This is not a technique to make the feeling smaller. It is a way of staying somatically present with what is genuinely there, rather than rushing past it toward composure.

Allow yourself to speak, silently or aloud, to the person you are grieving, as continuing bonds research suggests many people naturally and helpfully do. There is no correct thing to say. The practice is the continuation of the relationship itself, not a performance of grief for anyone else's benefit.

When you feel ready, take several slow breaths, allowing your nervous system to settle at whatever pace is genuinely available to you. There is no required outcome for this practice, and no timeline by which it should feel complete. It is designed to be repeated, for as long as it remains useful to you.

This practice can be used equally for a recent loss or one from many years ago. Continuing bonds, according to the research above, remain genuinely present regardless of how much time has passed, and there is no expiry date on when this practice stops being relevant or appropriate to use.

Closing Invitation

If you are carrying grief, of any kind, at any distance from its origin, this article is not asking you to resolve it. It is offering you the evidence that what you are carrying is love, still fully real, and that continuing to hold it is not a failure to heal.

If you would like somatic support in holding grief in a genuinely regulated, attuned setting, the InfiniteYou programme offers this kind of individualised care. Explore the InfiniteYou Programme If you would simply like an unhurried, complimentary conversation first, a Clarity Session is also available. Book Your Complimentary Clarity Session

References

Klass, D., Silverman, P. R., & Nickman, S. L. (Eds.). (1996). Continuing bonds: New understandings of grief. Taylor & Francis.

O'Connor, M.-F., Wellisch, D. K., Stanton, A. L., Eisenberger, N. I., Irwin, M. R., & Lieberman, M. D. (2008). Craving love? Enduring grief activates brain's reward center. NeuroImage, 42(2), 969 to 972.

Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self regulation. W. W. Norton.