Tantra and the Grief Process: How to Support Loved Ones in Emotional Healing

Grief is a sacred threshold. It arrives not only after death, but after heartbreak, identity loss, betrayal, or the unraveling of old selves. In Tantra, grief is not seen as a dysfunction. It is honoured as a necessary passage into deeper presence.

Tantra teaches that emotion is energy in motion. When we suppress it, it stagnates. When we allow it, it transforms.

Grief needs time, space, and love to unravel.

The five stages of grief, shock, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, are not linear. They spiral.

Sometimes we move through all five in a single breath. Other times, we sit with one for years.

When holding loved ones in grief:

• Welcome all expressions (tears, silence, shaking, rage)

• Invite sound, movement, and breath to support release

• Use ritual (e.g., candle-lighting, offering flowers, writing letters to the deceased) to honour loss

• Sit in silence without rushing the process

Tantra reminds us: the goal is not to get them to acceptance. It’s to be with them wherever they are.

In my Mystic Tantra Massage Journey, we release grief that is stored in the tissues. We approach it slowly, gently, through consent-based touch and energy flow, allowing the body to speak and release.