RVML’s Lecture Series: Grief: How I Healed and Why You Can Too by Barbara Seim

FREE ADMISSION – 1757 Ashland St., Ashland, OR. One mile west of I-5 Exit 14.

Barbara discusses how she healed an 8-year battle with prolonged/complicated grief, treatment resistant depression, PTSD, and anxiety after the sudden and accidental death of her teen son. The discussion focuses on the contrast between the commonly held societal belief that grief is immutable and psychological- something we merely learn to live with and tolerate versus another perspective- that grief is a physical body phenomenon that can be processed to move through and out of the body by way of a variety of body-centered and heart-centered somatic practices.

Barbara Seim is a bereaved mother who suffered for 8 long years after her teen son tragically and suddenly died in a cliff-side fall while climbing at Hellgate Canyon along the Rogue River.

Barbara worked in the mental health system for 10 years. She has always been curious and loves to learn, grow and teach. So she naturally sought out help with her grief and was met with disappointing so-called “support” groups that merely affirmed that grief would never leave and the only hope was that one day she’d learn to just settle into and tolerate the pain alongside all the other bereaved people.

How can a universally common experience we’ll all face someday leave us with no choice but to stay trapped in suffering? This made no sense.

In desperation, Barbara opted to say yes to any method, any teacher, any medicine, any practice, and any suggestion. Then, one day, after running a series of somatic experiments on herself, she realized that the grief was gone, and so far it has stayed gone for 5 years.

During the last five years, Barbara continued investigating and experimenting with other somatic (body-centered) practices and discovered there are many (yes, MANY) ways to move the pain of grief out of the body.

She discovered that this phenomenon has been written about in many different ways throughout the ages. Her mission now is to talk about healing grief, to encourage change around the language of seeing grief as terminal, and to inspire others to journey on their path toward healing grief, not just tolerating it.

The magic is available to everyone. We all have the built-in tools to heal grief-bodies. Our bodies are our tools. We just need to learn how to use the tools.

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