Moving Through Loss
Moving Through Loss invites the intense energy of loss to take expressive form through gesture, shape and voice.
Using techniques from Somatic Experiencing ™, dance, theater, improvisation and ritual, this work re-invigorates what we have instinctively understood for a long time; namely that physical expression within community offers health and healing outcomes no pill or talk therapy alone can provide.
At-A-Glance
Moving Through Loss is designed to be adapted across settings—from grief and support groups to healthcare and community organizations. If you’re considering bringing this work to your people, it can be tailored to meet your needs.
Who it’s for
Those navigating loss in its many forms—grief, divorce, illness, and life transitions.
Format
Offered as a ½-day workshop, 1–3 day experience, or a customized series designed for your group.
What it's like
A guided, creative process that unfolds through movement, drawing, writing, and shared experience. Participants engage in their own way—moving, reflecting, or simply observing.
How it works
Loss and stress are not only thought—they are held in the body. This work draws from Somatic Experiencing®, engaging the nervous system through movement and creative expression to support processing, awareness, and a return to balance.
Who Experiences Grief
& Loss?
Loss doesn’t arrive in just one form.
It lives in endings both visible and invisible—death, illness, divorce, identity shifts, and the many transitions life brings. What we carry often lingers beneath the surface, shaping how we feel, relate, and move through the world.
As understanding of grief continues to evolve, including the recognition of Prolonged Grief Disorder in the DSM-5 in 2022, there is growing awareness that loss is not only emotional but deeply held in the body.
How Moving Through Loss Got Started
by Dr. Susan Bendix
I was abruptly widowed and left with a very young child. Everything felt surreal. I was being called daily by the mortuary asking what was to be done with the body. Friends were asking what they could do to help. I had no idea how to deal with any of it. I was totally broke. Family was far away. The nature of the death was controversial bringing an added layer of drama. I was in shock.
"I remember sitting in a grief support circle in a generic room with yards of fluorescent lights overhead. I was not at all comfortable. I didn’t speak." - Dr. Susan Bendix
But when I went to pick up my daughter in the children’s grief group, they were moving around, drawing, writing, gluing this and that. I remember feeling so much better in that room with wounded grieving children than in my own group of wounded grieving adults.
This was basically the springboard for Moving Through Loss. I’ve had a professional career as a dancer, choreographer and improvisational artist. The world of creative expression has profound power as a way to explore difficult feelings. Grief groups and talking can be tremendously valuable. But as a movement artist, processing grief from an embodied expressive perspective made much more sense. Movement is my language.
I developed my program over several years. It incorporates dance, theater, improvisation and ritual. Though Moving Through Loss is innovative and progressive, it is not new. The therapeutic nature of movement, voice and ritual have been instinctively understood for a very long time. Physical expression within community offers health and healing outcomes no pill or talk therapy alone can provide.
While developing Moving Through Loss, I became a certified Somatic Experience ™ Practitioner – which is a psycho-therapeutic approach to trauma as it is experienced in the body. This knowledge greatly enhanced my work.
I’ve presented this workshop to adolescents and adults. People are hungry for this expressive approach to this very universal experience of loss. There is so much loss right now – a seemingly endless supply. Moving Through Loss is powerful in helping people through the difficult journey of loss. It offers healing within a supportive community.
For dance artists and choreographers, it offers a new way to generate choreographic material. For theater artists it offers a way to develop embodied monologues and scenes. For non-dance and non-theater people, it offers an exploration into creative expression and way to be more fully human!