How Can Holistic Healing Help You Cope With Grief? An Interview With Carol Harada

Carol Harada

Carol Harada is the founder of The Fluent Body, a holistic healing approach that communicates with the body’s inner wisdom through the language of physical sensations, emotions, movement, and metaphor. Carol has a background in arts and healing, hypnotherapy, meditation and holistic practices that informs her innovative approach to helping patients through the grieving process. 

Katie: Let’s start with an introduction of your background. What kind of personal experiences led you to your “Fluent Body” approach?

Carol: My family was a springboard for me pursuing holistic healing. I grew up among western medical people – my mom was a med tech, my dad was a pathologist, and my aunts were all nurses. Ultimately, though, I didn’t see a lot of health in their lives. I was a sensitive child and didn’t know how to process my emotions. I would feel discomfort physically because of my emotions, and I knew this because my dad would find no organic cause when he examined me. I knew there was something missing there. To everyone’s surprise, at nine years old, I announced I wasn’t going to medical school. I knew at a very young age I wanted to do something that involved the whole person.

I discovered holistic healing , an approach that includes the mental, spiritual, emotional, and physical and assumes we are whole underneath whatever imbalances we may be experiencing. I pursued shamanic practices, Native American healing ceremonies, Western herbs and flower essences. I did hypnotherapy and expressive arts with clients and managed an acupuncture clinic.  Over time I wanted to ground my work more in the body’s wisdom.

Katie: Can you tell us about the techniques you use at The Fluent Body? 

Carol: Sure. So there are five basic approaches: emotional freedom technique, biodynamic craniosacral therapy, reiki, inner relationship focusing and somatic awareness.

• Emotional freedom technique (EFT): Energy medicine practice that uses tapping on bony points along the acupuncture meridians, or energy lines, on the body. This tapping communicates with the energy system to recognize and release stuck emotions, thoughts and beliefs that are causing pain.
• Biodynamic craniosacral therapy: The client is fully clothed on a massage table, and I use gentle handholds to listen to the body’s underlying health. I find where the vitality is circulating freely and where it’s not moving well. I help the body resume its natural movement and reorganize according to its own treatment plan, which naturally unwinds stress and trauma.

Reiki hands

• Reiki: When someone is grieving, they may be exhausted and overwrought. I funnel Universal Energy, chi, liquid light, or whatever you like to call it through my hands to their body so they can feel rejuvenated and whole again. It’s the client’s inner wisdom that takes the energy wherever it needs to go to clear blockages and bring more vitality.

• Inner Relationship Focusing: In this engaged meditation I teach the client to take the seat of Presence and be his most compassionate, loving self. Doing that means stepping out of our normal mode, being attached to really strong emotion or belief or attitude. In Presence, you are able to witness that something in you that holds that strong emotion or belief or attitude. You are able to learn what it wants and doesn’t want. By meeting it where it is with acceptance, you can resolve inner conflicts that arise in grief and other situations.

• Somatic awareness: This is paying attention to body language. I worked with a client who was feeling really trapped in a relationship. As she was explaining this, she was chopping with her hands, saying she felt boxed in. Curious about that gesture, I suggested she repeat it while opening her hands a little wider. At a certain point, she paused and said that felt like the right amount of space for her. She took action to claim her space, prioritize her needs, got more self-sufficient and left the relationship. Somatic awareness works with your body movements and gestures to bring to consciousness underlying problems. I carefully observe how the body is already moving and how it wants to move for the person’s greater well-being.

Katie: So it sounds like these approaches are really directed by the clients.

Carol: Yes, definitely. Collaborating with the clients and their inner wisdom is so important. As a practitioner, I need to listen and observe really well to see where to go next with the healing.

Katie: Do you employ all of these approaches for each person you work with or use just one at a time?

Carol: A little of both. I do a free 20-minute intro call and talk about what’s going on, what their intention is, and see if I’m the right person to work with them. I’ll get a sense of where to start. In a session, I might use more than one, but it really depends on what happens during the process. It’s very intuitive about where to start and which modality is useful. It’s a very live process, so I listen.

Grief & healing

Katie: How do these techniques apply to the grieving process?

 Carol: Grief is such a unique individual process. Each technique accesses the body’s knowing of what next layer of grief can be resolved. In teaching Yoga and EFT for Grief with Ken Breniman, our group made these discoveries. One person realized that the emotions he was carrying around wasn’t even his. After a death in a family, he took on the unprocessed emotions from the rest of the family. Another person didn’t want to let go of physical symptoms because then she’d have to confront the emotions behind the pain. And another person felt that moving on with life and letting go of grief meant being disloyal to the loved one who passed. In Chinese Medicine, lung problems are associated with grief. So yoga and mindful breathing touch the stuck emotions and the EFT helps move and transform that pain.

Katie: Before I go, is there anything you’d like to add that you feel our readers should know?

Carol: I want people to know that I am here to partner with the client’s body wisdom. I want to help them use that to have a deeper connection with themselves and live more contentedly. Also, I will be offering a 25% discount for new clients that visit my SevenPonds listing.

Katie: Thanks, Carol!

Carol: Thank you.

For more information about the Fluent Body approach, please visit Carol’s website:www.thefluentbody.com

Read our past interviews on Reiki and its healing energy here and here.