Grief abroad has a particular shape. The phone call comes at the wrong hour. You fly, or you can't. The funeral is in a language and a place that used to be yours, and then you come back to a life where nobody knew the person and the day carries on as if nothing happened. The body holds all of that — the shock, the flight, the return — and it holds it alone, because the people who'd normally hold it with you are in another time zone.

I won't tell you Reiki helps you grieve. Grief isn't a problem to be helped. What I can tell you is that grief lives in the body as much as the mind — the chest that won't fully open, the sleep that doesn't come, the exhaustion that has nothing to do with effort — and that a session works on exactly that layer, quietly, without asking you to talk about anything.

What the body does with loss

It braces. Against the next call, the next wave, the moment in the supermarket when a song comes on. Grieving people describe a tightness across the chest and throat, a stomach that's clenched for weeks, sleep that's either impossible or the only thing they want. This is the nervous system in alert, the same as after any shock — except that grief keeps re-shocking, so the alert doesn't end.

Talking helps the mind make sense of it. The body doesn't make sense of things. It needs something else.

What a session is, for grief

Forty-five minutes lying down, fully clothed, at your home or my space in Cannes. Hands resting lightly on the body — I stay longer at the chest and the throat, where grief tends to sit. No conversation, unless you want it. Nothing to process, nothing to say, no one asking how you're doing.

What people describe is the chest opening, sometimes with tears that come without a thought attached, and then a heaviness that turns into the first real rest in weeks. One thing I hear often: "I hadn't cried yet." The body sometimes waits for a place safe enough.

Why it's different from talking

There's a limit to how much a grieving person wants to say, and a limit to how much saying it does. A session asks nothing. It's an hour where the loss is held without being discussed — where you can be exactly as broken as you are, without managing anyone else's reaction to it. For people who've been holding it together for a partner, for children, for colleagues, that hour is often the first time they've stopped.

Far from home, specifically

If you flew back for the funeral and returned to the Riviera, you've done grief in two places, and the second place doesn't know. Neighbours in Antibes don't know. The school run doesn't know. A session at home, in the place that doesn't know, is a way of letting the loss exist here too — of not having to leave it in the other country.

Over time

One session is a place to stop. Four over a month — The Renewal — is what I'd suggest for the weeks after a loss, when the first shock has passed and the long part begins. Not to move you through it faster. To give the body somewhere to put it down, regularly, so it isn't carrying it every hour.

Grief that turns into something else — that doesn't lift at all after months, that stops you functioning, that brings thoughts of not wanting to be here — needs a doctor or a therapist, and I'll say so plainly if I hear it. Reiki is complementary. It sits alongside that care and never in place of it.

FAQ

Can Reiki help with grief? It works on the body's side of grief — the braced chest, the clenched stomach, the sleep that won't come — without asking you to talk. It doesn't shorten grief; it gives the body somewhere to rest inside it.

What does a Reiki session for grief feel like? Often the chest opens, sometimes with tears that arrive on their own, then deep rest. Many people say it's the first time they've stopped holding it together.

When should grief be seen by a doctor? If it doesn't lift at all after months, stops you functioning, or brings thoughts of not wanting to be here. Sessions sit alongside that care, never instead.

If you've lost someone

Message me on WhatsApp — you don't have to explain. One session, €180, or four over a month, €640, at your home. I'll come to wherever the loss is.