We’ve all felt complex emotions that our language can’t capture. This essay introduces “Somasaudade”: the embodied wisdom of bittersweet, describing contentment and sadness rooted in our relationship with our bodies. Learning about Somasaudade offers a new lens for self-acceptance, embracing the tapestry of human emotions. We have “happy” and “sad,” but what about feeling both at once, grounded in our physical selves? Let’s explore the personal journey that led to this new word.
In a recent conversation on Philosophical Health with Luis de Miranda, I was asked about my relationship with my body. During this inquiry, I noticed contentment and loss at once, and was prompted to create a word for the feeling.
“Wistful” came close, but didn’t fully capture the feeling. During that conversation, Luis de Miranda asked, ‘How does your body feel to you now, with everything it’s been through?’ His question inspired me to create a new term — Somasaudade — a word that could help guide healing.
· Soma- (Greek): Meaning “body.”
· -saudade (Portuguese): A famous word describing a deep, melancholic longing for an absent person or thing; a bittersweet sadness for something loved and lost.
Somasaudade is the sweet-sorrow felt in a body that remembers both loss and resilience. It’s the simultaneous sense of contentment and sadness related to your relationship with your body, especially in the face of aging, change, or loss.
It’s the feeling when looking at a scar — a pang of memory for pain, mixed with gratitude for resilience. Or the athlete’s quiet ache for former speed, coexisting with appreciation for current, gentle strength.
Our culture often demands we pick a side. We must either love our bodies or fix them. This binary leaves no room for the complex, bittersweet truth. Somasaudade offers a third way: a space of honest, integrated acknowledgment.
To bring this concept into daily life, let’s move from idea to action. More than a poetic notion, Somasaudade can be a practical tool for healing, offering meaningful applications not only in psychotherapy but also in nurturing our deepest philosophical well-being. Soon, you will have a chance to experience this concept for yourself through a simple exercise that bridges theory and everyday practice.
In therapy, naming a feeling can be the first step toward healing. When a client struggles to describe their relationship to their changing body, “Somasaudade” can serve as a key. For example, a client saying, “I feel both proud and broken,” allows Somasaudade to encapsulate this complex duality and guide them beyond simple “body image issues.”
It helps clients name the grief of aging, illness, or change, letting them mourn what was and appreciate what is. A client may feel sorrow for lost agility but also pride in hard-earned resilience. This duality brings balance, turning daily acts — like stretching stiffly each morning — into reminders that mindful presence sustains our well-being.
Its true power lies in enhancing our philosophical well-being. Acknowledging both loss and gratitude creates integration. Our bodies age and change, teaching us through limits. Somasaudade is the emotional texture of this reality.
Here’s how it might shape our wisdom:
1. It’s the Antidote to Clinging
Many spiritual traditions teach that our suffering comes from clinging to permanence in a world that is inherently impermanent. We want our youth and strength to be static, and we suffer when they prove to be fluid.
Somasaudade expresses impermanence: sadness notes loss; contentment releases clinging. Instead of resisting, we flow with time. Think of a change in your body that you once resisted. How does naming it enrich your understanding of Somasaudade? Naming changes turns abstract wisdom into insight.
2. It Transforms Dread into Wisdom
Existential dread is the fear of loss and death. Somasaudade is its warmer cousin: not terror at a skull, but appreciation for the mix of love and melancholy when tracing aging hands.
Somasaudade integrates the paradox: “Yes, this is ending” (sadness) and “Yes, this was good and is me” (contentment). Philosophical well-being means integrating mortality, not denying it.
3. It Writes Your Body’s Narrative
Philosophical well-being requires a coherent story of the self. Who are you? What has your life meant? Somasaudade helps you write this story using your body as the text.
Without Somasaudade, a scar might be perceived as a ‘permanent mistake’. With Somasaudade, it becomes a chapter, holding sadness for the pain yet contentment for the survival. This change turns your body from an object to a story, where wrinkles reveal laughter and stiff knees narrate the effort of climbing stairs.
4. It Makes You Whole
A core philosophical question is the “mind-body problem”: Am I a mind (a ghost) inhabiting a machine (the body)? This separation creates a sense of alienation.
Somasaudade heals the mind-body split. It’s a felt experience — where thought, emotion, and physical sensation unite. You are one being, feeling your own full history. This is wholeness: being at home in yourself.
I invite you to do an exercise with Somaaudade. As you begin this exercise, you may notice the gentle blend of longing and gratitude it evokes. Let this feeling guide your introspective journey. Set aside a journal and 15 quiet minutes.
1. The Archive (2 minutes)
Sit comfortably and take three deep breaths. Set an intention to be curious and kind. Let your mind land on one specific part of your body that holds a story — a scar, your hands, your knees, the lines around your eyes.
2. The Two Columns (10 minutes)
In your journal, create two columns for this body part.
· Column 1: The Saudade (Sadness & Loss)
· What past strength, mobility, or experience has passed?
· What is the grief or sadness held here?
· (e.g., “I miss when my knees could run without pain.”)
· Column 2: The Soma (Contentment & Gratitude)
· What has this part done for me? What has it survived or accomplished?
· What resilience or wisdom does it represent?
· (e.g., “My knees carried me through decades of work and play.”)
3. The Integration (3 minutes)
Look at your two columns, side by side. Now, journal on this final question:
“What is the single, unified story these two columns tell together?”
(e.g., “The story of my knees is not ‘failure’; it’s a story of a ‘full, active life and its natural consequences.’”)
Somasaudade is not a problem to be fixed; it’s a wisdom to be cultivated. It’s the profound, mature acceptance that our bodies are living histories, not static objects.
It’s the invitation to love your body not in spite of its changes, but because of the complete, complex, and beautiful story it tells.
If you’d like to explore Somasaudade or any other aspect of your psychological or philosophical health, I encourage you to reach out to the therapists at Psychotherapist.Coach for a free consultation.
This post was previously published on Medium.com
