Chinese Medicine in all it's wholistic glory makes a fine point in assessment of disease and it's roots that are spread from material/physical symptomology to mental/emotional states as well as spiritual origins of disease; it even touches on the newly recognized field of epigenetics and inherited patterns of disease through our genetic lineages.
Dis-ease in the body manifests from any one of the levels: physical, emotional/mental, spiritual...from a turn of the ankle during a run to an inherited predisposition to diabetes or the emotional state that can lay down the path for Diabetes Mellitus to take hold in the body.
Once the body chooses a route of expression for the dis-ease, the longer the pattern or expression remains, the more we see it spread ..eventually to all levels and aspects of the body and mind.
Over the years of my practice, I have seen this slow progression of illness time and again. In deep sadness, a client overcome with grief and loss begins to feel the heaviness in the chest, breathing begins to change, the ribcage heavy with emotion, tense with the intensity of emotion becomes restricted, further impacting the lungs; the organs associated with grief in Chinese 5 Phase theory. Unable to let go of grief reshapes the body as well, closing the front of the chest, the shoulders slumping forward to comfort the lungs in their labored function, the spine curves forward, the head nodding deeply as well causing further restriction and pain. In Chinese medicine we say grief/sadness dissolves the Qi (the energy of the body that infuses every cell and animates life, some people call it bio-electricity) and impacts the kidneys. Western medicine now recognizes the links between lung and kidney function that Chinese medicine has spoken about for millenia.
Longstanding grief alters the chemistry of the body, changing us quite literally from happy chemical factories to a state of withdrawal. Not only do we mourn, we are also deprived of the endorphins: dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and other feel-good substances. The cascade continues...low dopamine inhibits immune function, it makes us less resilient physically and makes it difficult for our body to fight off inflammation on a systemic level.
Chinese medicine recognizes that the entire system is affected when any emotion is not in balance. Every cell connected. Every cell remembers.
This is why when grief enters our world and takes up residence, no matter how the physical symptoms of grief, acknowledged or undiagnosed, are treated, they will only resolve to a certain extent or oscillate back to the original pathological pattern. This is also why early trauma and inherent grief/loss encountered with that trauma often sets the stage for so many diseases from the many faces of cancer to autoimmune disorders and respiratory conditions.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9832385/
