Chinese Medicine

I was reading about what Chinese medicine says about grief. People who practice Chinese medicine believe that grief and sadness reside in the lungs. When your body is thrown into a state of grief the lungs are the part of the body most affected medically. It makes sense because when faced with trauma your fight or flight response is triggered which causes you to take faster shallower breaths. This is why people in grief report being exhausted most of the time. They are "ex hausted" meaning they have breathed out all their air. It is also common for people to have panic attacks where they feel that the are unable to breath. We have to find ways to get back the balance in our lives. It sounds easy but it is not because it requires us to make room for these painful feelings we are feeling from the loss of our child. Deep breathing exercises, going for a walk, doing something that allows us to begin to take in air into our lungs to calm down our sympathetic nervous system which is on over drive do to the perceived fear of not being able to go on living without your child. As you sit with and begin to make room for this seemingly unbearable psychological pain, it will begin to lessen in intensity and frequency, but it takes time. In the meantime, we have to remember to consciously breath deeply.