Decades ago, Dr. John Sarno, a rehabilitation physician at NYU, challenged traditional views of chronic pain. Some of his patients came in with excruciating back pain yet had perfectly normal scans. Others had dramatic findings—herniated discs, arthritis, narrowing—and felt no pain at all. Over years of observation, he began to see a pattern: unexpressed emotions often speak through the body.
If you’d like to see how this phenomenon has appeared in my own acupuncture practice, I’ve shared a few cases in today’s Substack. They illuminate how the body can hold fear, anger, or grief long before the mind can name them.
Sarno later expanded his work to include a wider range of chronic conditions—neck and shoulder pain, headaches, gastrointestinal distress, fibromyalgia—patterns he believed could surface when emotional conflict remains unacknowledged.
In Chinese medicine, we learn a similar concept through a different lens. What Western psychiatry calls repression, we call stagnation—qi that cannot move freely becomes pain, fatigue, digestive distress, or a heaviness of spirit.
I saw this long before I studied healing. My mother’s depression rarely looked like sadness. Instead, it took the form of endless physical complaints—a body weighted down by emotions she could not voice. Understanding her was, in a way, my first anatomy lesson.
It is very important to note that not all disease stems from emotional suppression—far from it. The mind–body connection is one lens among many, and persistent symptoms should always be medically evaluated.
Still, most of us have experienced moments when the body speaks before the heart and mind can. Those moments are worth listening to.
