THE BODY THAT BRACES: INFLAMMATION AS A MESSENGER, NOT AS MALFUNCTION

Sometimes the signal isn’t pain—it’s pressure. And the body breaks surface to be heard.

This evening, I placed my hands on a patient’s back and felt something I’ve been noticing more and more lately:

Bracing. A quiet, constant tension - like her body was waiting for something to go wrong.

She hadn’t said it out loud, but her tissues did.

And as I kept working, I found myself saying the words I’ve said many times before:“Your body will take it when you don’t deal with it—until it can’t take any more.”

In Chinese medicine, we don’t treat symptoms as isolated problems. We treat the body as a storyteller. A messenger. A mirror.

And one of the loudest messengers I’ve seen lately is inflammation.

Not just from food. Not just from stress..but from emotions that didn’t get to move.

Anger that had to stay polite.

Grief that never found a witness.

Fear that got tucked away for survival.

When we ignore those emotions, the body doesn't forget. It finds another way to speak.

Through heat.

Through pain.

Through chronic inflammation that doesn’t respond to surface-level treatment.

But here’s the good news: when we listen - really listen - healing doesn’t just become possible. It becomes inevitable.

Whether I’m using needles, coaching, or simply holding space, my work is about helping you translate what your body’s been trying to say all along.

If any of this resonates, consider this: your body is expressing. It’s speaking in the language it had to resort to when no other form was safe. The message isn’t destruction. It’s release.

Let’s listen together.

UNCOVER WHAT YOUR BODY HAS BEEN HOLDING ONTO