Ask someone where they feel grief and they will almost always touch their chest. Grief tightens the throat, makes the breath catch, and pulls the shoulders forward over the lungs. We sigh without meaning to. Chinese medicine noticed this long ago and filed grief under the Lung, the organ of autumn. The question I want to answer here is whether that was poetry or observation.
In Part 1 we looked at eating for autumn, and in Part 2 at the dryness the season brings. This last part is about the emotion the tradition ties to this season. I will give you what the classics actually say, separate it from some popular modern additions, and then look at what research on bereavement has found. The overlap is closer than I expected.
A note before we begin. If you are grieving right now, this article is not asking you to fix anything or move on faster. Some of what follows may be useful. Some of it you may want to come back to later.
What the Classics Actually Say
Three lines from the Huangdi Neijing carry most of the weight.
忧伤肺 (Su Wen chapter 5): worry and sorrow injure the Lung. The same chapter gives the Lung’s emotion as 忧 (yōu), which covers worry, sorrow and melancholy. English sources usually translate the Lung’s emotion as “grief.” That is close enough, though as I noted in the Lung article, the classical word is broader.
悲则气消 (Su Wen chapter 39): grief dissolves qi. The chapter explains the mechanism in its own terms:
悲则心系急，肺布叶举，而上焦不通，荣卫不散，热气在中，故气消矣。
With grief, the heart’s connections become tense, the lungs spread and lift, the upper burner is blocked, nourishment and defence cannot circulate, heat gathers in the middle, and so qi is dissolved.
Read that with modern eyes and it is a fair description of what grief does in the chest: tension, a lifted, held breath, a feeling of blockage. And note the word 卫, the defensive qi that protects the body’s surface. The classic is saying grief weakens protection.
肺藏魄 (Su Wen chapter 23): the Lung houses the 魄 (pò). Ling Shu chapter 8 defines it: 并精而出入者谓之魄, “that which comes and goes together with the essence is called the po.” The same chapter says 肺藏气，气舍魄: the Lung stores qi, and the po resides in that qi.
The 魄 is usually translated as the “corporeal soul.” It is the part of us tied to the physical body: instinct, sensation, the body’s own sense of being alive. It arrives with the body and departs with it. Because it lives in the qi of the Lung, it is closely tied to breath. This is the classical basis for the idea that grief is felt in the body and in the breathing, not only in the mind.
An Important Principle: Emotion Is Not the Problem
This point is easy to lose, so I want to put it plainly. In Chinese medicine, emotions are normal. Grief after a loss is not a disorder. It is what a person who loved something is supposed to feel.
The tradition treats an emotion as a cause of illness (内伤七情) only when it is excessive or prolonged, when it goes on long enough, or hard enough, to start wearing down the body. The goal was never to stop feeling grief. It was to let it move, so that it does not settle in and slowly deplete the Lung qi.
A Note on “Metal Personalities”
If you read about Chinese medicine in English, you will find detailed descriptions of the “Metal type”: a person drawn to structure and refinement, prone to perfectionism, preoccupied with worth and value, who either holds on too tightly or cuts things off too quickly. I find some of this language genuinely useful for reflection. The idea that autumn asks us to notice what we are holding on to, and what we have let go of too easily, is a good autumn question for anyone.
But I want to be honest about where it comes from. This detailed personality typing is largely a 20th-century development, mostly from the Western school of Five Element acupuncture founded by J.R. Worsley and developed by later writers. It draws on classical ideas, but you will not find it in this form in the Neijing. It is a modern interpretive framework, not ancient diagnosis. I would use it as a mirror for yourself, not as a label for other people.
What Modern Research Says Grief Does to the Body
Here is where the old idea meets the data. Bereavement research has found measurable effects on the heart, on inflammation and on infection.
The heart. A 2014 study in JAMA Internal Medicine followed 30,447 older adults in the UK whose partner had died, compared with over 83,000 matched people who had not been bereaved. In the first 30 days after the loss, the bereaved had more than twice the rate of heart attack or stroke. The absolute numbers were small (0.16% versus 0.08%), the risk eased by three months, and it returned to baseline after that. “Broken heart” turns out to be a real, if short-lived, medical phenomenon.
Inflammation. A 2019 study in Psychoneuroendocrinology measured inflammation in 99 people whose spouses had recently died. Those in the top third for grief symptoms had about 53% higher levels of inflammation than those in the bottom third, and this held even after accounting for depressive symptoms. Grief itself, not only depression, appeared to be the driver.
Infection and the lungs. A Swedish registry study of nearly 43,000 bereaved older adults, posted as a preprint in 2020, found a 14% higher risk of pneumonia in the year after losing a spouse, highest soon after the loss. That is a modest increase, the study was not yet peer reviewed when posted, and older adults under strain often sleep and eat poorly and may skip medical care, all of which could contribute. I would not build a theory on it alone. But it is at least consistent with the classical idea that grief weakens the Lung’s defence.
So I would put it this way. The classics said grief dissolves qi and weakens the body’s protective layer. Modern research finds that grief is followed, for a while, by higher inflammation, a spike in cardiovascular events and possibly more pneumonia. The explanations are completely different. The observation, that grief is a physical event and not only an emotional one, is shared.
When Grief Does Not Move
The tradition’s concern with grief that goes on too long now has a modern counterpart.
In 2022, the American Psychiatric Association added prolonged grief disorder to the DSM-5-TR. It describes grief that, at least a year after a loss for adults, still involves intense longing or preoccupation with the person most days, along with symptoms such as emotional numbness, feeling that part of oneself has died, or great difficulty re-engaging with life, to the point where it disrupts daily functioning. A 2017 meta-analysis estimated that roughly 1 in 10 bereaved adults develop this kind of prolonged grief after a non-violent loss.
Two things are worth saying about that. First, most people, about nine in ten, move through grief without it becoming a disorder. Grief is hard, and people are also remarkably resilient. Second, prolonged grief responds to specific treatments, so if this describes you, it is worth talking to a doctor or a grief counsellor rather than waiting for it to lift on its own.
One more modern shift I find helpful: grief research has moved away from the idea that healthy mourning means “letting go” of the person. Researchers now describe continuing bonds, the ongoing inner relationship people keep with those they have lost, as normal and often healthy. That fits the Chinese approach better than the popular Western phrase does. What the tradition asks us to release is not the person. It is the grip of grief that stops the breath and the body from moving.
The Breath Is Where This Tradition Starts
If the Lung houses the 魄 and grief catches the breath, then the most direct traditional practice is also the simplest: breathe.
There is now good evidence that a very short daily breathing practice can shift mood. In a 2023 randomised trial from Stanford published in Cell Reports Medicine, 111 healthy adults practised one of three breathing techniques or mindfulness meditation for five minutes a day for a month. The technique called cyclic sighing produced the greatest improvement in positive mood and also lowered resting breathing rate.
Here is how to do it:
- Breathe in through your nose until your lungs feel comfortably full.
- Take a second, shorter sip of air through the nose to fill them a little more.
- Breathe out slowly through your mouth, all the way, until the air is gone.
- Repeat for about five minutes.
This is the body’s own sigh, slowed down and done on purpose. I find it quietly moving that the most effective technique in a modern trial is the same shape as the involuntary sigh of grief itself: a long, full release.
The trial was in healthy adults, not bereaved ones, and it measured mood, not grief. But as a daily practice for an autumn that feels heavy, I cannot think of a gentler place to start.
Autumn Practices for a Heavy Heart
The Neijing’s instruction for autumn in Su Wen chapter 2 includes 使志安宁, keep the mind calm and settled, and 收敛神气, gather the spirit in. For someone who is grieving, I read that as permission to be quieter, not as an instruction to be fine.
A few practices that fit both the tradition and the evidence:
- Keep a rhythm. Go to bed and get up at roughly the same time every day. The tradition says the Lung likes regularity, and consistent sleep is one of the most reliable supports for mood.
- Breathe, on purpose, once a day. Five minutes of cyclic sighing. Morning or evening, whichever you will actually do.
- Go outside. Autumn is a season of visible endings: leaves falling, gardens dying back. Many people find it easier to feel grief among things that are also letting go. Daylight also helps sleep and mood.
- Eat, even when you are not hungry. Grief often takes the appetite away. This is when warm, soft, easy food matters most. A bowl of congee with ginger, a simple soup, a baked pear. These are the foods Chinese families bring to people in mourning, and for good reason.
- Stay connected. Isolation makes grief heavier. Let people help.
- When a painful thought loops, notice it and let it pass, like a wave that rises and breaks, rather than following it. You may need to do this many times. That is normal. It is a skill, and it gets easier.
- Know when to ask for more help. If grief a year on still dominates most days, or if everyday life has become very hard to manage, speak to your doctor or a grief counsellor.
If grief comes with thoughts of not wanting to be alive, please reach out now. In the US you can call or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Elsewhere, contact your local emergency number or a crisis line in your country.
Where Karviva Fits In
I want to be careful here. No drink resolves grief, and I would never suggest otherwise.
What I can say is practical. When appetite disappears, people often go most of a day on almost nothing, and that makes everything harder: sleep, mood, energy, the ability to cope. In those weeks, a simple, nourishing whole-plant blend that you can drink when a meal feels impossible is better than skipping food altogether. Because we blend rather than juice, the fibre stays in, and the low sugar means it will not leave you on a spike and crash.
Please think of it as a small support for the days you cannot face cooking, not a substitute for meals when you can, and certainly not a substitute for people, rest or professional help. As I said earlier in this series, in autumn let it warm to room temperature and have it with something warm when you can.
These are foods and beverages, not medicines. They do not treat grief, depression or any other condition.
This closes the Autumn Series. If you want to go deeper on the organ system behind all three articles, read the Lung article in the Five Systems Series, which covers the skin, the breath and the small hours of the morning.
