The virus has gone and the cough hasn’t. In Chinese medicine the Lungs guard the edge between you and the world, and after a fight they need feeding, not pushing. Warm food, soups, early nights, and time.

People rarely book acupuncture for grief. It arrives as a tight shoulder, a cough, a chest that won’t fill. Where grief sits in the body, why Chinese medicine gives it to the Lungs, and what forty quiet minutes can do.

Why people sleep badly before a storm breaks, and the two acupuncture points at the knee Steven kept returning to that day: Spring at the Bend and Yin Valley. In Chinese medicine water feeds wood. When the mind is racing, you don’t rein it in, you deepen the reserves it runs on.

Zhangmen, Chapter Gate, sits just under the lowest rib. Finishing something and closing it are two different jobs, and most of us skip the second one.

“Can you just calm me down?” Sometimes. More often the better work is to strengthen what’s underneath, so you can feel what you feel and stay upright. More keel, not flatter waves.