The Hidden Origins of Pain: A Case Study on Unexplained Chronic Pain and the Neuro-Fascial Connection

For Acupuncturists and Integrative Practitioners  Website & Blog Article

In clinical practice, we often encounter patients whose pain defies conventional logic. There is no injury, no inflammation, no structural explanation yet the body is locked in pain. As acupuncturists and holistic clinicians, our responsibility is to look beyond what’s visible, to what is unresolved.

This case study demonstrates how unprocessed trauma, vagus nerve dysregulation, and neuro-fascial imprinting can generate chronic pain and how gentle, brain  and body centered acupuncture approaches can help restore balance.

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The Case: Pain With No Medical Cause

Imagine a woman, 33 years old, walking into your clinic. She’s hunched forward, pale, tearful, exhausted. She can barely raise her head.

Her voice is weak, her spirit depleted. She shares that her life has been spiraling into pain, confusion, and hopelessness.

One year earlier, she was admitted to the hospital with severe lower back pain and a pounding headache. Doctors suspected meningitis and performed a lumbar puncture. The test came back clear no inflammation, no infection. But from that moment, her body went into chaos.

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She developed severe dizziness, nausea, and widespread radiating pain from her neck and shoulders down to her lower back and legs. Her arms became weak. She was hospitalized repeatedly, yet every examination MRIs, blood work, neurological tests showed nothing abnormal. She was told the pain was “emotional” and discharged with strong painkillers.

She tells you she’s been in pain ever since.

She can’t help care for her four-year-old son. She can’t clean the house. She’s afraid to leave home, especially as her pain worsens in the afternoons. In her words: "I feel like I’m a burden on my family."

She tried physiotherapy, chiropractic, herbal remedies, and acupuncture each one made her feel worse.

Now she’s here, seeking relief through scalp acupuncture.

You take her pulse: there is no Spleen sheath, no Kidney Yang. From a TCM perspective, she shows Blood deficiency, Kidney Yang collapse, Spleen Qi deficiency, and a deeply disturbed Shen.

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Initial Treatment: Building Safety in the System

You explain that her nervous system is overactivated and that scalp acupuncture might be too stimulating at this point. Instead, you begin with two gentle treatments focused on calming her system and activating the parasympathetic nervous system a necessary step before addressing the deeper neurological and emotional patterns.

After these sessions, she starts to feel slightly calmer. During the third visit, you notice a mobility issue in her elbow.

When you ask, she says it’s from a car accident 15 years ago. “It’s not a big deal,” she says. But something tells you it is.

You ask gently.

She opens up. The accident was fatal. She was clinically dead and resuscitated at the scene. Four days later, while recovering, she suffered a pulmonary embolism and had to be resuscitated again. These were life-altering, traumatic experiences that she had buried, and her nervous system had never truly processed them.

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My Clinical Insight: Trauma Was Reactivated

In my opinion, what happened during the lumbar puncture was more than a physical trigger it reactivated the trauma held in her nervous system since the car accident. The procedure woke up deeply stored body memories of the life-threatening experiences.

Her dizziness, nausea, hypersensitivity, and pain were signs of a reactivated threat response, both emotional and neurological.

Her system entered a loop: the brain and fascia remembered the trauma, and the nervous system attempted to protect her again this time without any visible threat. Chronic pain became the body’s way of staying alert.

Once we acknowledged the trauma and began working with the autonomic nervous system, the healing process began.

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YNSA, the Vagus Nerve, and the Liver Channel: A Neuro-Emotional Gateway

In the third session, we started incorporating Yamamoto New Scalp Acupuncture (YNSA) with neck diagnosis. We palpated the sternocleidomastoid (SCM) muscle, which directly relates to cranial nerves X (vagus) and XI (accessory) a region central to vagus nerve access and regulation.

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Yamamoto connected the vagus nerve with the Liver channel, proposing that regulation of the autonomic nervous system, especially the endo-parasympathetic branch, is achieved by balancing the vagus nerve via the YNSA Liver point. In essence, we were applying the foundations of polyvagal theory: trauma often causes vagal dysregulation, and restoring vagal tone supports emotional and physical recovery.

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By stimulating this point and applying targeted YNSA technique, we were activating the ventral vagal pathway, calming the system and enabling the patient to feel safety and emotional coherence often for the first time in years.

From this moment on, her symptoms began to shift.

We were no longer just treating physical pain we were acknowledging her trauma, helping her nervous system reorganize and feel safe. And her body responded.

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Session Nine: Where We Are Now

We are now at treatment number nine. The transformation is evident. While there is still some pain, it is no longer dominant. She is experiencing periods sometimes full days without pain.

More importantly, she feels like she is getting herself back.

She now continues treatments not for emergency relief, but to stay balanced and emotionally grounded. The work has shifted from survival to restoration.

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Clinical Lessons for Practitioners

This case illustrates the importance of:

Listening for hidden trauma, even when it’s not verbally expressed

Avoiding overstimulation in patients with hyperactive nervous systems

Using YNSA neck diagnosis to regulate the vagus nerve

Applying polyvagal principles within acupuncture frameworks

Understanding that pain may reflect a neurological memory, not tissue damage

Through the lens of both TCM theory and modern neurobiology, we treated this patient not just as a set of symptoms, but as a whole person. When we acknowledge the trauma, support the nervous system, and approach the body with safety, the results can be profound.

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If you’d like to explore the full scalp acupuncture protocol, point selections, and session strategies, click the button below: