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The Bride of the First House.
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The different pulse positions correspond to the 5 major organs and corresponding 6 hollow organs.

	Left		Right
寸 Top	心 heart	小腸 small intestine	肺 lungs	大腸 large intestine
關 Middle	肝 liver	膽 gallbladder	脾 spleen	胃 stomach
尺 Bottom	腎(陰) kidney (yin)	膀胱 urinary bladder	腎(陽) kidney (yang)	三焦 three visceral cavities

How we can observe exactly what is going on in the inner workings of the body by six little spots on the wrist, is not entirely clear. But the best explanation would be that the pulse is a blood vessel that carries the blood/fluid. It's driven by the heart, so by reading the pulses properly, you can see what the heart is doing. The other organs can also affect the heart. Sometimes, there is an obvious connection — the lungs, for example. Sometimes, the connection is not as obvious — like, the pancreas.

The radial artery also runs along a major meridian. Blood is to artery as Qi ("chee") is to meridian.

The analogy we were given was ripples in a pond when you throw a stone in. If you understand how the waves travel and are affected by objects in the pond, how constructive and destructive wave interference works, you can tell by the ripples that there is a goose and a toy sailboat somewhere in the middle. You might be able to tell their positions and orientations. As well, there is untrimmed grass along the circumference (as opposed to a brick-lined edge) and there's a fallen tree branch laying half-way in the water at one point.

Because the body is a harmony of systems, if one thing is affected, there will be an effect on the rest of the body.

I should try to explain 五臟六腑 (the Five Major Organs and the Six Hollow Organs) sometime soon. It's not entirely the same as in Western Medicine. As concise as I can explain it, Western Medicine sees organs as function based whereas Chinese Medicine sees them as a harmony or balance.

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I'm working on writing up Pulse Reading 3: Pulse Properties. We took a long break for the holidays, so it's been a while. In the meantime, I'll leave you with this:

The instructor did a review before continuing with last night's topic Pulse Properties. Among the stuff he brought up, one point was: "if a practitioner tells you that you don't have a deep bottom pulse reading, what do you say?" What he wanted was for us to explain that it's impossible because by virtue of not being on our deathbeds, we must have a deep bottom pulse reading.

From the back of the classroom, a lady says indignantly, "CHOY!" And the entire room erupted with laughter. XD

This is a southern Chinese cultural thing. If someone says something that alludes to death, illness, accident/injury, bankrupcy, evil spirit possession or something negative like that, usually hinting at non-logical or supernatural causes, we say "choy" with a falling tone (like the Mandarin fourth tone). Either short or prolonged in voice length, it doesn't matter. It's very colloquial, so I couldn't find the exact character for it.

It's hilarious in context and especially if a quickly muttered "ai-ya" is prepended. =D

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There are three positions where you would read and it corresponds to each of the three fingers that you put down on the radial artery:

• 寸脈 (literally "inch pulse"), the top pulse which is on the thumb side

• 關脈 (literally "gate pulse"), the middle pulse

• 尺脈 (literally "foot pulse"; "foot" as in the measurement, not the body part), the bottom pulse, also referred to in some texts as 根脈 (literally "root pulse") which is on the elbow side of the middle pulse

There are also three states to the three positions that are read by the amount pressure the reader applies to the pulse:

• 浮, the superficial or surface reading
• 中, the middle reading
• 沉, the sunken or deep reading

That will give you a total of nine readings per side. The left and right hand are wired up differently, so if both sides must be read, you'll have 18 points of data.

In most people, their radial artery is in their wrist, just below either thumb. But in rare cases, it can be somewhere else. There are known instances of the pulse being on the back of the hand, 翻關脈, the "Inverted Pulse".

In someone who is near death, the bottom pulse will disappear altogether, even in the deep reading. This is how we can tell that it's almost their time.

There was also special mention of ethics related to this. If you can't get a deep bottom pulse reading on a person, YOU DON'T EVER SAY IT OUT LOUD. For one, you could be misreading something. And it's plain bad form to be causing the patient and their families stress, spouting stuff like that.

師傅 related a story of one irresponsible doctor who said his wife had no deep bottom pulse(!). His wife was very much alive and well when he said that, but it caused them both 2 weeks of anguish before they finally realized that it was just physically not possible for her to be lacking a deep bottom pulse.

Stress hinders healing and worse yet, can cause other problems that may not have existed before.

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把脈 is "to read [someone's] pulse".

The pulse, in Traditional/Classical Chinese Medicine is one of the windows to our body's inner workings. To be able to proficiently feel and interpret the properties of the pulse (the radial artery pulse) is to have great insight to someone's health and condition.

You see it in Chinese WuXia flicks all the time where the doctor puts three fingers on someone's wrist and tells them exactly what's wrong with them in the matter of seconds. Or an even better one is reading a woman's pulse, immediately exclaiming, "Congratulations, you're pregnant!" and drama erupts from there. They're referring to the 喜脈, "The Pregnancy Pulse".

It's bullshit. Well, no. It's not totally bull. Let me qualify that.

Firstly, you need to read both sides, the left and the right. Not just one.

Secondly, it takes more than a quick touch to get a proper reading. There are certain patterns that can occur every 25 or more beats (rest pulse), so you need a reading of more than 50 to really read someone properly. Most doctors will take about 60 seconds on each side which is approximately 60-80 beats under normal circumstances.

Thirdly, there IS a certain feel to the pulse when a woman is pregnant, it's called 滑脈, a "slipping" pulse (that's referring the way in which the pulse is beating, it's not saying that her pulse is stopping). But a woman's pulse can be that way during the last few days of her Luteal Phase (a few days before her period is due to start). I'm thinking it has something to do with the progesterone levels and thus, the state of the pituitary gland, but I can't be sure because I don't think that's the only thing in the body that's going bananas at about that time.

If she's missing her period AND she's feeling nauseous in the mornings OR other combinations of symptoms then all of that combined with the 滑脈 will almost certainly confirm pregnancy. I have no idea what the pulse is like in chemical pregnancies or false pregnancies.

Fourthly, I think men can have a "slipping" pulse as well, though I'm not sure about that.

And lastly, I also think that other conditions/illnesses can cause a "slipping" pulse.

Hmm... I have a few good questions I can ask next time. =)

Pulse reading is absolutely not the be-all and end-all of diagnosis. Most doctors will only use the pulse as one dimension in their analysis. The pulse is not an infallible source and, on infrequent occasions, can show conflicting signs. There are really good doctors who seem to be very in tune with this one method and can diagnose almost anything from pulse readings alone. But they are very rare.

Next - Pulse Reading 2: Pulse Basics

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As I said here, I'm taking a Classical Chinese Medicine Studies course. I've always been fascinated with this subject. Even when I was very young, I had a blast playing "Healer Woman" in my backyard by myself. I had no siblings, no friends and didn't want to be a social creature. =)

I decided I want to transcribe some of my notes because actively doing things with the information helps me learn. Over the next little while, I'll post some self-discussion of my notes.

I was going to make it all private, but I thought other people might be interested in it as well. And maybe people can ask me questions that I can't answer so that I can bring them to class and look like a SuperKeenerGirl. =D But if it causes problems, I will remove them all and put them in another private journal.

I feel like growing up in the West has taken me too far away from Chinese culture, which is no one's fault but my own. There's a desire to know, understand, be able to explain, express, pass on the traditions of my people and my culture.

( A big pile of disclaiming. )

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I'm taking a Classical Chinese Medicine Studies course that's taught in Cantonese. I'm incredibly interested in the material, but I have a really hard time taking notes. I understand the lectures, but having to write things down in English is slow at best and sometimes impossible. It's not for credit, there are no exams, it's just for personal interest. But still.

And copying stuff from the whiteboard in Chinese... half the time I can, half the time I can't. I don't always know what the character is with whiteboard penmanship (read: little balls of scribbles). So, I hope that my little scribble balls are enough to jog my memory later.

I'm finding that I'm grasping for vocabulary and grammar in Cantonese lately. I'm resorting to thinking in Mandarin, then literally translating instead. I actually forgot that "pineapple" was 菠蘿 in Cantonese and said 鳳梨. That's not a good sign.

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