Tuesday, April 20, 2010

TCM Diagnosis Part II - Taking the Pulse

Palpation is another important part of the consultation, which can involve palpating areas of pain, points on a meridian and the pulse. The Pulse can provide the practitioner detailed information about the condition of the body, qi, blood and organ systems.

How is the pulse taken?
The pulse is taken on both wrists using three fingers. The three positions are referred to as cun at wrist crease felt with index finger, guan in the middle felt with the middle finger and chi position closest to the body felt with the ring finger.

What do the finger positions correspond to?
Each finger position corresponds to different organ systems in the body.
Left hand side - cun heart, guan liver/gallbladder and chi kidney/small intestines and bladder. Right hand side - cun lungs, guan spleen/stomach and chi ming men/large intestine.

What are the characteristics of the pulse to be analyzed?
rate - how fast is flowing under the fingers
depth - is it strongest close to the surface or close to the bone
strength - is it powerful or weak
quality - does the vessel feel soft, full, thin, wiry, slippery, choppy

Ideally the healthy pulse has a moderate rate, can be felt from a superficial level to a deep level, and flows smoothly under all three the fingers. If the pulse is abnormal in a particular position it gives a clue to how that organ system may be out of balance.

The pulse should also change according to the season
spring - yang qi starts to increase thereby increasing tension of the pulse making it wiry/taut
summer - the weather is hot which makes the pulse feel like it is overflowing from the vessel
autumn - yang qi starts to fade therefore the pulse becomes empty, soft and fine (like a hair)
winter - the weather is cold which causes the pulse to become deep and strong

For proper pulse diagnosis the practitioner evaluates seven aspects of the pulse left and right sides, upper and lower referring to cun and chi as well as analyzing the superficial which determines if an external disease is present such as the common cold, the middle determines pathology of the spleen and stomach while the deep determines the presence of an internal disease.



3 comments:

Unknown said...

Pulse in such shows signs of fatigue, diarrhea, vaginal discharge.pulse can be recognized by feeling the pulse reading on the third finger which we attach to the top of the wrist.

Unknown said...

Pulse reading is not something that practitioners can learn over night- it takes a lot of practice and each pulse reading represents a different organ or function in the body.

emilyharrie said...

Nadi Pariksha successfully tracks down the altered state of the mind. This is very important as the science of Ayurveda believes that a major part of human ailments are psychosomatic in nature. This is so because the only way the Mind can express itself is through the body. Therefore, the body works to a very large extent according to the dictates of the mind.

nadi pariksha bangalore

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