How to Take the Pulse and Read the Face: Can You Tell at a Glance Whether a Person Can Still Hold On? — Doctor Luo Dalun Presents Doctor Ni Haixia’s Twenty-Second Lecture on the Huang Di Nei Jing: the Essentials of the Pulse (Mai Yao Jing Wei Lun, Part Two)

Patient search terms: how to take the pulse / what does the pulse mean / pulse beating too fast / pulse too short / dai pulse (intermittent, alternating pulse) / rough, sluggish pulse / what your complexion says about your health / greenish face / lupus (butterfly rash) / old people repeating the same sentence / sleeping pills / diarrhea right after eating / sweating without exertion (night sweats, cold sweats) / winter health preservation / sitting in meditation / walking as exercise / Tianzhu point (BL10) / Yanglingquan point (GB34)

Corresponding medical names: Su Wen · Mai Yao Jing Wei Lun (On the Essentials of the Pulse) · mai shi xue zhi fu (the pulse is the mansion of the blood) · duan ze qi bing (short means the qi is diseased) · shu ze fan xin (rapid means vexation of the heart) · yi xi wu zhi (five beats per breath) · da ze bing jin (large means the disease is advancing) · shang sheng ze qi gao, xia sheng ze qi zhang (full above means the qi is high; full below means the qi is distended) · dai ze qi shuai (a changing pulse means the qi is failing) · xi ze qi shao (a thin pulse means the qi is little) · se ze xin tong (a rough pulse means pain of the heart) · hun hun ge zhi ru yong quan, bing jin er se bi (a leather-like pulse surging like a spring: the disease advances and the complexion withers) · mian mian qi qu ru xian jue (fading away like a snapping bowstring — a death pulse) · jing ming wu se zhe, qi zhi hua ye (the essence-brilliance of the five colors is the flower of the qi) · the five organs matching five colors (liver green, heart red, spleen yellow, lung white, kidney black) · ke se (guest color; the conquering color, zei xie — thief evil) · jing ming zhe shi wan wu, bie bai hei (the essence-brilliance discriminates the ten thousand things and separates black from white) · shen zai xing shi (the spirit dwelling while the form is lost) · wu zang zhe, zhong zhi shou ye (the five organs are the guardians within) · zhong qi zhi shi (dampness of the middle qi — a voice as if speaking from inside a room) · duo qi (seized qi — speaking weakly all day and repeating oneself) · shen ming zhi luan (disorder of the spirit — not covering the clothes, cursing at anyone) · cang lin bu cang (the granary not storing; the doors not shutting) · shui quan bu zhi (the water spring not stopping; the Bladder not storing) · urine and sweat sharing the same source (niao han tong yuan) · jin sheng shui (metal generating water) · biao yang xu (exterior yang deficiency) · wu zang zhe, shen zhi qiang ye (the five organs are the strength of the body) · tou zhe jing ming zhi fu (the head is the mansion of essence-brilliance; tou qing shi shen — head drooping and gaze deep; Tianzhu BL10) · bei zhe xiong zhong zhi fu (the back is the mansion of the chest; bei qu jian sui — a bent back and drooping shoulders) · yao zhe shen zhi fu (the waist is the mansion of the kidney; zhuan yao bu neng — inability to turn and twist) · xi zhe jin zhi fu (the knees are the mansions of the sinews; qu shen bu neng, xing ze lou fu — inability to bend and straighten, walking bent over; the sinews meet at Yanglingquan GB34) · gu zhe sui zhi fu (the bones are the mansions of the marrow; bu neng jiu li, xing ze zhen diao — unable to stand long, trembling when walking) · de qiang ze sheng, shi qiang ze si (gaining strength means life; losing strength means death) · practicing martial arts and sitting in meditation · you yu wei jing, bu zu wei xiao (excess is essence, deficiency is wasting) · se mai xiang ying (color and pulse corresponding) · guan ge zhi mai (the Guan-ge pulses; the true organ pulses, zhen zang mai)

Opening: the “nine fen and one cun” from last time — let me measure it out for you

Last lecture we covered the positioning of pulse-taking: from the high bone to the crease line of the palm is nine fen — that is the Cun (inch), the yang position; folding back a little beyond is one cun — that is the Chi (foot), the yin position. At the start of this lecture, Doctor Ni drew that positioning once more — where does the pulse run, and where does it stop being palpable?

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: If you measure from here, it is nine fen, and the pulse stops right there. This is one cun — and past here, it enters the muscle and you cannot feel it anymore. If the pulse is like this, it is long — that is qi arriving (qi zhi). If it is too short — the pulse has shortened overall, and when you put your three fingers on it: “Eh, why is this pulse so short?” That is a short pulse. First, then, distinguish long from short: short means the qi is diseased, because the pulse is qi.

The rapid pulse: more than five beats per breath means it is beating too fast

Once length is settled, next comes speed. What does “rapid” (shu) mean? Doctor Ni gives a precise definition:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The definition of rapid: one exhalation brings two beats, one inhalation brings two beats. And between the exhalation and the inhalation there is one pause — that pause belongs to the spleen and stomach. So two plus two plus one equals five. Thus in one breath of a person, the pulse moves five times — that is the normal pulse. Anything above five beats is called rapid. Rapid means too fast — “rapid means vexation of the heart” (shu ze fan xin).

The large pulse: the pulse must be proportional to the person — a thin person with a big pulse, a fat person with a thin one?

Next, the large pulse. What does “large” mean? Doctor Ni says it must be proportional to the person — but not in the way you might think:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Today a thin person comes in, and I feel his pulse and it is so large. The pulse must be proportional to the person. Then a fat person comes in, and I feel his pulse and it is so thin. For example, if you see two patients at the same time in the ward: you feel the thin man’s pulse and it is large; then you feel the fat man’s — “Eh, strange, the fat man should have a bigger pulse than the thin man, but the fat man’s pulse is actually smaller than the thin man’s just now.” The thin man has the large pulse; the fat man has little qi and a thin pulse. “Large means the disease is advancing” — when the pulse grows large, the disease is getting more and more serious; that is, the pulse will enlarge.

The three positions Cun, Guan, Chi: full above means the qi is high; full below means the qi is distended

The pulse is divided into upper, middle and lower positions — one touch and you know which region the disease sits in:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: “Full above means the qi is high” — “above” refers to the yang part of the Cun position. The yang pulse is very large, floating to the surface — this segment represents the chest. The Guan position sits right at the middle diaphragm, and this segment represents the abdomen. When the pulse below is too full, too abundant, and floats upward — “full below means the qi is distended.” So with one touch you basically know.

The dai, thin and rough pulses: a pulse that “changes its mind” means the qi is failing

Five abnormal pulse types, and Doctor Ni runs through them in one breath: dai, xi, se, ge, xian.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: “A changing pulse means the qi is failing” (dai ze qi shuai). How do we explain the dai pulse? It is about alternation and change. For example, you feel a pulse: normally, when you feel it, the pulse keeps on steadily the same — even a bad pulse stays the same without moving; even a slow pulse or a thin pulse beats very stably. But if you feel this pulse changing, alternating — the pulse grows large, then small, changing back and forth — that is dai. Dai means the qi is failing; the qi will decline. If the pulse is too thin, that means the qi is little.

And what does the rough, sluggish pulse (se mai) feel like? Doctor Ni uses the most vivid comparison:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The se pulse is very stagnant; it feels as if it has no strength. When we feel a pulse, the pulse responds to us and bounces back, right? With the se pulse, when you press down it does not bounce back; when you let go, it comes back; when you touch it, it runs off to the side — no strength — the se pulse governs pain of the heart.

The leather pulse like a surging spring: the pulse qi rushing outward means the disease is worsening

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The ge (leather) pulse is also about the image of change and revolution. If the pulse is very thick and large, and the condition is like a spring of water — you feel it and it keeps gushing out, gushing out — this kind of disease represents growing heavier and heavier. Why can we diagnose this way? Because the pulse is where the qi resides. The best pulse should be gathered and restrained, gathered inside the body — when your qi cannot get in because yang has no way to enter, and it keeps flowing backward in rebellion, then the pulse grows very large. All of that is very dangerous — “the disease is advancing” means getting more and more serious. “Se bi” (the complexion withering) means the complexion — that is, it tears away its original complexion. If the pulse becomes tight like a drawn bowstring, that person is about to die — that kind of pulse.

Whether treatment is working — the pulse speaks for itself

Feeling a dangerous pulse is not the end of the story. Doctor Ni says pulse-taking can also tell you whether treatment is effective:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Five beats per breath is normal. If he counts to eight or nine, that is very dangerous, right? Then when you begin treatment, “Eh, he is slowly, slowly becoming seven, six, then six, five” — you can feel that the patient is in the middle of recovery. And if it is below five — four, three, two, one: you, the doctor, take one breath and the patient’s pulse only beats four, three, two times — very small. Then when you start treating him at two, and it becomes three, then four, that means the disease is in the middle of recovery. We set up this standard: besides knowing when the disease is getting worse, you must also know — the reverse — when the disease is in the middle of recovery. Generally, by the time you have your own clinic, patients only come to you when they are sick, so you never feel a normal pulse — so in your daily life, whenever you see a normal, healthy person, feel his pulse.

Inspection lesson one: the complexion is the flower that the five organs open on the face

Pulse-taking done, we move to inspection (wang zhen). “The essence-brilliance of the five colors is the flower of the qi” — the complexion of the face is the expression of sufficient qi. What should a normal complexion look like?

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The color on a person’s face — good complexion represents the manifestation of sufficient qi, the place where qi is gloriously radiant. Red: what should it be? Red should carry a little white inside. If it is white, it should carry a little luster — not like salt. There is no other way — they could only describe it for you, since in ancient times there were no cameras. If green turns blue and loses its sheen, there is a problem.

The five organs match five colors — when one organ has trouble, its color runs onto the face:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The five organs match five colors: the liver is green, the heart is red, the spleen is yellow, the lung is white, the kidney is black. When one of your organs has a problem, that organ’s color will run onto the face. If you see the face very green — green without luster — the liver has a problem; this is pathological. If you see the face very bright red — like lupus, the whole center like a lupus rash, like a butterfly, both sides red — that is the heart. Girls love to be beautiful; they rub on thick makeup, and however thick they rub it, it still fades through — useless, because this color comes from the inside, and that means the heart has a problem. If you see a very yellow yellow — the kind of yellow you know at a glance is not a normal yellow; if you see a pale white; if you see a black that is dark black, completely without luster — these are all disease colors.

Guest color: spring should show green — why has white popped out?

Normal “constant color” changes with the four seasons, but there is one color that is wrong — the guest color (ke se):

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: In the normal color, when spring comes, you should see very good complexion, but carrying a little green in the middle — especially green on the left, which is best. The left is the east — liver, heart, spleen, lung, kidney; remember it this way, you can place it on your navel, on your body, it is like this too. If in spring you do not see green but see white, that is called the guest color. Guest color is ominous, because it is the thief evil (zei xie). So a person with a weak liver must have a very good lung; and if the lung is about to have problems, then the liver will have problems.

The eyes: mistaking black for white means the essence is failing

Beyond complexion, the second thing inspection looks at is the eyes:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: “Jing ming” (essence-brilliance) refers to the spirit of the eyes. The eyes are naturally made to see the ten thousand things, able to distinguish black from white. If a person sees long as short, mistakes black for white — confused and unclear — when the eyes have this kind of problem, at this point the essence is failing (jing shuai). So with the eyes, we look at the spirit of the eyes; if the patient’s spirit in the eyes is gone, that is also a very dangerous sign. In clinical practice, when we walk in: a patient lies there; before you have even seen the patient, you listen first — inside there is only the voice of the family members beside the bed; the patient makes no sound at all — that is already not good. Then you walk in and look at the patient, look at the spirit in his eyes. The body has grown thin and weak, the spirit dwelling while the form is lost — that is still all right, the spirit is naturally still there. What you fear most is the spirit being gone — even if the person has not grown thin, if the spirit in the eyes is gone, that will not do. This is all the inspection of Chinese medicine — from the very first moment of contact with the patient, the ears are already listening.

Some people do not die of disease — they are frightened to death

From the subject of “spirit,” Doctor Ni told a heartfelt story about seeing patients:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Among us humans, some people die of cancer, and some people die naturally. How does a natural death happen? The spirit is gone. So people should always keep their emotions calm and at ease — fearless, not afraid. Some people are completely frightened to death — when they are terrified, the spirit is lost, and they die just the same; you do not have to be sick to die. That is why when I see patients, I often “compete in fear” with the patient — first make him unafraid, then we act. If he is not afraid, I only have to treat the physiology. If he is afraid, I also have to treat his psychology — that is very tiring. When you run into that kind of patient it is exhausting: he calls you every hour of the day — never, never let him know your home phone number; he calls you in the middle of the night. That kind exists, and it is why I am always changing my phone number.

The five organs must “guard”: the essence must not run away, and they must be strong

“The five organs are the guardians within” — the storehouse must be able to store, and must be strong:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: “Store” is the storing of a storehouse — stored inside, this original essence must be guarded. First, the storehouse must be able to guard — the essence you absorb must not run away. Second, it must be strong — able to be very strong. Grasp these two principles and the storehouse will have no problems. So when we write prescriptions or do acupuncture, there are medicines that guard and consolidate, and medicines that strengthen — the two are slightly different. We often say do not eat too full: when you eat too full, the food does not digest, the organ qi slows down, and the middle burner becomes damp and hot; when qi is too abundant, going overboard harms.

Shallow voice, repeating oneself, throwing off clothes and cursing: three signals of “not guarding”

When the guard fails, the voice leaks it first. The first kind — a voice that is shallow and muffled:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: “A voice as if speaking from inside a room” — this is very muffled, the voice very shallow. Usually when we speak, the voice comes out from the dantian, from the abdomen. Some people speak very shallowly, from the throat — their stomach is blocked. Why is it blocked? The qi cannot go down; they can only produce sound from here, so the voice becomes very shallow. Now, if a person’s voice is not sonorous and not deep, without the power issuing from within, and you ask him whether he has eaten his fill — he says he is hungry, has not eaten yet — then this is a petty person, because most petty people speak very shallowly, from above, not from below; because their hearts are not upright, the qi cannot sink to the dantian. So you must distinguish clearly — do not casually say this person’s qi is shallow and therefore the middle is full — he might be hungry after all.

The second kind — repeating the same sentence:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: “Speaking all day and then repeating” (yan er zhong ri nai fu yan) — the voice is very small, and every day he keeps repeating different sentences. We meet many old people like this today — they repeat themselves, especially those taking sleeping pills and those with depression; they often say the same thing over and over, because they forget — this kind of qi has been seized (duo qi). Seized qi — all of this is very bad.

The third kind — throwing off clothes and blankets, cursing at anyone:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: “Not covering the clothes and blankets, speaking good and evil” — he does not cover the clothes or the blankets, takes off his clothes and does not care, speaks and curses at anyone without avoiding kin or stranger — this is disorder of the spirit (shen ming zhi luan). When we look at symptoms, there are always such cases: for example, the Large Intestine is blocked, and there is a lot of dry qi. The diaphragm is what Chinese medicine regards as the place that separates clear from turbid — if the dry qi of the Large Intestine runs upward, crosses the diaphragm, and rushes into the brain, the person becomes confused, talks nonsense and curses at anyone; some people climb up on the wall and sing without knowing it — the turbid qi rising. All of this has prescription treatments — very fast, cured with one dose.

The granary not storing: vomiting after eating, diarrhea after eating — cold and heat distinguished at once

Next comes the digestive tract’s “failure to guard”:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: “The granary not storing” (cang lin bu cang) means the doors are not shutting. The stomach and the Small Intestine are both granary officials. If you eat something and vomit it right out, it is not being received. Second: eat something and immediately pass it out as stool — whether vomiting or not storing, both are bad. Generally speaking, vomiting right after eating means there is something blocked in the stomach. When food goes down, the Small Intestine is the official of reception; the Small Intestine itself is fire, very hot, right? Food should be digested by the Small Intestine — but if it is not digested and goes straight out, that means the Small Intestine is too cold — and immediately we can distinguish cold from heat. Why do we distinguish cold and heat? Because of the prescription: when we meet a heat syndrome we prescribe cold medicines; when we meet a cold syndrome we prescribe hot medicines — that is why we need to distinguish cold and heat.

“The water spring not stopping is the Bladder not storing” — losing control of urination means the Bladder is not storing. But here Doctor Ni stretches far out, and explains the complete circuit of water metabolism in the human body. This long passage deserves slow reading:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: First you need a concept: where does the water in the Bladder come from? Once you have this concept, differentiation becomes very fast, prescriptions become fast and never wrong, and even the dosage can be held very precisely. The biggest problem in Chinese medicine today is that differentiation is not precise enough — when your differentiation is not precise, you dare not say whether this medicine is right, so you prescribe a huge pile of medicines; a huge pile is shooting birds with a scattergun, hoping a few shots will hit. But when you prescribe like that, the power is dispersed.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Urine and sweat themselves share the same source. We drink water, it enters the stomach; ordinary water reaches the stomach and disperses immediately, spreading through the body by way of the San Jiao system. As for food: after chewing, food reaches the Small Intestine, which heat-transforms it; the food becomes residue and enters the Large Intestine — so inside there are only residue and water. The Small Intestine is very hot, and surrounding the Small Intestine, wrapping around it, is the Large Intestine — the water in the Large Intestine, because the Small Intestine’s heat burns below while the water travels above, this water vaporizes and returns to enter the lung — that is the source. In the middle is the diaphragm, so the turbid qi cannot rise; only the clear qi can go up. When you exercise and sweat, when you breathe strongly, the sweat you shed is white — lung sweat. Do you ever sweat with a urine smell? That is disease — that is a person with uremia. Normally, right now I am speaking of a normal person.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: If you do not sweat, the water is still in the lung, and you keep eating. The lung is metal; Chinese medicine holds that metal generates water (jin sheng shui) — after the lung receives clean water, it sends it downward; if you have not sweated it out, it returns to the kidney. Once in the kidney, the kidney and Small Intestine make contact once more, and the water in the kidney is burned a second time — the first distillation comes out of the bone marrow and enters the brain. Because this water is very hot — just boiled, like steam — it goes up through the marrow, and precisely because it is so hot, there must be a cooling tube in the middle — the neck is the cooling system. That is why when you tuck your neck in during winter, your body is less cold. The second batch of water gathers in the Bladder; the Small Intestine vaporizes it; the clear water enters the liver, and the turbid water is expelled. So now we understand: the water in the Bladder and the water in the lung share the same source.

After the circuit, he lands back in everyday life — why are urination and sweating different in summer and winter?

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: In summer you exercise a lot, you sweat, and urine becomes little — “today, why have I not urinated?” Because you sweated it out; the urine is a little yellower — that is normal. In winter you do not sweat — the way of health preservation in Chinese medicine: in winter do not sweat; store and gather; wear thicker clothes, keep the body warm — you do not have to hide away that seriously. Because you do not sweat, urination becomes more frequent and greater in volume — that is the normal state. Now “the water spring not stopping” — one is sweating and flowing without stopping, the other is not controlling the urine — both are dangerous symptoms, symptoms of not storing.

Sweating while lying still? That is “exterior yang deficiency”

The ability to hold sweat depends on yang qi:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Being able to guard the sweat — the sweat is guarded at the exterior. We humans have yang qi; this yang is consolidated on the surface of the skin. Because yang guards it there, the sweat does not leak out. In other words, when yang is deficient, the sweat comes out — sweat is the fluid of the lung, the so-called yin fluids, and it will leak out. So even the exterior, speaking of the skin surface alone, is divided into yin and yang: because there is yang, it is guarded, and you do not sweat casually; only when yang is deficient do you sweat. Some patients, without any exercise, lying inside, sweat without stopping — in the future, when we speak of this, the technical term will be exterior yang deficiency (biao yang xu). You should gradually accept some terms; later when I mention a term — “this medicine specifically treats exterior yang deficiency, able to consolidate the exterior; that medicine can consolidate the stool” — I will just say it that way.

Head, back, waist, knees, bones: inspecting the five “mansions” tells you the strength of the five organs at a glance

“The five organs are the strength of the body” — what came before was about guarding; now it is about strength. Being too weak is death; not guarding is also death. Doctor Ni says from a person’s head, back, waist, knees and bones you can see the strength or weakness of the organ qi:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The head is the mansion of essence-brilliance. “Head drooping and gaze deep — the spirit will be seized” (tou qing shi shen, jing shen jiang duo) — that is very dangerous. Look at acupuncture: the head is here, the ears are here, the back of the head, the back; the Du meridian of the spine comes down here — at the junction of the skull and the spine, on both sides, are two points; we call them Tianzhu (BL10, the Pillar of Heaven), on the Bladder meridian. Tianzhu means the pillar of heaven; the head is heaven. When the pillar of heaven tilts — you see the head cannot hold itself up, no strength; you look at his eyes, very deep-set, but you know he does not recognize you. You see your own kin; he should recognize you — but his eyes are strange, he does not recognize people, does not even recognize his own child. Of course, when dividing property he may not recognize you for a moment — that is human nature, not the same as this.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The back is the mansion of the chest. “Back bent, shoulders following” (bei qu jian sui) — the back is bent; “shoulders following”? When breathing, he must move the shoulders, because the organs are too weak; without moving the shoulders he cannot complete a full breath. Normally our organ qi is strong; we do not need to use posture to breathe — we can breathe normally and easily. He cannot — this is the mansion about to break. The digestive system — stomach, gallbladder, Small Intestine, Large Intestine, Bladder — because the back is yang.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The waist is the mansion of the kidney. “Unable to turn and twist” (zhuan yao bu neng). What does “unable to turn and twist” mean? You ask him to turn around and he turns his whole body; he cannot move. The waist is the mansion of the kidney; inside the kidney there is yang and yin, which is why it is so supple. If now it cannot move, stiff and rigid — why is there no yang? Yang is movement; yang is life. Then we know the kidney has a problem.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The knees are the mansions of the sinews. Unable to bend or straighten; when walking he must bend his body, stoop his back — the sinews are about to be exhausted (jin jiang bei yi). So patients will tell you: “I cannot straighten my leg, my body is bent” — you know at once it is a sinew disease. Beside the knee is the meeting point of the sinews, Yanglingquan (GB34, the Yang Mound Spring) — Yanglingquan sits right beside the knee, which is why we say the sinews meet at Yanglingquan. The moment you hear that, you know it is a sinew disease; at that time the liver governs the sinews, and you must find a way to restore the liver’s function. Look at the waist — the waist is the mansion of the kidney: the kidney has a problem, and we must find a way to make his waist supple again, to replenish the yang back.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: “The bones are the mansions of the marrow” (gu zhe sui zhi fu). Unable to stand long; when walking, the upper body sways; standing, he cannot hold his footing; the two feet have no strength — the feet having no strength means the bones have a problem. “The bones are the mansions of the marrow” — so we must supplement the bones; in the whole body it is the kidney that governs the bones; the kidney governs the skeletal system. As for the internal organs: “gaining strength means life; losing strength means death” (de qiang ze sheng, shi qiang ze si) — when the strength is lost, the internal organs are sure to perish. And there are many ways to gain strength: practicing martial arts is gaining strength for life; sitting in meditation can lower the changes of the emotions — joy, anger, worry, sorrow, fear — to the minimum, keeping your mood steady — meditation controls the spiritual side; practicing martial arts makes the physiological organs very strong. This is our way of health preservation. Besides treating disease, you also know how to maintain yourself — walking is the best; walking is the best exercise.

Color and pulse must correspond: a red face in summer, yet you feel a kidney pulse?

Last comes “color and pulse corresponding” — the color on the face and the pulse you feel must match:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: “Excess is essence, deficiency is wasting” (you yu wei jing, bu zu wei xiao). When a person’s complexion and pulse are both correct, both in season — in spring it is the spring pulse, slightly wiry, and the face slightly green; if the wiriness is a little stronger, the pulse very forceful, and the green of the face very lustrous — the essence qi is very strong, a little stronger than the ordinary person — all of this is very good. Deficiency is wasting — exactly the opposite. What does this passage mainly emphasize? Slightly strong is normal; when you are insufficient, color and pulse must be united — color and pulse not united is dangerous. Example: this person comes to you, the face very rosy; you look, now it is summer, right? Very rosy, very good. Feel the pulse — the summer pulse should be the heart pulse, slightly red; you feel the heart pulse — “Eh, strange, this is not the heart pulse; it is a very, very deep kidney pulse” — this is the heart and kidney conquering each other. Eh, this person already has a problem. What problem exactly? We feel a kidney pulse — the disease will break out in winter: he is fine now, but this winter he may not get through. This is color and pulse not united; when color and pulse are not united, it is all bad.

Closing: the true organ pulse — when you feel it, it is a death pulse

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: We introduced earlier what the Guan-ge (barrier-rejection) pulses look like. Anyway, whether it is internal obstruction with external rejection (nei guan wai ge) or external obstruction with internal rejection (wai guan nei ge), both belong to the true organ pulses (zhen zang mai) — when you feel these pulses in a person, the person will die. We have several ways of handling this — if you feel a true organ pulse, you can just tell him: “According to the true organ pulse, you are going to die.” You can say it that way too.

Compiled from Doctor Ni Haixia’s Ren Ji (Human Records) lecture series on the Huang Di Nei Jing (lecture 22), presented by Doctor Luo Dalun