Dreaming of Water, Fire, or Falling From a Height — Is Your Body Warning You? Dreams as Diagnosis, and How the Pulse Follows the Four Seasons — Doctor Luo Dalun Presents Doctor Ni Haixia’s Twenty-Third Lecture on the Huang Di Nei Jing: the Pulse Responding to the Seasons and Dream Diagnosis

Patient search terms: dreaming of water / dreaming of drowning / dreaming of great fire / dreaming of falling from a height / dreaming of fighting / dreaming of a party or crowd / dreaming of worms / dreaming too much at night / worms in the belly / a black face / taking the pulse in spring / how to read the pulse / the superior physician treating disease before it arises / can Chinese medicine read omens of disaster

Corresponding medical names: Su Wen · Mai Yao Jing Wei Lun (On the Essentials of the Pulse) · mai qi si shi dong nai he (how does the pulse move in response to the four seasons?) · zhi bing zhi suo zai / suo bian (knowing where the disease is and how it changes) · bing zha zai nei / zha zai wai (disease arising within or entering from without) · San Jiao channel, Water nature from Winter Solstice to Summer Solstice, Fire nature from Summer Solstice to Winter Solstice · zi xue and mu xue (child points and mother points) changing every half year · san jiao zhe jue du zhi guan (the Triple Burner is the official of irrigation, the web linking all the organs) · qi hua (qi transformation) · kui du (assessing) · four seasons / five seasons (adding the Long Summer) / twelve months / twenty-four solar terms · chun ying zhong gui, xia ying zhong ju, qiu ying zhong heng, dong ying zhong quan (spring matches the compass, summer the square, autumn the steelyard beam, winter the steelyard weight) · the character images of the Heavenly Stems (jia, bing, ding) · forty-five days after the Winter Solstice yang rises a little and yin descends a little · forty-five days after the Summer Solstice yin rises a little and yang descends a little · yin yang you shi, yu mai wei qi (yin and yang have their seasons, and the pulse keeps their appointment) · the pulse like a seesaw · a sick pulse keeping an appointment (wood conquers earth: the spleen-earth pulse seen in spring brings danger in the Long Summer) · yi xi si zhi wu zhi (four to five beats per breath is normal) · shi ze xie zhi, xu ze bu zhi (drain excess, tonify deficiency) · sheng he wu yin, se he wu xing, mai he yin yang (sound matches the five notes, complexion matches the five elements, pulse matches yin and yang) · dream diagnosis: yin sheng ze meng she da shui (yin prevailing — dreaming of wading through great water), yang sheng ze meng da huo fan zhuo (yang prevailing — dreaming of great fire blazing), yin yang ju sheng ze meng xiang sha (both prevailing — dreaming of mutual killing), shang sheng ze meng fei (upper prevailing — dreaming of flying), xia sheng ze meng duo (lower prevailing — dreaming of falling), shen bao ze meng yu (very full — dreaming of giving), shen ji ze meng qu (very hungry — dreaming of taking), gan qi sheng ze meng nu (liver qi prevailing — dreaming of anger), fei qi sheng ze meng ku (lung qi prevailing — dreaming of crying), duan chong duo ze meng ju zhong (many short worms — dreaming of crowds), chang chong duo ze meng xiang ji (many long worms — dreaming of mutual attack) · er qi shi si tian gui zhi, er ba shi liu (fourteen: tian gui arrives for girls; sixteen: for boys) · intestinal parasite diagnosis · qi heng and kui du (the extraordinary and the assessing) · tian gui (heavenly gui) · shang gong zhi wei bing (the superior physician treats disease before it arises) · shang zhi tian wen, xia zhi di li, zhong zhi ren shi (knowing astronomy above, geography below, and human affairs in between) · treating the heart and the external · the omen of fire (the whole family’s face red)

Opening: the Yellow Emperor fires off five “how” questions, and Qi Bo starts with the Triple Burner

This lecture continues straight from the last one. Having just spoken about people close to death, Doctor Ni added one important aside: how you talk to a dying person matters greatly — you must never speak carelessly. Then he enters a passage from the Mai Yao Jing Wei Lun — the Yellow Emperor suddenly asks five questions in one breath:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The last paragraph on page 124: “How does the pulse move in response to the four seasons? How do you know where the disease is located? How do you know how the disease will change? How do you know when the disease arises from within? How do you know when it enters from without? May I hear all five?” The Yellow Emperor asks: how does the pulse respond to the four seasons? How do we know where the disease is and how it will change? How do we know whether the disease comes from inside the body or enters from outside? He hopes Qi Bo will explain all of it together.

Qi Bo does not answer about the pulse directly. Instead, he first asks everyone to recall one thing — the San Jiao (Triple Burner) channel.

Why start with the Triple Burner? Its “Water and Fire” nature changes every half year

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Do you remember, when we studied acupuncture, that I taught the nature of the San Jiao channel? From the Winter Solstice to the Summer Solstice, the weather is colder, going gradually from cold to hot — so the nature of the San Jiao is Water. From the Summer Solstice to the Winter Solstice of that year, it goes from hot gradually to cold — so its nature is Fire. That is why, when the San Jiao shows excess or deficiency, our child point and mother point must be changed every half year — swapped once every half year.

Why bring up the San Jiao before talking about the pulse? Because every person has a San Jiao system — and this is the key to understanding how qi moves through the body:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Why do we mention the San Jiao channel? Because we have the San Jiao system. This San Jiao system connects all the organs and bowels, the connections between the organs and bowels; it is a web-like network spread throughout the entire body, above and below. That is what is called the San Jiao. And because this San Jiao system, when it is functioning normally, allows a person’s qi and pulse to follow the solar terms.

How are the solar terms divided? From the four seasons all the way down to twenty-four

Since the qi and pulse follow the solar terms, how are the solar terms divided? Doctor Ni gave the complete breakdown from coarse to fine:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: At first, divide into four solar terms: spring, summer, autumn, winter. Divide more finely, into five: spring, Long Summer, summer, Long Summer, autumn, then Long Summer, winter, Long Summer, spring — divided into five. Divide further: into twelve months, and then into twenty-four solar terms. It can be divided very finely — this is what we call qi hua (qi transformation), which contains kui du (assessing). Each solar term lasts two weeks. It is indeed quite complex.

So Qi Bo says: to know whether a disease arises from within or enters from without, and where it is located, you must understand the circulation of the days — “Outside the ten thousand things, within the six directions, the changes of heaven and earth, the responses of yin and yang.” It always comes back to yin and yang.

The pulse follows the seasons: spring compass, summer square, autumn beam, winter weight

The four seasons have their constancy, and so does the pulse. The text says, “The warmth of that spring becomes the heat of summer; the fury of that autumn becomes the wrath of winter” — the seasons change gradually, not all at once. The pulse is the same:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The text says, “Yin and yang have their seasons, and the pulse keeps their appointment”: in spring the pulse should be like a compass, in summer like a carpenter’s square, in autumn like a steelyard beam, in winter like a steelyard weight. How so? The spring pulse: on your patient’s wrist, touch the surface of the skin, press down just a little, and you can feel the spring pulse — because the spring pulse comes at the moment when the ten thousand things are just beginning to grow.

Why use the words “compass, square, beam, weight”? Doctor Ni explains that the ancients hid images inside their written characters — you can see it in the Heavenly Stems:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Look at the character jia (甲). If you only look at jia, yi, bing, ding as a list, it seems meaningless. But if you take that “field” (田) — under the field there is a root. That is jia. The tip of this root is no longer straight; it is beginning to bend, so it begins to grow — that is the image of spring. Bing (丙): the root pokes its head up — doesn’t bing look like a root below with two leaves sprouting above? Ding (丁) is the leaves on the surface growing bigger and bigger. So each of our Heavenly Stems has its own character image — there is an image inside it.

So the twenty-four solar terms can also be read through the Heavenly Stems: spring is the time when the qi bursts forth, and the pulse qi follows spring. When summer comes, the pulse floats to the surface — you touch the skin lightly and feel it, strong — that is the summer pulse.

The Winter Solstice and Summer Solstice: two doors where yin and yang exchange

The pulse follows the four seasons because its root is the waxing and waning of yin and yang. Doctor Ni explained the two key points thoroughly:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: It takes the forty-five days after the Winter Solstice, with yang qi above and yin qi below; and the forty-five days after the Summer Solstice, with yin qi above and yang qi below. At the Winter Solstice, yin qi reaches its peak and begins to descend, while yang qi begins to rise slowly. At the Summer Solstice it reverses: yin qi slowly rises, yang qi slowly descends. These two solar terms are the ones where yin and yang are exchanging. So when the Yellow Emperor asks, Qi Bo uses these two solar terms as the standard — yin and yang have their seasons. After the Winter Solstice, yang qi slowly spreads out, gradually rising until the spring equinox of the next year; the rising and falling of the pulse is like a seesaw — you can adjust it yourself, taking the changes of the solar terms as the master.

A sick pulse keeps an appointment: catch the spleen-earth pulse in spring, and trouble comes in the Long Summer

Once you know the normal pulse, you must learn to read the pathological pulse. All pulses begin with yin and yang — it all comes down to watching yin and yang. So how do you know it is “fatal” (critical)?

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: It is very simple. If you fall ill today, and in spring you get a conquering pulse — for example, wood conquers earth: in spring you get the pulse of the Long Summer, the spleen-earth pulse — then the danger will arrive in the Long Summer, at the exchange of the solar terms. But this refers to the pathological pulse. If your pulse is normal, no such thing will happen in summer. For example, the spring pulse is naturally a little wiry; if it is a little fuller, or the yang qi a little stronger or a little weaker, but your pulse is four to five beats per breath — very standard, neither too fast nor too slow — then there is no problem at all.

When reading the pulse, take the solar terms as the master: the more yang, the higher the yang pulse should ride; the more yin, the more the yin pulse should come up, floating a little. When yin and yang meet they move like this: as yin rises, yang descends; as yang rises, yin descends. In simple terms:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Starting from the Winter Solstice, yang is born; in winter you take it as level, and slowly, slowly it begins to rise; at the Summer Solstice it reaches the top; once the Summer Solstice passes, look — slowly, slowly it comes back, comes back. That is the meaning. And how can you tell from the pulse where the disease comes from? That is the liver, heart, spleen, lung, and kidney positions that we will introduce later — the moment you touch it, you know the disease comes from that organ.

Tonify and drain like heaven and earth: when the lake is full, it overflows — the lesson of the dam

On page 126, the text speaks of “tonifying and draining, not applying them differently from heaven and earth”:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: We drain excess and tonify deficiency — that is the constant rule. Heaven and earth are the same: when a lake is full, it overflows, doesn’t it? Look at a dam: you do not let it fill to the top — the gate at the bottom of the dam is there to drain the water before it tops. The nature of things between heaven and earth is like this: when full, overflow; when insufficient, we find a way to tonify. It is one and the same principle.

And so: “Sound matches the five notes, complexion matches the five elements, pulse matches yin and yang.”

Dream diagnosis, first lesson: yin prevailing — dreams of water; yang prevailing — dreams of fire; both prevailing — dreams of mutual killing

How do you know whether yin or yang prevails? Doctor Ni says you can see it in dreams. This section is about dreams — it is also the qi heng (extraordinary) and kui du (assessing) within the “heavenly degrees”:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: When yin prevails, you dream of wading through great water — terrified, as if a great flood is surging toward you and you are about to drown. When yang prevails, at night you dream of great fire burning your house down. When both yin and yang prevail, two people are killing each other — you are fighting and killing with someone. When both are strong, read it from the dream. When the upper prevails, you dream of flying — the person can fly. When the lower prevails, you dream of falling.

A teenager who keeps dreaming of falling from a height? Congratulations — you are growing

“Lower prevails — dreaming of falling.” Dreaming of falling from a height, Doctor Ni says, is actually the normal state of many people while their bodies are growing:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: When you were young, in your teens, often you would dream of falling from a building, or falling very deep from a mountaintop. That was you growing — because the lower prevails: your channel qi — at fourteen, tian gui (heavenly gui) arrives for girls; at sixteen, the man’s tian gui water comes. At this time you will dream of falling. It is the normal state.

The content of dreams is tied to the organs, and to hunger and fullness:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: When the stomach is very full, you dream of giving — dreaming of giving things to people. When very hungry, you dream of taking — dreaming of going to fetch and take things. When liver qi prevails, you dream of anger; when lung qi prevails, of crying — these are all connected to our emotions. When many short worms are present, you dream of crowds — there are short worms in the body, small, very thin worms. Long worms are the longer ones. Many short worms — dreaming of crowds; many long worms — dreaming of mutual attack and injury. This mutual attack is also two people fighting and getting hurt — they clash, but they do not kill.

Dreaming of parties, dreaming of worms: there are worms in the belly

Dreaming of crowds, dreaming of worms — Doctor Ni says this is genuinely used clinically — it is the diagnosis of parasites:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: This is called diagnosing worms — diagnosing roundworms. We have very many diagnostic methods. Here is the Huang Di Nei Jing; when we come to the de-worming medicines, I will introduce them to you in detail. Here let me emphasize one dream: one day a friend calls you: “Strange — why do I dream every night that a big crowd of us is having a party, a big gathering!” There are worms in the belly. Then your wife tells you: “I dream about worms a lot.” You take one look and tell her: “Dear, you have worms.” The husband looks — you see, I told you not to eat sashimi, you insisted on sashimi — everyone has worms. And we have other ways of diagnosing; with one glance, you have even more worms — the husband may have even more worms, and he may not dream about it at all. So we have many diagnostic methods that can all help us make a diagnosis.

Bonus: qi heng and kui du — a black face with perfectly normal eating and elimination means “an omen”

Having finished dream diagnosis, Doctor Ni throws out a much bigger topic: qi heng (the extraordinary) and kui du (assessing). These are ancient medical classics quoted in the Huang Di Nei Jing — and what Doctor Ni himself calls “heaven’s secrets”:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Qi heng and kui du — this time in my Huang Di Nei Jing course I will teach them to you. If you see a person whose face is very black, yet who eats, drinks, and eliminates perfectly well, who is completely normal — you know there is an omen. When this omen appears, the day has its twelve double-hours, and the hours correspond. If it is 9 PM, 21:00, that is the Xu hour. Originally his destined disaster is due to happen by 11 o’clock. How do we adjust it? Adjust it: at night between 9 and 11, he goes to sleep, at home, and dreams — the disaster passes in the dream.

How to use “heaven’s secret”? Move the daytime disaster into a dream and dissolve it

This method of “dissolving disaster through dreams” — Doctor Ni states it plainly, and says he will teach it this time, holding nothing back:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: This is heaven’s secret. I thought about it and decided not to keep it back — this is about qi heng and kui du. It is also about dreams: we can use the dream to take what would have happened in the daytime and let it happen at night instead. A person is a circulation of the whole cycle; it can be adjusted. If you do not know how to adjust it, then what is going to happen just happens. After the adjustment, you tell him not to go out at night — otherwise, he was sitting here perfectly fine, and at night something still happens to him; he has not escaped after all. He must not go out at night. Chinese medicine can reach this level — besides curing disease, if a person is struck by harm, we can even avoid the disaster.

Behind this lies the most famous saying in Chinese medicine — the superior physician treats disease before it arises:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: We — the superior physician — treat disease before it arises: what has not yet broken out, we can treat; and what is about to happen, we can also avoid. To know how to adjust it — when I teach that adjustment method, I will explain it in great detail.

Why does the Way of medicine last? Knowing astronomy above, geography below, and human affairs in between

From “avoiding disaster,” the conversation turns to the Way of medicine itself. The Yellow Emperor asks Qi Bo: can the Way of medicine last long? Qi Bo’s answer, Doctor Ni says, is the very scope of Chinese medicine:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Qi Bo says, of course it can last long — we must know astronomy above, geography below, and human affairs in between; then the Way of medicine can last long. So we do not only heal the disease; we also heal the person’s heart, and the external things around the person — all of it can be healed.

Closing: dreaming of great fire, the whole family’s face red — is this house about to burn?

Finally, Doctor Ni gives one more vivid example of dreams put to use, making the point that “dreams have meaning” unforgettable:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: For example, we see the dream of great fire blazing. If there is no dream, and that person during the day — you go to his house, and you see: why is everyone’s face red? So many heart conditions? How can the faces of three generations, grandparents and grandchildren, all be red? You know — this house is going to have a fire. You know at once. But why is everyone’s face red? One person having heart disease is enough; three generations all having heart disease, the same disease — the chance is very small. So it is an omen. Therefore I believe dreams have great meaning — they can remind us of many things.

With that, Doctor Ni wrapped up: the Nei Jing of Chinese medicine should be something very flexible — but it is also dry, very dry. Let us stop here for now and rest.

Based on Doctor Ni Haixia’s Ren Ji (Human Records) lecture series on the Huang Di Nei Jing (Twenty-Third lecture).