Can Reading the Pulse Tell How Long You Will Live? Doctor Luo Dalun Presents Doctor Ni Haixia’s Twenty-Sixth Lecture on the Huang Di Nei Jing: Stomach Qi and Life and Death in the Ping Ren Qi Xiang Lun

Patient search terms: reading the pulse to find disease / how many times does a normal pulse beat per breath / is a fast pulse a disease / what is the stomach qi that Chinese medicine talks about / what does a deep pulse mean / is a floating pulse a cold / what to do about a prolapsed stomach / how centenarians stay healthy / my stomach is always bloated / a pulse that runs sideways / what the pulse of a chronically ill person looks like

Corresponding medical names: Su Wen · Ping Ren Qi Xiang Lun (On the Qi of the Normal Person) · the normal pulse (one breath in and one breath out, five beats, run yi tai xi — the intercalary sigh) · chang yi bu bing tiao bing ren (use the person who is not ill to adjust the patient) · shao qi (qi deficiency, three beats per breath) · zao mai (restless pulse, six beats per breath) · death pulses (si zheng, nine beats per breath) · stomach qi (huan, relaxed: four beats per breath, relaxed yet forceful) · with stomach qi there is life, without stomach qi there is death · the five seasonal normal pulses: xian (wiry), gou (hooked), ruan ruo (soft and weak), mao (downy-feather), shi (stone) · cang zhen san yu gan / tong yu xin / ru yu pi / gao yu fei / xia yu shen (the stored essence of the viscera scatters through the liver, reaches the heart, moistens the spleen, rises to the lung, descends to the kidney) · the liver stores the qi of the sinews and membranes · the lung is the Minister (xiang fu zhi guan) · the great collateral of the stomach, xu li (below the left breast, its movement stirs the clothing — the ancestral qi of the pulse, the seat of zhong qi, central qi) · sheng chuan shu jue zhe bing zai zhong (violent panting with repeated pauses means disease in the middle) · cun-kou rules: short pulse headache / long pulse shin-and-foot pain / surging-upward striking pulse shoulder-and-back pain · the Du Mai breathing method · prolapsed stomach and heart yang insufficiency · deep and sideways-running pulse, accumulation below the ribs and in the abdomen · fu gu mai (bone-buried pulse) · yin excess knotted inside, yang floating outward · small, weak, choppy pulse marks chronic illness · slippery is wind, choppy is bi (obstruction) · the pulse follows yin and yang — following is easy to treat

Opening: finishing the last lecture — pushing the pulse at cun and chi

Doctor Ni opens by settling the account left over from the previous lecture on the Mai Yao Jing Wei Lun — still the same pushing techniques of pulse diagnosis.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: What does “shang er bu xia” — present above, absent below — mean? The pulse sits at the cun position, you can feel the cun pulse, but the chi pulse is gone — that points to a problem of the waist and feet, because that is the lower half of the body. When the pulse can only be felt above and not below, the lower burner is cold. The other way around — you press down, the chi pulse is there, the cun pulse is not — that means headache and pain in the neck. The cun pulse is yang; the head is the meeting of all yang (zhu yang zhi hui). When yang is insufficient, yin rises up, and the head aches.

He adds a detail of pressing technique:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: When you press your fingers all the way to the bone and the pulse qi is already very weak, that is lumbar muscle pain. These are extensions and applications of pulse taking. The basic principle is this: when we take the pulse, we are taking the qi — diagnosis is about the qi.

When the pulse qi is scant, the problem usually belongs to the Du Mai (Governing Vessel):

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: When the pulse qi is scant, all the yang of the body is managed by the Du Mai. You have all studied acupuncture and know the Du Mai is the meeting of all yang — yang is qi. When the qi pulse is scant, of course there will be Du Mai problems: lower back pain, and a numbness of the body — all of these are yang insufficiency. With yang insufficient, since all the yang of the body is managed by the Du Mai, there will be lumbar spine pain.

Why must you understand this diagnosis? Doctor Ni states the key point: because when you write prescriptions later you must know how to “choose and discard” — some yang medicines strengthen the yang of the Du Mai, while other yang medicines strengthen the yang of the limbs, the skin and the joints. They are not the same, and you can only choose correctly if you understand diagnosis.

How many beats per breath is a normal person’s pulse?

With the tail finished, he enters the main text — the eighteenth chapter, the Ping Ren Qi Xiang Lun. The Yellow Emperor asks: what does the pulse of a normal person look like?

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Qi Bo says: with one breath in, the pulse moves again — that is, beats twice; with one breath out, the pulse moves again — beats twice. Between the in-breath and the out-breath there is a pause, a rest, so one breath in and one breath out carry five beats — this is called run yi tai xi, the intercalary sigh, and such a person is named a ping ren, a normal person. The ping ren is one who is not ill. More than five beats per breath is excess; fewer than five is deficiency.

Here he draws out the single most important maxim of learning pulse diagnosis:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Chang yi bu bing tiao bing ren — always use the person who is not ill to adjust the patient. The physician himself is not ill, and that is why he can calm his own breath and adjust the patient’s pulse. When you practice, take the pulse of normal people — people with nothing wrong — and feel their pulse. The breathing is governed by the physician’s own breath. When the pulse is abnormal, you use medicine or acupuncture to adjust it back to normal — that is the rule of treatment.

What does abnormal look like? Keep listening:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: If a person’s pulse moves once with each breath in and once with each breath out — three beats per full breath — that is shao qi, qi deficiency: the pulse is too weak. If the pulse moves three times with each breath in and three times with each breath out, that is the restless pulse, zao mai — zao means agitated, the speed is faster. There is also the chi position: chi re, hot chi, is warm disease (bing wen); chi not hot but slippery is wind disease (bing feng). The foot taiyang channel (Bladder) is the largest channel of the whole body — it runs from the Jingming point BL1 (Bright Eyes, at the inner corner of the eye) all the way down the back to the feet. When external qi accelerates, you lightly touch the chi and it floats up — you know a cold has arrived, the pathogen is at the surface, and you can tell right away. This is the living application of “color and pulse.”

Four beats per exhalation? The Nei Jing says “death” — but Doctor Ni insists on rescuing

Some chaotic pulses are directly sentenced to “death” in the text:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: If a person’s pulse beats four times with each exhalation, that is a death sign — exhale four times, inhale four times, plus the resting breath in between, nine beats altogether. Mai jue — the pulse stopping and refusing to continue — is also a death sign. A pulse that beats very fast, sometimes present and sometimes gone — these are all death signs, extremely abnormal.

But here Doctor Ni stops and speaks from the heart:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: We have treated this kind of pulse before — one that beat nine times. One prescription, and it came down from nine beats to six or seven. Chinese medicine can still bring them back. When the Nei Jing says “death,” it is because the Nei Jing does not discuss treatment — it speaks entirely of diagnosis and differentiation. It means: this is extremely dangerous. You cannot say, “Teacher, this is a death pulse,” and then wash your hands of the patient, can you? The physician has a parent’s heart — you think of a way, you think of every way, to bring them back.

He adds one frank clinical observation:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Sometimes we look at a patient and truly know he will die. If the patient does not believe you, does not believe in Chinese medicine, you cannot cure him — you spend your medicine and say, “Let me give you one treatment,” and it does no good. So doing charity clinics or helping people is very hard. Often you are punished for your loyalty — because you were too good to someone, you end up blamed for it.

The lifeline in the pulse: stomach qi

The next passage, Doctor Ni says, is the heart of the whole chapter — page 138, ping ren zhi chang qi bing yu wei, the normal person’s constant qi is endowed by the stomach:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: All the qi of a normal person is born in the stomach. The stomach is the constant qi of the normal person (wei zhe, ping ren zhi chang qi ye). We constantly use the presence or absence of stomach qi to judge life and death. If a person has no stomach qi — the pulse has no stomach qi in it — that is reversal, and reversal means death. How do you read stomach qi in the pulse? It is explained right here: stomach qi is huan, relaxed — four beats per breath, at that speed. That is stomach qi.

How does stomach qi combine with the seasonal pulses? Take spring as the example:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The normal pulse of spring is the wiry pulse, carrying a little stomach qi. Wiry with little stomach — that is liver disease, the pulse very wiry and thin. But if it is wiry with no stomach at all — only the wiry pulse, feeling like a single taut string — that is a death pulse. With stomach qi means relaxed yet forceful, and the speed is good.

Spring’s wiry, summer’s hooked: the liver stores sinews, the heart stores blood vessels

Why is the wiry pulse tied to the liver? Doctor Ni starts from the “sinews and membranes”:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Cang zhen san yu gan — the stored essence scatters through the liver; the liver stores the qi of the sinews and membranes (gan cang jin mo zhi qi). Why can the liver pulse diagnose all five viscera and six bowels? Because every sinew in the body is born from the liver — you can see this most clearly in a chicken leg: when you eat a chicken leg, there are sinews in it, and those come from the liver. All the viscera and bowels are full of sinews. So in spring, the liver pulse lets you examine the pulses of all five viscera and six bowels — very reasonable, because sinews and membranes are inside them.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: In spring you feel a stomach pulse carrying mao, the downy-feather quality — that is autumn’s disease; if the mao is marked, the disease is present right now. If in spring you feel autumn’s pulse, you know this person has no illness now but will fall ill in autumn — feel winter’s pulse and he falls ill in winter, feel summer’s pulse and he falls ill in summer. This is how, from the presence or absence of stomach qi in the pulse, you can predict when he will become ill.

Summer looks at the hooked pulse:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The normal summer pulse is a stomach pulse carrying a little gou, the hook. What is the hook? When you press down, the pulse bulges slightly — an ordinary pulse moves up and down in a line, while the hooked pulse has a slight bulging feel. This pulse is very common. Hook with little stomach — that is heart disease: the hook is too big and the stomach qi too little. But hook with no stomach — all death. In summer you feel winter’s stone pulse, and the person will certainly fall ill in winter. Because cang zhen tong yu xin — the stored essence reaches the heart — and the heart stores the qi of the blood vessels (xin cang xue mai zhi qi). Every internal organ — kidney, liver, spleen, pancreas — its blood vessels all connect to the heart. So from the heart’s pulse we can also detect problems in the other organs.

Long summer soft, autumn downy, winter stone: spleen flesh, lung defense, kidney marrow

Long summer reads the spleen and stomach:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: In long summer, a soft and weak stomach pulse is normal. Weak with little stomach — the spleen has a problem. But a dai pulse with no stomach — that is a death pulse. What is dai? Unstable — sometimes fast, sometimes slow, sometimes big, sometimes small, constantly changing. Soft and weak carrying stone means it is deeper — the person will fall ill in winter; if the weakness is severe, the disease is present in the current season. Cang zhen ru yu pi — the stored essence moistens the spleen; the spleen stores the qi of the flesh (pi cang ji rou zhi qi). The spleen manages the flesh: besides the flesh of the outer body, every internal organ has flesh — the heart has heart muscle, the liver has liver muscle. So spleen problems can also be diagnosed from the pulse.

Autumn’s pulse is the mao pulse — and Doctor Ni takes care to correct a common misunderstanding:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: In autumn a stomach pulse carrying a little mao is the level pulse. What is the mao pulse? It is not your hair — it is a feather. Take a chicken feather: when you feel it, the sides are thin, and in the middle there is one hard quill. That is the mao pulse — not a single strand of hair. Feather with little stomach — the lung is diseased. If you feel only the feather pulse with no stomach pulse at all — the pulse at nine or ten beats, or only one or two beats per breath, far too slow — that is a death pulse. Feather carrying wiry — illness will come in spring, the next year’s spring; if it is marked, the disease is present now. Cang zhen gao yu fei, yi xing rong wei yin yang — the stored essence rises to the lung, to move the nutritive and defensive qi, yin and yang. Why can the lung pulse be examined? Because the lung is the highest viscus — it is the Minister (xiang fu zhi guan), governing all qi, blood, yin and yang.

Winter’s pulse is the stone pulse:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: In winter the pulse carries a little stone. Stone means like a stone sunk at the bottom of water: you press down and feel the pulse lying deep, and the speed is still five beats per breath, very steady and forceful. When you press to the bone, it should be gone — if it is still there at the bone, that is the fu gu mai, the bone-buried pulse. Stone carrying hook — that is summer disease: the hooked pulse belongs to summer, to the heart; if the hook is marked, the disease is present now. Why can it be diagnosed? Cang zhen xia yu shen — the stored essence descends to the kidney; the kidney stores the qi of marrow and bone (shen cang gu sui zhi qi). The qi of the marrow and bones is stored in the kidney, so every internal organ is affected by it.

One sentence to sum it up: with stomach qi there is life, without stomach qi there is death

With the five seasonal pulses complete, Doctor Ni gathers the core of the chapter in one sentence:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: What is the main point of this passage? Simply this: if you feel stomach qi in the pulse, there is life; if there is no stomach qi, it is death. And when a patient has no stomach qi, and you bring the stomach qi back — you can tell from the pulse whether it has been rescued or not.

He pairs it with the simplest possible division of yin and yang, for judging which layer the disease sits in:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Day is yang, night is yin. So throw all the viscera — liver, heart, spleen, lung, kidney — into the night; throw the small intestine, stomach, large intestine and bladder into the day. Day is yang, the yang bowels; night is the viscera. That is the simplest way to separate yin and yang. When treating a bowel disease or an exterior syndrome, the stomach qi returns at noon — the appetite opens, “I want to eat.” When treating a visceral disease, you wake up hungry in the middle of the night and need to eat. That is the basic great principle.

A secret hidden below the left breast: xu li

Page 141 — a point most people have never heard of, the great collateral of the stomach, xu li:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Wei zhi da luo, ming yue xu li, guan ge luo fei, chu yu zuo ru xia, qi dong ying yi, mai zong qi ye — the great collateral of the stomach, named xu li, pierces the diaphragm, connects with the lung, emerges below the left breast, its movement stirs the clothing — it is the ancestral qi of the pulse. This is where the zhong qi, the central qi, lives. Xu li lies below the left breast. Since it happens to be winter now, you can try feeling it on yourselves — I cannot feel it for you, because men and women are different. Here is the breast, here is the Danzhong CV17 (Chest Center) position — a triangle comes down. You reach into the gap between the ribs, slide your hand in, and there is an artery beating very fast. It beats only on the left side; on the right side it does not beat at all — strange. That is where the central qi lives.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: You cannot easily feel it through the clothing — you have to reach inside; through the skin you can feel the pulse moving very fast. When you exercise, when you run, the qi is vigorous and you can see the clothing moving on the left side with each breath — only on the left, never on the right. Women are the same — go home and feel it yourselves. Zhong qi means the root of the stomach’s qi, the root of the stomach qi.

Why do all centenarians walk, and none of them run?

Speaking of xu li whose “movement stirs the clothing,” Doctor Ni turns naturally to health cultivation:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: If a person pants violently — panting several times and then fainting — the disease is in the middle. For anything inside the belly, whether liver, heart, spleen, lung or kidney, when we feel the zhong qi pulse there is no problem; but if the zhong qi pulse disappears, and you can never feel it anymore — that is nearly the end. Also, ru xia qi dong ying yi — below the breast, the movement stirring the clothing: the central qi is leaking out. If you do not exercise, you will not see the clothing move; after violent running, you can see it moving — the central qi leaks out. That is excess.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: So I keep telling you: ask every person over one hundred years old who is still healthy what exercise they do every day — they all walk. Not one of them runs. Someone should go tell that mayor: stop running around — you will run yourself into an early grave. Walk. Walking is enough. After running, that artery is pulsing right there — the central qi leaking outward. That is excess.

And one great principle about how qi moves:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: All the channels run up and down, right? So whenever qi runs sideways, across — it all comes to the chest. Including what I told you last time: on a woman, the qi of the left side crossing to the right follows yang, and the qi of the right side crossing to the left follows yin. Whenever it runs sideways, it is all the chest. The qi of a normal person runs straight, in a circle, continuously. Running sideways is reversed qi. All human illness is the straight qi turning reversed — when the qi follows its course, everyone is normal.

The length of the cun pulse: headache or shin pain?

Next, the cun-kou pulse — Doctor Ni says the cun position corresponds to the upper burner and should normally be nine fen long:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Cun kou zhi mai zhong shou duan zhe, wei tou tong — when the cun pulse felt at the hand is short, it is headache. The cun pulse is yang; a short cun means yang insufficiency. The head is the meeting of all yang — now yang is insufficient, so yin comes up, and when yin rises headache arises. If the cun pulse is long — cun kou zhi mai zhong shou chang zhe, shi zu jing tong — that is shin and foot pain. The cun pulse is a yang pulse; if it is too long, beyond nine fen to over one cun, it means yang qi is in excess. With yang qi in excess, yin qi cannot come up and stalls below, and the feet develop problems.

Why does the foot hurt when yang cannot come down? Doctor Ni explains the Du Mai breathing method:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: The normal pattern is this: after yang qi is released at the top of the head, it must come down. Take the foot yangming channel (Stomach): from Touwei ST8, Xiaguan ST7, Jiache ST6, Chengqi ST1, Sibai ST2, Juliao ST3 — the stomach channel runs toward the corner of the mouth and goes down; the qi travels straight down. The qi of the Du Mai comes up — when you breathe in, the breath follows the Du Mai and the trachea down to the kidneys, and then from the kidneys enters our Guanyuan CV4 (Gate of Origin). In your mind, imagine a slanted line between the fourteenth vertebra and Guanyuan — when Daoists sit in meditation, this is what they imagine: breathe in and pull that slanted line upward, breathe out and sink it down to the perineum (Huiyin CV1). So when you breathe in, the qi enters Guanyuan. When yang qi is very abundant, it stays above and cannot come down, and then the feet have problems — shin and foot pain — because the four limbs are all yang: hands and feet are yang, the body is yin.

Shoulder and back pain, hernia, disease in the middle: the learning between floating and sinking

The cun pulse continues, and every deduction lands:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Cun kou zhi mai zhong shou cu shang ji zhe, jian bei tong — when the cun pulse comes up and strikes hard, that is shoulder and back pain. You feel the pulse very floating, very strong — it means yang wants to come out but cannot get out. Cun kou mai chen er jian zhe, bing zai zhong — deep and firm, disease in the middle: yang qi is below and cannot come out, so there is a problem inside the body. Cun kou mai fu er sheng zhe, bing zai wai — floating and abundant, disease without. Cun kou mai chen er ruo zhe, han re ji shan jia shao fu tong — deep and weak, chills and fever, hernia, and lower abdominal pain: yang is insufficient, blocked in the abdomen, with distension and stuffiness.

Then comes a very usable clinical reasoning case — the prolapsed stomach:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: For example, you feel the heart’s pulse — soft and weak, or almost gone. Then you feel just below the xin xia, below the heart — and this pulse is huge. The heart is here, the stomach is here. If heart yang is insufficient, yang is not enough, then the fire of the stomach — the stomach is normally very hot; the stomach sits between the heart and the small intestine. The stomach can rot and ripen food only because the heat of the heart and the small intestine steams it, so it can hold heat inside and churn. In modern medical terms, from my observation: when you breathe in, the stomach churns twice; breathe out, twice — four churns per full breath. A normal stomach churns very slowly. When yang is insufficient, the stomach drops down, sinks a layer — that is a prolapsed stomach — Chinese medicine calls it stomach cold (wei han), because you do not have enough heat. The stomach becomes distended and full, the stomach turns cold — many people with prolapsed stomach are like this, and the same reasoning extends to lower abdominal distension.

The pulse that runs sideways: there is an accumulation in the belly

Can a pulse run sideways? Doctor Ni says he has actually seen one:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Cun kou mai chen er heng, xie xia you ji, fu zhong you ji tong — the cun pulse deep and running sideways: accumulation below the ribs, accumulation and pain in the abdomen. The cun pulse is normally straight; now the pulse has turned sideways. I have seen a sideways pulse — you feel it and it is not running straight, it runs across. There is always something accumulated. If the pulse goes up and turns sideways coming out, that is the throat — in the upper throat it means something is blocked; once blocked, the pulse runs obliquely instead of straight. If the pulse turns and runs sideways here, it means the cun pulse is deep and sideways — accumulation below the ribs, accumulation and pain in the abdomen. Because the cun pulse speaks of the yang region — yang above the ribs — and when there is accumulation below the ribs, yang cannot go down, so it runs sideways.

Floating and sinking tell exterior from interior: why does cancer also feel floating and large?

Whether the pulse floats or sinks is the great outline for distinguishing exterior from interior:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Cun kou mai chen er chuan — chuan here means sometimes small, sometimes large — the patient has chills and fever. Slippery and very firm, the disease is without, a very floating exterior: you feel the pulse very large, and you touch it as soon as you lightly reach the skin. Small and firm — the disease is within. So the rule of the pulse now emerges: whatever is deep, whatever is small, is disease inside; whatever floats on the surface of the skin, felt at the first touch, is mostly disease at the exterior.

But there is a “false floating” that needs special care — Doctor Ni speaks specifically about the cancer pulse:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: When we diagnose liver cancer or lung cancer, we also feel it floating and large — why? Because inside, yin is accumulated. We said before: yin — the viscera can tolerate being filled with nourishment, but they cannot tolerate being full of substance. When it is full of substance, that is disease, a pathological state. When yin is very full, yang — the yang originally hidden inside the viscus, its function, its power — now that yin is full, its function is gone, and yang walks outward, so the pulse floats very large, right at the surface of the skin. You feel it and think it is an exterior syndrome, but it is not — inside there is something solid, and yang is floating out. How do you tell? Press down: if it is an exterior syndrome — just a cold with fever — the pulse is also floating, but when you press, it is empty inside, and at the very bottom there is still a pulse. If it is large with a light press and large with a heavy press too — that is dangerous. That is the simple rule.

Chronic illness: small and weak; pain: rapid; slippery is wind, choppy is bi

The last set of pulses is all clinical mnemonics:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Mai xiao ruo yi se — the cun pulse very small and weak, sometimes strong and sometimes weak, unstable — that is a chronically ill person; his yang is surely deficient. This passage speaks of the cun pulse, the yang pulse — the whole passage speaks of yang pulses. In chronic illness the yang is surely deficient — yang is movement, function, power. A person whose stomach and intestines digest powerfully has sufficient yang; one who cannot digest has insufficient yang. Yang is the thing you cannot see, but it exists — it is the power, the function.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: A pulse beating very fast generally means there is pain somewhere in the body. A slippery pulse is the wind pulse; a choppy pulse is the bi pulse — qi and blood blocked and obstructed. Huan er hua zhe, wei re zhong — relaxed and slippery, heat in the middle; sheng er jin zhe, wei zhang — full and tight, distension. This is all speaking of the cun position — a single cun position, what you feel when you touch it.

Closing: the pulse follows yin and yang — follow it and it is easy to treat

In the final section, Doctor Ni raises the whole philosophy of pulse study once more:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni: Mai cong yin yang, bing yi; mai ni cong yin yang — if the pulse goes against yin and yang it is hard to manage. We must look at the yin and yang of every pulse. If yin and yang are smooth and following, there is no pathological state — very easy to treat. What does “following yin and yang” mean? Say you feel a patient’s pulse — the heart’s pulse is small and powerless. You reason it out: heart yang insufficient, so the stomach develops problems in turn — deduce all the way down, and the yin and yang of the whole body are strung together.

This lecture moves from the ping ren standard of five beats per breath, to stomach qi deciding life and death, to the five seasonal pulses of the five viscera — wiry, hooked, soft and weak, downy-feather, stone — and finally settles on xu li below the left breast and the deduction methods of the cun pulse. Doctor Ni says it plainly: pulse diagnosis is not mysticism; it is a craft whose subject is qi. First feel the pulse of normal people; remember the relaxed four-beats-per-breath of stomach qi; remember that with stomach qi there is life and without stomach qi there is death; remember that deep and small is within and floating and large is at the surface; and remember the beating seat of the central qi below the left breast — what you hold under your fingers is the entire qi mechanism of a person’s body.

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