 I had a very mystifying experience the first time I saw a Chinese medicine doctor that was primarily an herbalist. I showed up to his office, he put his hands on my radial artery, felt my pulse, and then a few minutes later prescribed an herbal formula that at that time was the best result I had ever gotten from seeing any doctor, east or west, for my digestive problems. So clearly my mind was blown that he could put his fingers on my pulse and prescribe a formula to somehow diagnose my entire body's condition. Now since then Chinese pulse diagnosis has become a real interest and obsession of mine, but in this video I want to share a very very basic introduction for the lay person as to what pulse diagnosis is and how it works and what it can really tell you in terms of information. Hey guys, Alex Hein, author of the health book, Master of the Day, so I've included a free download there below the video which is five daily rituals that can possibly help you add 10 years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine. So you can check it out right there, the link in the description. Now pulse diagnosis is actually something that ancient physicians used, east versus west, and in Chinese medicine and also in a certain sense in the Persian countries it became a developed specialized science. Now to the point where you can go from the very basic objective criteria in a pulse like the rates, like some aspects of the quality in terms of what you feel, but also very specific things unique to Chinese medicine like the individual pulse positions reflecting the state of even different organs. But in general what you've seen throughout medical history is that some sciences or some medicines or medical systems left out pulse diagnosis as time went on and others used it as an increasingly specialized system to diagnose and treat certain patterns of imbalance in a person's body. So what is Chinese pulse diagnosis? Now pulse diagnosis essentially is where a practitioner puts their fingers, typically three fingers on the radial artery, so on the side of your hand where your thumb is where you can feel the pulse. And typically the first section is called the sun, the first being the distal the closest to your hand. And the second position is the middle position which is called the guan and the third position which is the closest towards your torso is called the chur. And the sun, guan and chur each technically have three different depths. You have the superficial depth where you just place your hand on the pulse very lightly, a moderate depth where you apply moderate pressure and a deeper depth where you apply the deepest amount of pressure, the most pressure. Now according to Chinese medical theory each depth and each position reflects different information meaning you have a total of generally nine positions because you have three depths superficial moderate and deep and then you have three positions in the pulse that's in guan and chur so you could have three bits of information at each pulse position meaning nine total and then from there you can even get even more specialized but as a general trend that Chinese medicine practitioners agree upon you see three positions and generally there are three depths to each position. Now to go even into more detail different pulse lineages describe different pulse positions differently. So generally speaking on the left hand the first position closest to the hand is the heart and small intestine and the second position is the liver gall bladder and the third position is usually generalized to be the kidney and often some other organ as well depending on your lineage. So according to Chinese medical theory there's a lot of information that can be gleaned from the pulse and it seems mystical or pseudoscientific but there's some really interesting correlations that you can see objectively subjectively in the pulse. So really the basic qualities in pulse diagnosis are very simple. When a Chinese medicine practitioner puts their hand in your pulse they usually notice three qualities that are truly objective. The first three things are the depth. So essentially you put your hand in the pulse a pulse frequently will feel very superficial. You feel it right on the surface of the skin and there are also many pulses in people that are older or with serious illness where you have to go all the way to the bone to feel the pulse. So depth is one quality. The second quality is the rate. So some people's pulses you feel and it's 45 beats per minute. Some people it's 90 beats per minute. Those are really important diagnostic indicators that are pretty objective. And the third thing is some aspects of quality are truly objective. With even a little bit of training sometimes you can put your fingers on the pulse and it feels hard like a guitar string. And sometimes you put it on it and it feels mushy like soggy toilet paper. Those qualities are very useful in Chinese medical diagnosis for understanding the base state of vitality in the person and where things are maybe getting kinked up and maybe they're going wrong. So for example maybe you have a patient that comes in and let's say she's an 80 year old woman and she's complaining of feeling freezing cold, having body pain and just wanting to sleep all the time. All right, very cliche example. You feel the pulse, the pulse is all the way down to the bone and so weak it's almost imperceptible. Now to a skilled herbalist this may be one indication of using a food formula, an aconite formula. So that's a very, very rudimentary textbook example but some symptoms are strongly correlated with certain pulses and others are not. Certain body types are correlated with certain pulses more often than not and others are not. So it's the skilled pulse diagnostician's ability to ascertain when is the pulse useful information and when it's not. But a great pulse diagnostician can do things that are pretty amazing to see. So I hope that helps. That's a little bit of a lay intro to Chinese medicine pulse diagnostics. Again, I've included a free link down there below for a PDF on five daily rituals that can help you add 10 years to your life with Chinese medicine. So you can check it out there below and my recent videos on this topic right over there.