Pulse Diagnosis in Chinese Medicine - Starting A Modern Scientific Method

Comment by Archived User

The correlations with Western medical practice are good, but note that Western medicine generally uses Newtonian physics, certainly not quantum- and quantum is over 100 years old now! This truly matters if you consider how torsion, a subtle energy from a “higher” domain than physical that has been researched by Kozarev and others affects the pulses! Often called the “zero point fiend”, there are already medical devices that utilize it. This energy may be the “carrier” for higher domains of knowing, as well: my understanding is that as the practitioner reads the pulses he enters into an entrainment with the client, which enables subtle energetic effects (such as torsion) to be cognized and interpreted. (see “the Bond” by Lynne McTaggart). As Western medicine opens to the much more advanced ideas in physics that are not taught in regular schools (unless you are in Russia or Eastern Europe, where they are), a greater fluency with these concepts will propel their usage into common parlance, and help to establish a common vocabulary, which will be key in integrating East and West.

Comment by Chad J. Dupuis, L.Ac.

I can understand your point of view. But it would be helpful if you could describe a direct clinical example relevant to pulse diagnosis in acupuncture theory where your understanding of subtle/quantum energy would make someone choose a more closely aligned diagnosis in Chinese Medicine terms for their patients than what the current practices offer - or even than what the research article was discussing. In other words, direct your comment towards clinical examples relevant to the article.

While the bulk of theories surrounding the idea of the torsion field that you are describing have been disproven by many ( 1 ). There is certainly merit and correlation in the general idea that “we” are much larger than “ourselves” and that in essence neither of those exist. Certainly some concepts of this is what form part of our tong ren therapy energy healing system and Chinese Medicine being interwoven with meditation, tai chi, bagua, Taoism generally, etc. - is certainly no stranger to these general ideas.

At the end of the day, however, we are here and as practitioners we have patients with problems that cause them to suffer. To me, when patient is coming for me to help, I’m concerned with what tools allow me to help them the most efficiently, directly and reliably.

The beginnings of what you are alluding to are present in works such as:

and

as examples.

While I’m certainly not arguing against these much larger ideas, in fact use them in various ways already, but I also need to make sure they are clinically relevant - that they can help me, efficiently and reliably, to remove the suffering my patients experience. That is what drives my interest.

If you can present those ideas in a way that is clinically relevant to the readers of this site (i.e. Chinese Medicine), I would be very happy to hear more about your views.

Comment by Archived User

In my humble opinion, Chinese modern day practitioners have lost their traditional art, everyone is searching for western medicine types of “proof”. But that leads to a simplification of traditional Chinese medicine, with many practitioners simply not mastering their art and trying to mix it with western medicine…
Remember also that TCM is as much a modern era creation as it is supposed to be the collection of traditional, ancient, medical practice. It was set up by modern day communist china in an effort to standardise the tradition and make it more simpler…

People say pulse reading is so subjective, but that is maybe simply because pulse reading is such an elaborate and precious tool that it needs a long practice before mastering.
I think that everyone who feels a “soggy” pulse or a “hidden” pulse should be able to recognize it. Of course, pulse varies a lot during the day, but this is because it reflects the immediate energy balance of the body and mind. The pulse is the perfect reflection of energetic information at a given moment.
Another aspect of pulse reading is that different practitioners do not really get different information from it but in fact focus on a different information, and that is a GOOD thing, each SHOULD treat the patient in a different way, that is what makes the richness and diversity of an Art.
Starting to standardise things and come up with protocols is a failure, it is the end of an Art and the beginning of materialistic, poor, and uniform science. Art is superior to science and does not indulge in protocols. That is exactly why westerners are now try out alternative medicine, simply to flee from the inhuman, standardized, uniformed protocols of western medicine… It s a shame that TCM is now using the same philosophy as modern occidental medicine : forgetting to treat the patient with his personal history and focusing on the illness… Well in reality, “modern” TCM does exactly the same thing with its “syndromes diagnosis”… Healing is about helping the patient to “recover” from the traumas of his personal history and life, not about using standardized protocols to fix syndromes and symptoms…
For example, in acupuncture, you should never do the same treatment twice, even on the same patient…

Reality is that Chinese practitioners are so fascinated by modern western medicine that they now tend to use a modern, materialistic approach, forgetting the complex taoist and, esoteric and astronomical bases of their art.

That happens when you forget your roots.
It is also clearly the goal of communism to give a materialistic, atheist, and simplified basis to Chinese medicine, because communism just wants to select some parts of the rich history of acupuncture and herbology, that does comply with its materialistic vision of the world, while “purging” and destroying the most authentic and traditional aspects of them.