From Beginning to End

Lofty title for a blog post, eh? Well, I’m just lifting it from Chapter 9 of the Ling Shu. A little, well, rather large bird, recently told me to give that chapter a read as I try to understand how to use Jingie as a diagnostic tool.

Now, I am not sure if any of you have read this chapter, let alone understood it, but I have quite a few questions about it that I would like to explore. This is really my first crack at the classics so if I say anything too far off base, I’m just taking a novice stab so forgive and correct me. Also, I am more interested in discussing what I don’t understand rather than what is clear to me. Which leaves me a lot to discuss.

The premise of the Ling Shu seems to be creating a document that will communicate the theory of Chinese medicine for posterity. Chapter 9 appears to be one of the meatiest chapters in the whole book in regard to diagnosis and treatment.

“Respect and serve Heaven’s way. Please discuss, from beginning to end, the regulations of the major channels. One should know by taking the pulse at the Pulse Mouth and the Man’s Receptor, whether yin and yang are in excess or deficient, balanced or not balanced, according to the wholeness of heaven’s way. So it is said that the balanced man is not ill. Not ill means the pulses at the wrist and at Man’s Receptor point are in resonance with the four seasons, that top and bottom are mutually responsive and together with the comings and goings. The six channels pulses are neither blocked nor agitated. The body’s branches are mutually controlled and managed as to cold or heat. The physical form, the flesh, blood and qi must be appropriate. This is what it is to be a balanced man."
– “From Beginning to End”, Ling Shu

According to the notes in my text, Pulse Mouth is the radial artery while Man’s Receptor is the carotid. I was really surprised to see this so clearly laid out and the importance of these pulses highlighted since my acupuncture education didn’t even touch on the relationship. Seems like a bit of an oversight to me.

Now I’d like to get into some of the other passages that are really interesting to me. What I have gotten out of this passage is that when patient is qi xu, moxa actually makes the problem worse.

“When qi is sparse, the wrist pulse and the Man’s Receptor pulse are also sparse…it is necessary to use sweet medicines…moxibustion should not be used. If dispersion is used before recovery, it will result in the imbalance of all five viscera.”

Yikes, I may be a really bad student, but I was under the impression that moxa was good for qi xu. Don’t we moxa ST36 to build qi and moxa the abdomen when there is middle jiao qi xu. Can’t moxa disperse as well as tonify? Is the concept that moxa tonifies a newer idea?

Moving right along, I am wondering if there are subtleties to the pulses in Jingie that can give you more information about a patient. Like the qualities that we look for in the radial pulse in TCM pulse diagnosis. In Chapter 9, it seems like pulse qualities are described. Here’s one example:

“If the Man’s Receptor pulse is twice as full, disease is located in the Leg Minor Yang. If it is twice as full and rough, it is located in the Arm Minor Yang.”

Rough? Really??? I looked up rough in my handy pulse chart that my lovely 1st year theory teacher gave to me and it seems that rough is equivalent to what most of us call a choppy pulse, se mai in Chinese. Here’s where I get a little more confused. In my notes, I have a distinction between choppy and forceful as indicating a deficiency, interior dryness due to injured essence, blood deficiency. Choppy and forceful indicates stagnation of qi and blood, accumulation of phlegm, and food retention. So if the disease is located in the Arm Minor Yang, can you extrapolate that there is a relationship with dryness and deficiency or stagnation as well?

According to this passage, it seems that one can feel qualities in the carotid artery that can give you more information than just the root. Has anyone experienced this to be true?

I was under the impression that with Jingie you simply feel the width of arteries and compare the ratios. Then you determine if the pulse is fast or slow and that’s how you determine the root. The beauty of Jingie is in the simplicity, but could there be a little more too it? Big bird, do you know the answer?

One thing that I took away from reading this chapter is that this “new” style of treating patients with Jin Gie that CAN promotes is quite old, and quite overlooked. I think that too is beautiful. It’s like going out to the garage and finding an old bike that works perfectly well, cleaning it up, pumping up the tires, and putting it back on the road. These types of things, the simple things that are hiding in plain sight, which offer mystery and new possibilities, always intrigue me.

Thanks for reading,
Blythe