How to Improve your Pulse Skills, Part One

The pulse weekend approaches! And some of you out there are probably itching for something to do right now to improve your pulse skills! There are two things that spring to mind as things that you can do on your own to really improve your pulse-taking ability – either in preparation for the class weekend, or just because there’s nothing on TV and you need a new hobby.

The first thing is to keep a pulse journal for a set amount of time. A month is great, but even two weeks will do very nicely as well. In order to journal pulses in a useful fashion, the key is to be regular and thorough. If you are seeing clients, do this independently of your clinical work. When you are working you have other things on your mind besides pure appreciation of the pulse. I recommend that you actually use a physical journal which is earmarked for this purpose only as well, so you will have all your pulse logs in one place.

You should aim to take at least 3 pulses a day, each with the sole purpose of recording everything you can feel going on in the pulse vessel. Note who's pulse you are feeling, the date, the time, the location, what is going on around you, what the person ate or did recently, any emotions that are up for the person at the time, as well as any other environmental factors that seem relevant. Then feel the pulse as fully as you can, and make note of everything you find. If you have trained in different systems of pulse diagnosis, indulge each of them separately and chart the whole of what you find.

If possible, try to regularly chart the pulse of one or more person repeatedly - every day or often over the time span. Taking your own pulse is a valid and excellent choice for one of the 3+ people. You will be able to watch how changes in daily life affect you or the other person over time. This honest assessment of how mood, travel, life rhythms, food, etc. affects a person will be of great value to you in helping you recognize pulses in the your clinical work.

Also if possible, ask someone who you respect or who is a teacher for you to take a look at your pulse journal after you have filled it out a bit. What you are ideally looking for as feedback is habits or trends that the other person sees in how you are taking the pulse, and whether the person sees any bias in your work that appears unbalanced to him or her. Examples of such bias might be noticing that you find a pulse to be slippery and wiry in almost every case, or that your 6-positional diagnosis comes up liver 90% of the time. While such things are possible, they are unlikely. Another set of eyes can help you see areas where you might be misreading the pulse. Likely causes for misreading the pulse are imprecise use of pulse definitions (in which case you can review those used in whatever pulse system you have studies) or uneven tension in the fingers (in which case, you can be more mindful of this in the future).

Even if you do this exercise on your own, you will find it of great benefit, as it will help you clarify exactly what you look for in the pulse. If you know what information you are getting from the pulse on a daily basis in your work, you can think about how completely this information fills your diagnostic needs, and whether you might want to search for something else in the pulse vessel to make your choice of treatment strategy easier.