How to Improve your Pulse Skills, Part Two

As I mentioned in my last post, there are two things that spring to mind in answer to the question, “how can I improve my pulse skills right now?” Last time I talked about how a pulse journal can help you review and evaluate how useful your pulse diagnosis actually is for you in your work. This time, I want to talk to you about taking stock of how you actually treat people.

During our schooling and through our continuing education work, we are usually exposed to more than one conceptual framework or acupuncture style. There are so many styles of acupuncture out there, I hesitate to even try to make a list. I think it is important when considering styles of acupuncture to keep three things in mind:

1: Most acupuncture styles are based on the same source materials – virtually everyone traces their styles back to one or more of the acupuncture classics.
2: Most acupuncture styles are describing the same things – whatever terminology people use, we tend to all be describing an imbalance in the body, and we are trying to bring the body back into a state of better balance.
3: Most acupuncture styles work well – despite strong opinions that may arise during your career about the relative merits of different styles, if a style does not work it does not survive. Anyone who has been in business for any length of time is doing something right.

You may be a purist in a single style, or you may pick and choose from the different methods to which you have been exposed over the years. Whatever you do is ok. What I want you to consider for the purposes of this exercise is what exactly do you do? So I want you to take stock of what treatments you do on a regular basis. And when I say “take stock” I really mean just that – make a big list of every treatment you can remember doing in recent history. Go over your past files, or just sit down at the end of each day or each week and remember what you did for each client. And write everything down.

Once you have this list of treatments, I want you to think about how you take the pulse. I want you to ask yourself if the information you get from the pulse is enough to allow you to make a clear distinction between each of the treatments you have on your list. If the answer is “no,” ask yourself the following questions:

1: Where do I get the information that helps me make a choice between all these treatment patterns? Is it from asking? Abdominal palpation? Facial diagnosis? Smells? Voice patterns?... and so on.
2: Would I like to be able to diagnose all these patterns using the pulse as my primary method of gathering information?
3: What would I need to be able to read in the pulse about the Qi of the body to make this happen?

Once you have your answers, you have several options available for moving forward. Go to your pulse books and your notes from your classes to see if such information is there. Talk with colleagues and teachers to see if anyone can advise you on how to move forward. Necessity is the mother of innovation. Identifying what you are missing and what you WANT to be able to feel in the pulse is a great first step in finding it there.

For those of you coming to the pulse class weekend, I highly recommend keeping a pulse journal for a couple weeks and taking stock of how you actually treat (or think about treatment). One of the goals in Simplifying the Pulse is to help every participant tailor this pulse method to fit his or her unique and authentic way of seeing and treating clients. The pulse CAN be your primary diagnostic method, and you CAN quickly and easily differentiate among all the patterns you commonly treat using the pulse. Many people over the years have told me that they only use their pulse diagnosis to confirm broad-stroke aspects of their diagnosis. If you choose to work this way, that is completely fine. If you distrust your pulse-taking skills and feel that you cannot use the pulse reliably to determine how the balance of Qi in the body is out of harmony, I encourage you to take control, take stock of how you work and think right now, and make changes that help you feel like you are doing the best and most joyful work you can.