HEALTH – pulse reading in Chinese medicine

I came across the Chinese way of diagnosis with pulse reading through several sessions with an acupuncturist. After telling him what I came for he read my pulse and explained that he had detected an imbalance and recommended that the balance be restored. I got two needles in my lower back left and right of my spine and one a few inches lower roughly in the middle. The area of the needles was then heated for some 20 minutes by an assistant. Before and after removing the needles my pose was again read. For several weeks the sessions were repeated twice a week.

Asked about pulse reading I was told that there are 28 positions to read. What is being read is the patient’s whole bio-field and amounts to a listening very deeply.

When I opined that western medicine would better apply such method too, he agreed, but stated that practitioners on the western side of medicine as well as those on the Chinese side were far too arrogant to enter into a dialogue about exchanging and sharing experience.

Not only arrogance stands in the way, I would think, but also the western obsession with ever further specialisation. Can you imagine, there are eye specialists whose sole field is the lens and completely ignore the retina.

I'll go for the Chinese medical cure—and herbal treatments—any day. And for readers in Jakarta in need of acupuncture I strongly recommend Dr. Alvin Indradjaja at the O Clinic in Jl. Prapanca Raya PIII No. 20. By the way, Dr. Alvin does not need USG to tell the sex of an unborn baby. He was confused and did not know only once when the first pulse reading indicated a girl, while the later one said boy! Turned out they were twins: girl and boy.

The chart is for embellishment only. It is from Shi si jing fa hui (Expression of the Fourteen Meridians). (Tokyo: Suharaya Heisuke kanko, Kyoho gan 1716). Wikipedia.