Volume 3 Issue 4 - Winter 2008

by Ross Rosen and Brandt Stickley

At first glance practitioners may not see the importance or relevance of diagnosing pain, a subjective sensation of one's patient, from reading the pulse as patients tend to report any experience of pain to their practitioner. This article, however, will address pain from multiple approaches and organ systems and demonstrate the value of perceiving the imbalances that lead to, contribute to, and reflect the manifestation of pain directly from the pulse at the radial artery using Contemporary Chinese Pulse Diagnosis (CCPD). Utilizing a diagnostic tool as sensitive as CCPD, one is not limited to the two common explanations of pain, i.e. Qi and/or blood stagnation, and bi obstruction syndrome. While we can indeed diagnose these from the pulse, using the 28 pulse positions and 80 qualities from CCPD, as well as some unique concepts from Contemporary Oriental Medicine® (COM), we can broaden our concepts to include the pulse diagnostic categories for pain.