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All lessons   Module 5: Going deeper   Lesson 8

Module 5   Lesson 8   Fu Zhen

Follow-up, records and continued practice

How do you follow a picture over time, and how do you keep training your eye and your fingers?

After this final lesson you can write a tongue and pulse report that a colleague can read, follow a picture across consultations under fixed conditions and know which change to expect when, you know what research says about the reliability of tongue and pulse and what improves it, and you have a thirty-day practice plan with the visual trainer. The looking and feeling itself you go on practising with people, under the guidance of a teacher.

week 1 week 2 week 3 week 4 week 5 1colour 2shape 3coating 4atlas 5mixed 6tongues 7review 8depth 9rate 10shape 11own pulse 12atlas 13mixed 143 pulses 15clashes 168 principles 17neighbours 18calibrate 19cases 20cases 21review 22Heart, Liver 23Lung, Spleen 24Kidneys 25Qi, Blood 26pathogens 27calibrate 28weak spot 29test 30look back read tongue read pulse case atlas in real life review about fifteen minutes a day; the orange days with people, ideally with a teacher or fellow student
Schematic. Read the tongue, Read the pulse, Cases and Atlas are the four exercises of the visual trainer; review is done with the flashcards and the exam trainer. The practice plan day by day is in step 8.

Know by heart

  • The report. Conditions; tongue (colour, shape, movement, signs, coating, moisture, underside, zone); pulse (for each side and position the eight features, rate per minute, only then a name); the interpretation separately, as a hypothesis with a neighbour; mnemonic: first when, then what, then what it means.
  • Measuring comparably. Same time of day, light, rest and preparation; photos with the same phone, distance and a white card; on photos compare mainly the coating; mnemonic: same light, same time, same words.
  • What changes when. Pulse in days (rate and tension first, the root only in weeks); coating in days to weeks; tongue body in weeks to months; a constitutional crack not at all.
  • Favourable or not. Complaints, tongue and pulse move in the same direction: favourable. Complaints better, tongue and pulse not: patience, and after a few weeks look at the interpretation again. Somewhat worse or a new flag: back to rung 0.
  • Reliability. Simple features (is there a coating, a crack, the rhythm) do best; names and patterns worst; tongue colour and slippery coating on photos are the least stable over days.
  • How to improve it. Fixed words; features before names; calibrate blind with a colleague and then compare; fixed photo conditions; spaced practice instead of everything at once.
  • In real life. The looking and feeling itself you practise with people, under the guidance of a teacher; this course trains the reading and the reasoning.

The rest of this lesson is reference.

Three practice questions from this lesson

What goes at the top of a tongue and pulse report, even before the tongue?
  1. The conditions: time, light, rest, food, medication
  2. The interpretation: the pattern as a hypothesis, with its neighbour next to it
  3. The principle: what the treatment must achieve first

Answer: The conditions: time, light, rest, food, medication. Without the conditions (time, light, rest, food, coffee, medication, cycle), nobody can lay a later measurement next to it: a pulse after coffee or a tongue under different light is a different measurement. The interpretation goes at the bottom, on a line of its own.

Why does the interpretation go on a line of its own?
  1. So that the description stays checkable
  2. Because the interpretation is the most important part of the report
  3. So that a colleague only needs to read the interpretation

Answer: So that the description stays checkable. A colleague can check the description; the interpretation is your reasoning about it: a hypothesis, with a neighbour and what still has to decide.

Case. You compare tongue photos from week 0 and week 6. The second was taken with a different phone under fluorescent light, and the tongue looks redder. What do you conclude?
  1. Nothing about the colour; compare only the coating
  2. The Heat has increased, because the body is redder
  3. The treatment is not working, because the colour should have dropped

Answer: Nothing about the colour; compare only the coating. Tongue colour on photos is already shaky over days (kappa 0.22, Wang 2020); with different light and a different camera, a colour difference means nothing. From now on take photos under fixed conditions: same phone, distance, light and a white card.

The rest of this lesson

In the course you get the step-by-step explanation with illustrated tongues and animated pulse models, 16 case-based practice questions, 15 spaced-repetition flashcards, the pitfalls, the bridge to physiology and the visual trainer. This lesson belongs to module 5: Going deeper.

Try two lessons freeSee Tongue and Pulse