Most acupuncture treatments begin with a short conversation, where the patient may provide an update on symptoms and/or life experiences.
Sometimes patients even set an intention for the treatment, stating what they hope to get out of the experience that day with their needles in place.
This initial exchange can be helpful in the determination of effective treatment, but the real decision of which acupuncture points to needle during a treatment, for the Licensed Acupuncturist, is informed by the process called diagnosis.
Diagnosis can be summarized in several ways.
In the Five Element tradition, factors used for diagnosis include C-O-S-E: color, sound, odor and emotion. (I will save elaboration on each of these for a future post.)
In TCM, or Traditional Chinese Medicine, the focus might be viewed along the categories of inspection, palpation, hearing and smelling, and questioning.
In either tradition, pulse diagnosis provides an in-depth understanding of the interior workings of the body. (I will expand on this topic in a future post, too.)
The tongue provides equally important information about the state of the body and the influences, to which it may be responding.
Sometimes we categorize these influences into climactic qualities like heat, cold, wind, dampness, damp-heat, and dryness. Lifestyle choices like diet and exercise, even the emotions, impact what we are able to diagnosis on the tongue.
So it is with pleasure that I share with you the above diagram. May it at least in part help to answer what patients so often inquire of me, after I inspect their tongues: “What do you see?”
Let me know if you ever look at a tongue the same again.