Not Always Physical

Sometimes, pulse diagnosis can tell you interesting things about a person. I have a regular at SACHR that comes to me for a range of things, often mental. One day, she came in, and told me that physically, she had no complaints. Feeling her pulse, however, I found that the Cun position on her right wrist, the Lung position, was intermittent. I asked her if she was having a hard time keeping things, thoughts, and life activities separate, and she said yes. In her own words, "As I was studying, I felt the whole outside world crashing in on me."
It should be noted here that this isn't just a random question that popped into my head, or a diagnosis that I mystically knew had to be the reason behind the feel of her Lung pulse. As I said, she's a regular, and so I already know something of her temperament, and have a feeling of what may be bothering her. As one of my teachers noted, pulsing is steeped in a kind of mysticism, and that even in China, people feel that if you can't guess what's wrong with them through only their pulse, they won't think of you as a good physician/clinician. So, there is a bit of P.T. Barnum that surrounds pulse diagnosis in China and here in the West also, in order to keep patients. However, in this case, there had been a lot of prior treatment, and extensive history, which allowed me to ask this question right off the bat after feeling her pulse.
Much of TCM has a mental component also, and this case illustrates the Lung/Metal aspect's role in helping people to compartmentalize, or delineate borders around activities. This young woman has some blood deficiency stemming from Spleen Qi deficiency, and since Spleen/Earth is the mother of Lung/Metal, the Lungs weren't being properly nourished to perform this function of delineation.
Treatment was kept very simple, in this case. I used Lung 9, as the Yuan-Source point of the Lungs, along with Spleen 3 and Stomach 36, both of which strongly tonifies Metal's mother, Earth. I also used LI 1o and Lung 7, the former to help boost Qi and Blood, and the latter, as the Luo-Connecting point, to calm her Spirit. Moxa was applied to Ren 4 to help boost Blood.
Seeing her again the following week, I asked her if she was still having the same problem, of keeping things separate. She looked thoughtful, and replied, "I didn't think of it."