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Pulse Quality Chart
| Pulse | Description | Meaning |
| Choppy | Pulse is uneven and rough. Classically defined as a knife scraping bamboo. | Blood deficiency or blood stagnation |
| Deep | Pulse has most strength at lowest level and requires deep pressure to feel well. | Internal organ deficiency |
| Fast | Pulse is greater than 80 beats per mintue. | Heat, either excess or deficient |
| Full | Pulse can be felt strongly on all three levels (superficial, middle and deep). | Heat, excess or both. |
| Hurried | Irregularly irregular and fast. Pulse seems to miss a beat with no apparent pattern. | Internal heat causing recklessness of blood, condition is deep and serious. |
| Intermittent | Regularly irregular. Pulse seems to miss a beat with a definite pattern. | Heart organ disharmony or exhaustion of the organs |
| Knotted | Irregularly irregular and slow. Pulse seems to miss a beat with no apparent pattern. | Cold obstructing the flow of qi and blood. |
| Short | Pulse doesn't seem to fill all three positions (front, middle, rear). | Qi deficiency or congenital problem. |
| Slippery | Pulse feels like pearls coursing through the pulse, with a definitive rolling quality. The pulse quickly hits each individual finger and just as quickly rolls away. | Dampness of any variety, phlegm, pregnancy. |
| Slow | Pulse is less than 60 beats per minute. | Cold in the interior, or severe qi deficiency |
| Superficial | Pulse has most strength at upper-most level, and can be felt with only a slight touch. | External pathogen (OPI) or Yin deficiency |
| Thin | Exactly what it says. Pulse simply feels thinner than it should. | Blood or qi deficiency. |
| Tight | Pulse feels taught like a rope, thicker than wiry, feels as if the pulse evenly hits the fingers in different places with every beat. | Cold, usually causing stagnation. |
| Weak | Strength of the pulse is minimal, and with more pressure cannot be felt at all. | Qi deficiency |
| Wiry | Pulse feels like a thin rope that bounds up against the fingers evenly but with force. | Qi stagnation, especially in Liver, can also be phlegm |