Jill Holden shares about Pulses in The Main Central Jin Shin Jyutsu Newsletter, issue Number 56, Spring 2007:

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When I first read this excerpt from Ram Dass’ book, How Can I Help? [see posts from yesterday and the previous Monday], it opened a door for me into seeing into the world of “textures” as we know them in Jin Shin Jyutsu. Until then, they were a mystery, and occasionally I would catch a fleeting glimpse of a texture, but it would soon disappear and leave me wondering, “Did I hear that?”…”What was it?”…trying to catch it by the tail so I could take a closer look. But the pulses, especially the textures in the pulse remained illusive.

The way that Yeshi Dhonden speaks about the pulses, using metaphors in nature as descriptions, he speaks of “winds coursing through the body, blowing open a deep gate, waters flooding the breath…” My own awareness awakened to this world of metaphor. I recognized that often an image from nature comes to mind when I’m listening to the pulses. I started to recognize that I was experiencing a depth when envisioning a mountain stream, floating clouds, wind making ripples on water, and whatever images come. And through this, I could begin to identify textures and which depth is speaking. This has been a key for me into my own understanding of the rhythms and textures in the world of pulses.

The relationship of Yeshi Dhonden and the patient seems one of a sacred nature, one in which there is a third presence of divine spirit or God. Listening to the pulses seems to be the ultimate intimate experience, in which we bring all of ourselves into the present, the now, so we can listen and hear the story being told in the moment, a dance which moves between two worlds simultaneously, the visible and invisible. The pulses are the story of how we reflect the cosmos.

I had the good fortune in 1996 to meet Yeshi Dhonden. I was not feeling well at the time and was able to have an appointment with him. This was before I was diagnosed with lymphoma. I remember feeling vulnerable as he was listening to my pulses, stripped bare, as we were in this timeless place, how being in the present feels, suspended between past and future, where there is nothing, just being. I was uplifted, it was a spiritual experience. I realize now that this was the treatment. The experience of being fully received, no attitudes, no judgments, and as Mary says, “There is no story in the Main Central Vertical Flow”, but simply the oneness that connects everything.

After a while, Yeshi Dhonden looked up and said, “There’s a block in your chest, it’s a wind disharmony,” and he wrote out in Tibetan a prescription for herbs, which were sent to me from India and tasted like cow dung. I didn’t mind. I carried the experience that I had had with Yeshi Dhonden with me. It’s an experience I will never forget. Soon after I met with him I was diagnosed with lymphoma, which presented itself in the form of a large tumor in my chest, right in the area he had placed his hand when he told me I had a block in my chest.

In this article, the author speaks about “the palpation of the pulse raised to the state of ritual.” It seems to me that the Art of Jin Shin Jyutsu is all within listening to the pulse. As Mary says, “It is a lifetime study.”

It has become important to prepare myself in some way before I begin to listen to the “heavenly breath”. Sometimes it’s just being in the awareness of my breath for a few minutes, sometimes it’s meditation, sometimes a cup of tea, a walk, or a prayer. The way I begin doesn’t matter, but that I have some preparation or ritual, no matter how small, realizing that listening to the pulse is some form of prayer, and where the treatment begins and ends…in the eternal.

Thank you, Jill.

Thank you, Mary.

Thank you, David.

Gassho, Namaste, Blessings

All issues of The Main Central Jin Shin Jyutsu Newsletter are available at http://www.jsjinc.net.