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Posture and movement. Examining a patient’s bearing is an important part of diagnosis.

• Flailing of the limbs, agitation and talkativeness, or manic agitation and desire to throw off clothing and bedclothes usually indicates a yáng disease, i.e., a disease due to heat or repletion.
• A patient who sleeps curled up, is uncommunicative, who suffers from a general feeling of heaviness and difficulty in movement, and who keeps his body well wrapped, is ordinarily suffering from a yīn disease, i.e., a disease of cold or vacuity.
• Groping in the air and pulling at invisible strings and picking at bedclothes indicate that the illness has reached its most advanced stage and that the condition is severe.
• Deviated eyes and mouth, convulsions of the limbs, shaking of the head, and twitching of the lips or cheeks are conditions mostly attributable to liver wind stirring internally.
• Pronounced forceful spasm is usually seen in repletion heat patterns, whereas milder forms usually indicate vacuity wind.
• Stiffness of the nape, arched-back rigidity (opisthotonos), and clenched jaw (trismus) indicate tetany (jìng).
• Hypertonicity of the limbs inhibiting normal bending and stretching, and rigidity, distension, and deformity of the joints usually indicate impediment (bì).
• Weakness and limpness of the limbs depriving the patient of the ability to grasp things and move about freely indicates wilting (wěi). If the patient suffers from rapid breathing in lying posture and is thus forced to sit up, an exuberant evil is present and right qì is vacuous.
• Dizziness experienced when sitting up, confining the patient to a lying posture, usually indicates either a vacuity pattern or phlegm turbidity harassing the upper body.

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