What Exactly Are the Sixty Shou? They Are Not Sixty Pieces of Music

The “Sixty Shou” are among the concepts in the Mirror Classic of Bian Que most easily misunderstood because of the name.

Seeing the Twelve Lü and Gong-Shang-Jue-Zhi-Yu, one might naturally imagine sixty musical pieces. But the text’s own definition is direct:

The Sixty Shou are used to measure the shallowness and depth of the place of disease.

This makes the medical function clear: the Sixty Shou are a system for measuring the depth of disease location.

Why must the Ten Tones come first?

Because the Sixty Shou do not appear from nowhere.

The “Ten Tones” chapter first establishes transformation tones, while the “Pulse and Breath” material establishes breath, divisions, and pulse lü. Only in the “Sixty Shou” are these layers joined.

The text says:

The pulse is the manifestation of qi; tone is the mechanism of qi; breath is the movement of qi; voice sustains qi; lü is the movement-course of qi; transformation is the pivot of qi.

These six clauses can be read almost as operating instructions for the Sixty Shou. Tone describes the mechanism; lü describes the course; pulse provides the manifestation; breath provides movement. Only together can they describe both what state a qi event is in and on what movement scale it occurs.

“Shou” is not a song, but a starting point

A later passage says explicitly:

Shou is the beginning of tone and also the establishment of qi; it is the mechanism of qi and also the manifestation of voice; it is the tuning of lü and also the movement of the pulse.

Shou is therefore best understood first as a starting state for an interpretation or qi-transformational sequence.

When the manifestation of tone and lü and the qi state are joined, a Shou is established. Only then can the subsequent She and qi movement be inferred.

The Sixty Shou are a “transformation tone × lü” combination table

The text enumerates arrangements such as “An-Huangzhong, Fu-Dalü, Gong-Taicu, Ge-Jiazhong…” These names already show the structure: the first term comes from the ten transformation tones, the second from the Twelve Lü.

The Sixty Shou therefore cross at least two axes:

• transformation tone: the relation of state;
• Twelve Lü: the regulated scale of qi movement.

This is why they can be used to “measure the shallowness and depth of disease location.” The same transformation tone placed on different lü can represent different movement scales and channel positions.

Sixty is only the surface; forward and reverse directions lie behind it

The text specifically says “forward and reverse Sixty Shou” and gives two large sequences in opposite directions. This means the system is not a static lookup table; it contains direction.

So the next question cannot be only “what does this Shou mean?” It must also ask where it comes from and where it goes in the sequence.

The next article supplies the other axis of the Sixty Shou: how are the Twelve Lü paired with the Six Channels?