The outside reflects the inside and the inside expresses itself on the surface.
It is the core concept of Chinese diagnosis.

The majority of people today choose to find complementary methods to the usual healthcare. Many also choose to take care of both body and soul before losing health. In ancient China, you paid your family doctor as long as you stayed healthy. Thus, it was the doctor who, with the help of the Chinese medical art, would partly ensure that energy balance was maintained through counseling and preventive care to keep his patients healthy. Times are changing and today the doctor's role in society is seen differently. Instead, the responsibility is shifted to each of us. Perhaps precisely because of that, it is even more important to take advantage of the old knowledge of how we can keep ourselves in balance. For those who already have a disease and want to receive additional support in their treatment of the disease, there are many different possibilities in Chinese medicine to choose between different treatments. Although we sometimes already receive a diagnosis established by the healthcare system, the Chinese medical way of thinking differs significantly from school medicine. It assumes that disease states arise from the energetic imbalance. Therefore, it is of great importance that before any form of treatment occurs, one undergoes a traditional Chinese diagnosis, which can then recommend appropriate treatment.

At the first visit to a Chinese doctor, you undergo a health examination in order to make a diagnosis according to Chinese medicine. These include all aspects: physical, emotional, intellectual and social, which are involved in one way or another. The underlying aspects are discerned using the four diagnostic methods which include: observation, smelling and listening, palpation and hearing. These four diagnostic methods help us discern characteristic patterns of symptoms and signs. Symptoms consist of subjective phenomena, for example pain, itching and double vision, while signs of objective phenomena such as the quality of the pulse, the color of the face and the appearance of the tongue. Symptoms and signs are further classified so that finally, through specific differentiation, carefully studying all these facts, the doctor forms an idea of the client's state of health. This is expressed in Chinese terminology based on the body's energy and imbalances. 

The Chinese diagnostics and differentiation differ both in terms of terminology and diagnosis and rarely correspond directly to the norms of school medicine for the concepts of disease and syndrome.