Yin Yang Medicine

What does the Yin Yang symbol mean, and how does it apply to our lives and our health?

Essentially the yin yang symbol represents nature’s functional and structural designs. This applies to all aspects of life: from plants and animals to human beings and the universe that surrounds us. Yin/yang symbolically shows us there are two aspects to everything, a co-existing that designates separate aspects of a larger interconnected whole. A yin aspect(the dark part of the symbol) and a yang aspect(the light part of the symbol). Yin and yang create, control, nourish, and transform into one another, thus creating duality and oneness simultaneously, on going balancing the tension between the two opposites. These yin/yang attributes correspond to all of us as individuals(the microcosm), and the universe as a whole(the macrocosm).

Each person experiences yin/yang dynamics to their core, including each internal organ, their emotions, mind, and spirit. A person, an eco system, a culture, or a planet, can never be completely healthy if it is too one-sided and out of balance. “Disease”as a disharmony manifests as a result of yin/yang dynamics, and essentially creates stagnation. In Chinese Medical theory all diseases comes from stagnation, and are treated naturally with acupuncture, herbology, moxibustion, and food therapy.

Yang energy is bright, daytime, the sun, the masculine principle(not exclusive to males), active, moving, external, hot, energetic, aggressive, thinking, forceful, ascending, expending, boundary making, expanding. It is the energetic capacity to move and create outwardly, to plan, prospect for and envision the future. Yang is the fuel or qi that moves blood and bodily substances. Contextually this is the functional capacity of a person’s life force – their energy.

Yin energy is dark, night time, the moon, the feminine principle(not exclusive to females), passive, quiescent, internal, cooling, viscous, yielding, feeling, intuiting, descending, containing, regenerating, merging, contracting. It is the capacity to go inward and feel, reflect upon our past,  root and process inwardly the experience of being human. Yin is material substances, blood, nutritional jing, and bodily essence. Contextually this is the structural integrity of a person’s physiology – their body.

Although Chinese medicine concentrates on preventative intervention, it is magnificent for the treatment of an incredibly broad range of yin yang disharmonies and health concerns. Acupuncture treatments and herbal formulas are designed to drain excesses, tonify deficiencies, and balance organ systems that are disharmonious. Conflicts in the yin/yang pairs of organs in the body are treated effectively: the liver/gallbladder, heart/small intestine, spleen/stomach, lungs/large intestine, and the kidneys/urinary bladder.

Disharmonies that root in the yin and yang of the internal organs if left untreated eventually become disease. These disharmonies often reveal themselves in patients quite early through pain and/or hypo-function, long before western medical pharmaceutical controls or surgeries are required. This is really the great value of the organic approach of acupuncture and herbology, as these healing modalities stimulate our body’s inherent healing capacity correcting disharmony – before disease ever has the opportunity to develop. 

At Shenque Acupuncture of West Palm Beach we provide the balance in life you need naturally.