A very crucial factor in our health and well being has to do with how well we balance yin and yang within ourselves.
Yin energy is dark. Yin energy yields, allows and receives. Yin energy is the grounded earth energy. It is our female energy. Yin energy stops for a cup of tea and asks you how you are feeling.
Yang energy is light. Yang energy pushes, get things done, meets deadlines and keeps on going no matter what our feelings say. Yang energy is heaven energy. It is our male energy. Yang energy allows you to pull things out of a hat no matter how you are feeling.
We live in a very yang society. Fast. Quick. Instant may not be even fast enough. The preponderance of what is valued in corporate America is yang.
One of my friends says her husband used to work at IBM. She recalls trying to explain things to him, and he would reply, “Net it out for me.”
Despite the speed of the internet and the rapid pace of change in our society, we come upon a few basic facts, which include that women are not men and even men can get pushed to the wall.
When we are healthy, we are able to balance the yin and the yang energies. This is called balanced polarity, and it is a factor I regularly check in my healing practice. If you understand the yin yang symbol, even yin energy contains yang energy and yang energy contains yin energy. One is eternally creating the other. The light can not exist without the dark and vice versa.
Women can be feminine and get things done. Men can get things done and then kick back and enjoy themselves.
But when our yin and yang polarity is out of balance, all sorts of things happen. Beautiful, rich accomplished women may find themselves feeling puzzled why they are unable to get a date or find a mate. Handsome, wealthy accomplished men may feel manipulated or even emasculated by their wives at home.
Both sexes may experience adrenal burnout if their polarity is out of balance. And as a result of adrenal burnout, their sex hormones may be depleted, so sex drive goes out the window.
A male client of mine described this phenomenon very succinctly.
He says he frequently sees these beautiful woman at Bacchanalia, a gourmet restaurant. Every hair is in place, their figure and posture are gorgeous, but they are followed behind by some guy in a T-shirt and baggy pants, looking around him as if he felt very out of place.
Nobody is happy when our yin and yang energies get out of balance.
One of my friends summarized it for me last week. “I am living in the red zone,” she told me.
This is an invisible factor and one that may not be politically correct to discuss.
I recently received a call from the head of a business women’s networking group. I was in the middle of doing my accounting when she called, but I was happy to hear her voice, so I stopped to ask her how she was feeling. “Thanks,” she replied, then proceeded to tell me how she was doing.
She did not ask me how I was feeling.
She busily cut to the chase of why she had bothered to pick up the phone and proceeded to push me to go to a meeting that would have required me to drive one to one and a half hours up a major Atlanta interstate through rush hour traffic. She also pressed me to find someone else to do the same. It didn’t matter to her that I wasn’t interested. “So I will put you down for you and one guest,” she commanded breezily.
I sent her an email about an hour later declining her invitation.
Your yin energy may be out of balance if you are a woman even if you look very very beautiful, have the latest outfits and get your manicure once a week.
And while I am being politically incorrect, let me add that this is also nothing about your sexual orientation. You can still accept that you are a woman. It’s all about your energy. Here are a few things you can do to be more yin:
- Admit you are not in control of everything.
- Practice allowing other people to win, be right or get their way.
- Get enough rest.
- Create space in your schedule to do nothing.
- Take a nap, a hot bath or lie in a hammock.
- Practice yoga, tai chi or qi gong. Whether you are a man or a woman, these forms of exercise help to balance your polarity.
- Listen instead of talking.
- Follow a spiritual practice. Meditate. Pray. Go to church.
- Stop the habit of overworking. Stop overexercising while you are at it, because overexercising simply depletes your hormones.
- Value yourself as a woman and enjoy doing things your mother and grandmothers enjoyed – cooking, baking, gardening, knitting, sewing and making things with your hands.
With all due respect, I am not a man so I don’t presume to want to educate men about how to be more yang.
I grew up with the women’s movement and I now see how the aftermath of that has affected my sisters and their health, their self esteem, their relationships with their partners and with other women as well as their children.
When I was growing up, I couldn’t wait to do everything better than my mother.
Now I can only hope that I eventually may do things nearly as well as she has done.
