Leading a Balanced Life

Sounds boring, right? That's what I used to think.

Traditional Oriental Medicine* is based heavily on two philosophies: yin-yang and the five elements. Many Americans not familiar with the philosophy think that yin-yang is just a redundant tattoo, but the meaning is much deeper.

Yin and yang refer to two opposite aspects of the same thing. It is most often described using the image of a mountain that has a sunny side and a shady side. Yin refers to the shady side, and yang is the sunny side. Yin is cold, yang is heat. Yin is female, yang is male.

In addition to opposing each other, yin and yang also generate each other, feed each other, and transform into each other. Day turns into night which turns into day. A person who is sick gets a fever that is so high they get the chills. A person knows they are getting frostbite when the get a burning sensation on their fingertips.

In Traditional Oriental Medicine, the goal is to bring the mind and body back into balance. Not too hot and not too cold. Not too fat and not too thin. Not too strong and not to weak.

At first, this was a hard concept for me to grasp. I though the further you can run, the better. I was raised with the Guiness Book of World Records mentality of pushing your body as far as possible to achieve greatness. More is better.

Maybe it's because I was raised Catholic. I was taught that things were either good or evil, and you should always be trying to be really really good. If you weren't being really really good, you were probably being evil. The idea of just being didn't really enter the question. They figured you were always up to something.

The only thing was neither good nor evil was purgatory, which was a place you got held prisoner before they let you into heaven if you weren't good enough. It was a waiting room where absolutely nothing happened. I remember thinking that even though hell was supposed to be horrible at least there was something going on.

This concept of duality in which good and bad are separate is unique to Western culture. In Eastern philosophy, good and bad can exist together in a balanced or unbalanced way. Duality does not mean choosing between two things, but exists in every object, concept, and action that can be expressed. It's almost never black and white, it's usually shades of gray. This is the theory of yin and yang.

How does this theory apply to your physical health?

Here are a few examples: Running is good, but is it necessary to run a whole marathon? Ice cream is delicious, but do you need the whole container? Dieting is healthy is you are overweight, but it's important to eat food from time to time.

Give it a shot. You just might like it.


*There's been so much debate over the most politically correct term for this medicine that I don't know what is most correct at the moment. This is the term that's on my diploma.