Greatest blessings everyone,


I would like to ask for your help in my inquiry of understanding yin and yang energies,

meridians, and so on, more deeply.

Per example:


- Which meridians are yin and which are yang, and possibly: which are both and what is the

yin part and which is the yang part. (etc.)


- Which foods are yin and which are yang and which are both (and how), and which foods (and

other things) promote yin energy in the body and which promote yang energy in the body, and

which add both and balanced state


- How does one refine the yin energies in one's ("physical") body and how does one refine

yang energies in one's ("physical"). (for example: foods, treatment of food and water (an

overlooked part in my opinion) and so on etcetera)


- Which books (and other media) for example can you recommend on this? (in particular in

regard to the upper 3 questions, if you could, please)



I may come up with more of these questions to add as the thread continues.




My honest thanks - innergy

if nothing else... i would at the least appreciate a book recommendation about it that covers it

You can get a lot of information by doing a few googles

I have done many googles, i have browsed through many books and reviews and indexes of books at amazon.com, eventually i will find what i am looking for, one way or another, probably, but i would also like to use this forum. I said i'd apreciate your help as well, didn't i?
my own searches did not bring me much closer to my specialised questions yet.
i hope this is not the standard answer, to 'do a google', when you want to ask something.
i want to talk about it with people with the same interests and sometimes give and take tips.
but thank you nevertheless for the ''check'', anyway.

Sounds like you want to learn Chinese medicine.

For starters, "The Web that has No Weaver" is a pretty good overview. Though it doesn't cover foods. For foods an herbs there are plenty of books available, the ones I use are in Chinese, but I got my Mom, "Healing with the Herbs of Life" which looked like the best herbal and diet book available for lay readers. As for your third question you're looking for "waidan" herbal concoctions for the alchemical process. I'm not sure there are good books on this and without a good base in Chinese medicine you could well hurt yourself.

Bill Bodri's "How to Clean Your Arteries and Detox Your Body for the Road of Spiritual Cultivation" may be a place to start, though I haven't read it so can't give a review.

Song Yongdao,

Much appreciated.
I have over 15 years of experience with western herbal medicine, an interest in eastern medicine but no very deep knowledge of that so far.
My friend is learning Chinese (Mandarin, i believe), and i think i will start learning it soon also.
Thank you.

And for foods, try Chinese Food Cures by Henry C. Lu.

The best way to understand yin and yang is via direct observation/meditation/contemplation of the behavior of entities and energies around you and within you. You basically do it by making a habit out of discerning whether anything you perceive is yin or yang compared to something else. NB, NB, NB! -- yin and yang are not absolutes, whatever is "yin" is merely "more yin" than something else, and this something else is then "more yang" to that "more yin" thing or event or process or quality, etc.. If you keep this in mind, the world turns into a fun study of yin-yang interactions of assorted phenomena.

I just remembered... There was a question someone blew on Jeopardy: which one is the heaviest, a gallon of water, a gallon of crude oil, or a gallon of olive oil? I knew the answer right away because of this yin-yang picture I immediately formed of their interactions. Which one is going to float on top, on the surface, if you mix them? The one that's more yang. And when you have equal amounts of something yin and something yang, whatever is yin is heavier. So I said "water" and the contestant said "crude oil" and I said "bleep!" and so did the bleep-making thingie they use for such occasions.

You will often google up all manner of lists comparing yin to yang, but they are likely to omit the time aspect, which is crucial for understanding them, and the "how it feels compared to something else of a similar function" aspect -- here's some examples:

comfortable things are more yin (a pair of your favorite old sneakers is more yin now that it has adapted itself thoroughly to your foot; a recliner is more yin than an office chair; a path in the woods is more yin than the highway);
new, recent things are more yang (a man of twenty-seven is much more yang than he will be at seventy; the latest movie is more yang than it will be a year from now -- then it will be sitting quietly on the shelf at Blockbuster's, now it's flying off the shelf, moving fast, going here and there and everywhere; a culture that is 200 years old is way more yang than a culture that is 2000 years old);
things that have a future are more yang, things that have a past are more yin, and things that are "right now" are one or the other depending on whether they ignore what went before (these are yang) or what lies ahead (these are yin).

Hello

So for me with a yang defiency it should be better to think about what is ahead of me than to think about the past to achive more yang energy?

Dreamed about how to act socialy to gain or loose energy just a few minutes ago.

Not a good idea to go Freudian psychoanalysis then!


F D

Better to do less thinking and more doing. Doing is yang. Pondering is yin.

In the human body, whatever happens in the head is more yang than whatever happens elsewhere in the body: yang is the topmost, the lightest (thought), it ascends, and the brain is yang compared to, say, the liver, and within the brain, the lower brain is yin compared to the neocortex, and the neocortex is the source of ultimate human yang, "higher thought." The neocortex does the pondering. Pondering is yang, meditation is yin; doing is yang, getting things done is yin. "Doing nothing, accomplishing everything" is the Great Yin, "taiyin"; "doing everything, accomplishing nothing" is the Great Yang, "taiyang."

Thinking "there's something to accomplish" is yang, feeling accomplished is yin.

For me to stay in the present is to be balanced

But what about a young girl, she is definitely more yin than and old woman? So the girls are time bandits, not following the law of yin and yang?

A young girl is more yang than an old woman. She is not as yang as a young man, but she is more yang than an older version of herself. And when she was a child, she was even more yang. Growth is yang; yin is settled. Activity, motion, changeability are all yang compared to set-in-one's-ways ways, slowing down, gaining "heng" (stability, predictability, being oneself for a length of time without changing much, or abruptly, or drastically).

Then again there's recurrent "waves" of more yin/more yang in one's life. You grow, change, take on new things (yang), then you settle down (yin), then you get restless (midlife crisis? just a wave of yang -- in both sexes), then you seek peace and quiet again (yin), then you suddenly feel like someone new with retirement, start traveling, seeking adventures (yang), then you slow down for good (yin)... These recurrent waves are fairly healthy, but if one's health is out of balance, over- or under-manifestation of either yin or yang can occur at any age, of course.

Hello Taomeow

Nice answer thx

Here's a little illustration of yang ascending... don't forget to turn the speakers on...

http://funlist.funpic.hu/?page=archive&...5&did=11270

lol

here is a chart of Yin/Yang nature of the meridians http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:FiveEle...iurnalCycle.jpg


The Yin meridians have lesser points (they are shorter) while the Yang meridians have more points (they are longer) and the energy (Qi) takes 2 hours to travel from one but to the other, then Qi travels slower in Yin meridians than in Yang meridians. Also yang meridians are on the exterior part of the arm, leg and on the back of the body, while yin meridians are on the front of the body and on the inside part of the arm and leg

the meridians connect the internal organs with the extremities of the limbs and head where they connect with each other in such a way that there is a difference of electrical potential. Along meridians circulate all the electrical charged substances such as hormones and neurotransmitters. Usually in western medicine the bioelectricity is synonym with energy or Qi but imho Qi is that and something more such a substance more subtle than the molecules electrically charged and electrons that circulate through our bodies, maybe is formed by particles not discovered yet... officialy... but that's another discussion. What is called Jing in traditional medicine is actually the essence of the organs i.e. the hormones and neurotransmitters and other substances that participate to the metabolism.

So Jing - essence - is more Yin while Qi - energy - is more Yang, the same applies for blood which is Yin compared to the Qi - bioelectricity - which is Yang.




First of all I would classify the foods by its alcaline or acid effect on the blood's pH. If you look to the definition of pH the more free electrons or negative charges you have in a substance the more alcaline it is, while the more positive charges or lack of electrons the more acid it is. Normally the water is electrically neutral and that is why all the life on our planet is based on water because provides a base on that all the chemical reactions can occur. Also normally the metabolism creates free radicals which have an acidifying effect on the blood and everything inside our body is acid because of the breathing. The most acid diet is meat and cereals (Yang) while the most alcaline diet is the vegetarianism (Yin) but still the metabolism creates free radicals which steal electrons from the proteins that forms the cell walls. Also the pH of the blood is given by the concentration of CO2 and oxygen which imo the more CO2 you have in blood the more Yang you feel, while the more oxygen there is in blood the more Yin. This is because the chemical reactions and burnings of substances in the cells. for example nitric oxide (NO) is made in the cells by burning arginine with oxygen. The effect of nitric oxide is vasodilation and creates inflamation of the tissues and the feeling of heat which definitely is Yang. This is why I would say that foods that contains arginine are more Yang (seeds, nuts) than foods that contains lysine which blocks the arginine are Yin (yogurt, milk, vegetables).
These are just some examples of the recent discoveries that can be related to the Traditional Chinese Medicine which is genial and maybe there is much more to discover by the modern science.

One more thought: the Earth is the hugest reservoir of free electrons - static electricity, what the Qigong and Taoism refer to as Earth energy but Earth energy is more than that is also magnetism and gravity - which are two distinct and separate things that many confuse them (three if you count the static electricity), while the sky above is the hugest source of subtlest energies (subtle particles/radiation/dark matter/dark energy) what is referred to as Heaven or Cosmic or Ùniversal energies

below is Yin, above is Yang

P.S. if someone is interested to see some complete charts with the body anatomy and meridians let me know and I will post them

Read all the info offered in the links provided.

OTH, Five Elements Theory is simply a form of symbolism that really means the following:

The interactions between Yin and Yang follow five basic phases or movements of energy:

1. Fire represents energy rising.

2. Water represents energy sinking.

3. Wood represents energy expanding.

4. Metal represents energy solidifying.

5. Earth represents energy that is stable or centered.