When trying to understand acupuncture and oriental medicine it is helpful to understand a little bit about the worldview and culture  from which it arose.  Although this is not an essential prerequisite for someone to benefit from acupuncture therapy….it is worth looking into to have a greater appreciation of this form of medicine in general. 

So to start at the beginning:Yin and Yang.  We have all heard these terms although most of the time the TV and movies mispronounce them as YING and YANG.(If you really want to impress your acupuncturist say the word Yang with a long A almost like you are saying Young.  

So what are yin and yang all about?  They are opposites. 

The Ancient Chinese sought a way to systematically observe and classify the world around them so as to better understand how things worked. 

They sought to classify the world in terms of  Black and White.

 Yin and Yang are defined as the shady side of a hill and the sunny side of a hill, respectively.  But metaphorically the concept of opposites can be applied to each and every thing in the world, including humans and their physiology.

Someone with a loud voice?  They have more yang

Someone who is thin and frail?  They are more yin.

And so on it goes ad infinitum

What this means for the practice of acupuncture and oriental medicine is that each disease is diagnosed first according to these two conditions……Is it more yin or more yang?  

Sounds simple, yes it is.  However if you start at this point you never miss the forest for the trees.   Western medicine is fantastic at breaking down disease processes to the tiniest little minutiae.  They narrow down a disease to the precise type of cell component that is malfunctioning.    However they often miss out on giving the patient the requisite prescription of stop doing X and do more of Y and this cell will not malfunction. 

If you can grasp the fundamental concepts of yin and yang, then the foundation is set to understand all of Oriental Medicine.  

Up Next: The five elements