Front — Back – Yin — Yang

Front — Back – Yin – Yang - We have within us a range of seemingly contradictory abilities, views, and attributes. Today we have a look at how they might better play with each other. 

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I’ll get to the Front — Back – Yin — Yang chart as we go along. But first I want to tell you a sto­ry from a decade ago.

A friend of ours had, for 15 years or so, a famous­ly wonky back. For which there was no med­ical rea­son, some­thing that gains impor­tance as we go along.

Any­way, she messed her back up again, as usu­al, by doing “noth­ing.” She end­ed up off work for sev­er­al days. The Sat­ur­day came around and they invit­ed us for din­ner, with the warn­ing that she wasn’t sure she’d make it through the meal with­out need­ing to lay down.

We showed up, and she was bare­ly mov­ing. They had a mas­sage table, which, con­sid­er­ing her back, got a lot of use, so I sug­gest­ed she lay on it, and the 4 of us could talk while I worked on her back.

So, she did. And she let me know that, this time, she was sure she’d done some major dam­age to her back.

I checked, and didn’t feel any lumps or bulges, and said that I was pret­ty sure that, as usu­al, noth­ing phys­i­cal was going on.

One more thing about her, and then, a bit about the chart.

She was lying face down and said that the front of her body felt much bet­ter than the back of her body.

You’d be tempt­ed to whip out a, “Well, duh, it’s her back that’s out” kind of response to that, but bear with me.

As she spoke, and as I worked on her, I had a flash that there was some­thing about yin vs. yang ener­gy that I was miss­ing; that’s just how my mind works.

Anyway, all the way home I “mulled.” Late that night, back home, I couldn’t sleep.

I fell into one of those dream­ing with­out dream­ing states and imag­ined myself writ­ing a book about what she said. And the red and blue per­son (see the chart above) played a promi­nent role and the lit­tle move that was run­ning in my head.

The internal exploration I was doing had everything to do with Front — Back – Yin — Yang.

Now, if you’ve been read­ing my stuff for any length of time, you’ll know I’ve writ­ten about this top­ic before. Assum­ing you’re read­ing this on the web­site, you can search for Body­work and Yin / Yang articles.

But here’s the weird piece… I’d nev­er real­ly thought about yin and yang as it acts as a metaphor for the front / back of the body.

So, I had an “of course” moment = Front — Back – Yin — Yang

In Chi­nese thought, things seek bal­ance. This is so with the merid­i­ans, with the ener­gy pools (Dan Tian) and for the Taoists, with Yin and Yang. 

The sym­bol shows this by the equal amounts of the two colours. But more impor­tant­ly, bal­ance is shown sym­bol­i­cal­ly by the black cir­cle in the white side, the white cir­cle in the black side.

This is the clos­est an unla­belled illus­tra­tion can come to mak­ing the point that nei­ther polar­i­ty is “bet­ter” — “bet­ter” is both / and, not either / or.

You might say that “The West” is yang, and “the East” yin—specifically because the West loves “either / or,” the East “both / and”—something Buddhists call The Middle Way.

In the West, the expec­ta­tion is that some­one or some­thing is always going to fig­ure out specif­i­cal­ly what is up, and what is up is going to be clear-cut and obvi­ous, once the expert declares “truth.”

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In the East, things are not so clear.

From the time I’d met her, my friend had searched for a med­ical rea­son for her wonky back. Only, here’s the issue with that. Her back is per­fect. OK, maybe not per­fect, but not the cause of her pain.

X‑Rays? Neg­a­tive. Physio? Nada, or rather, “It’s com­ing from your pelvis.”

For more of this sto­ry, and specif­i­cal­ly her pelvis, see “My Hus­band and My Pelvis”

So, what’s anoth­er sto­ry about her pain?

Things tend­ed to go off the rails for her when she was stymied. When her emo­tions got triggered.

And I’ve got a mil­lion exam­ples of that happening—blocked emo­tions lead­ing to non-phys­i­cal­ly-caused pain. I’ve seen it with friends, past clients, myself, Dar­bel­la.

And that’s where the above chart and red / blue per­son comes in handy. Or so my non-dream­ing dream sug­gest­ed. Have anoth­er glance.

As an over­all metaphor, (and that’s what yin / yang is… a metaphor) try this: the yang (back) side of the body is tasked with con­trol. Because con­trol has to do with rules and roles, the yang side fears flexibility.

Yang 101 — Beliefs

• With­out con­trol, we “wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.”
• The yang side warns us to “watch our butt,” so no one “stabs us in the back.”
• Forces us into mil­i­tary pos­ture, so we can “(wo)man up.”
• Gives us the “spine” we need to survive.
• Helps us to “shoul­der our burdens.”
• Keeps us from “stick­ing our neck out.” And emphat­i­cal­ly, the Yang side
• val­ues “the right answer” (par­ty, reli­gion, sex, phi­los­o­phy, etc.)
• You remain “in the right” by stand­ing up for your­self, and you do that by speak­ing your mind.

That last one is my favourite as weird ideas go. Think MAGA. Imag­ine what the world would be like if we “spoke our hearts.” But I digress.

So, imag­ine a per­son, caught in rules and roles. They’d want to be a good son / daugh­ter, father / moth­er, wife / hus­band. As if any­one has a clue what that (what “good”) means.

Take “good wife.” Can you see that the way “good” is defined has every­thing to do with:

• where you were born,
• what your reli­gious affil­i­a­tion is, even
• your pol­i­tics?

And haven’t you heard mul­ti­tudes going off on this one, absolute­ly con­vinced that their view of how a “good wife” behaves was the cor­rect one?

That’s Yang.

But please, don’t get your back up… 😉

Which is, actu­al­ly, what hap­pens phys­i­o­log­i­cal­ly, when yang gets agitated.

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Anoth­er friend of ours was talk­ing about “doing the right thing.” She said, “I’m doing it for my rela­tion­ship and fam­i­ly.” Her back straight­ened, and her eyes glared a bit.
I said, “But… what about you?“
She clutched her chest (pressed her yin-heart) and got all weepy. “I don’t know…”

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In my non-dreamy dream, I pic­tured my friend with the sore back tied to the tree of rigid beliefs, try­ing ever so hard to stay still (“upright”), be “good,” not make a scene, be “seen and not heard.” (This is how she was brought up.) I saw her strug­gling not to strug­gle with being a role instead of a per­son. Her back was prac­ti­cal­ly locked up from this effort.

Struggling against what, you ask? Against herself, or better, against balance.

I guess I helped her a bit that evening, because her back let go a bit. A few days lat­er, Dar­bel­la and I saw her again, and she actu­al­ly danced / skipped to the door. That’s Yin.

Yin 101 — Activities

• It’s “danc­ing your feet off,” while declar­ing “I’m flexible!”
• It’s “shak­ing your booty,” while “mov­ing to the rhythm of life.”
• It’s open­ing your heart to the sit­u­a­tion in front of you.
• It’s open­ing your arms to give and receive car­ing and compassion.
• It’s tast­ing and savour­ing the rich­ness there in front of you.
• It’s speak­ing your heart, while clear­ly see­ing beneath the surface.
• And emphat­i­cal­ly, it’s thriv­ing on uncertainty.

My Yang-bur­dened friend, tied to the tree of beliefs, is torn. Her front wants to dance and sing, to reach out with com­pas­sion, to intu­it a deep and vibrant life. Her back is work­ing tire­less­ly to keep her safe by “mak­ing her” rigid­ly fol­low rules and roles.

Oth­ers I know are the oppo­site — Yin per­son­i­fied — flit­ting around like bum­ble­bees, nev­er land­ing, and there­fore nev­er real­ly accom­plish­ing. They’re drag­ging their Yang side around, while spout­ing spir­i­tu­al plat­i­tudes… and Yang is scream­ing for con­tact with the ground.

The key here: It’s not one or the other. It’s both, in balance.

And that kind of bal­anced liv­ing comes from con­scious­ness and presence.

There is no “one, right way” to be, although there is often a “right” answer or behav­iour, right now, in this moment, this situation.

The answer to the dilemma of living is found in refusing to accept pat answers, either from others, or yourself.

We all tend to lean a lit­tle (or a lot) off plumb—as in, our ten­den­cy is either toward Yin or Yang. But it’s only a ten­den­cy. It becomes real only when we let our­selves fall for the bull we so ele­gant­ly shovel.

We can, on the oth­er hand, ask our­selves, “Giv­en who I wish to be—whole, whol­ly me, clear, conscious—what action (includ­ing doing noth­ing) is the most appro­pri­ate, right now?

The next action almost always will lie on the centre line between the two poles, and will be an elegant dance.

Or a non-dream­ing dream. The mind boggles.

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