A foundational principle of Chinese Medicine is balance. Specifically balance between yin and yang.
Yang is life force, movement, action, activity. It is light, ephemeral, intangible. 
Yang is what moves the leaves in a breeze, it is the spark that awakens us from slumber.
Yang is summer, hot, bright, open. Yang reaches to the heavens and responds to what we see.
Yin, on the other hand, is substance. It is darkness.
As one of my teachers described it, it is the bottom of the ocean, on the ocean floor. Yin is still, quiet, heavy.
Winter, especially in these days of solstice turning, is Yin Time. It is the time to be still. These are the days to honor the substance of our being. To listen. To rest and allow the yang to enter into the yin. The nights are as long as the days and even as we long for the light to return, missing the dazzle of summer afternoons, we are invited to settle in. Set a spell, as some locals might say.
Our culture’s response to this invitation is to gather, to move, to get busy with shopping and buying, baking and visiting. This is not bad necessarily. It is an opportunity for balance. In the midst of profound reflection we need the warmth of love and friendship. In the darkness we can use some candlelight.
It is also an opportunity for Imbalance, enticing us to force the light to blind the darkness. To fight the currents dropping us to the ocean floor and to burn up our substance with candles aflame at both ends.
The trick this time of year is to set a spell with ourselves. To rest in the weight of our substance, with all that makes us indescribably amazingly who we are. The trick this time of year is to welcome the warmth of love and celebration and yet to risk the dark still quiet of our own profound depths.
The nights are longer than the days. The quiet is more needed than the noise. The darkness more than light. Listening is greater wisdom than seeing. This is the balance around us, it invites us to greater balance within. As my faith tradition reminds us, Be Still, and know that I am the Holy One. Be still. Know.
May you find great peace in the depths and warmth in your circles and comfort in this Season.
Carol Henderson says
So good to hear from you, Caroline. Those lucky folks who land on your massage table. I look forward to following your blogs and enterprises.
I really appreciate this yin/yang post. I have been forced into stillness and my own depths by a minor surgery for a basal cell cancer on my forehead that required a big vertical stitching from brow to hairline. When I told the surgeon I was planning to transplant a tree the next day and head to Boston at 7 AM the following day (yesterday, to visit with a sick friend), he looked at me and said, “You will not transplant a tree tomorrow. You will move your head as little as possible for the next 48 hours.”
I rescheduled my Boston trip for next week and have been heavy and deep on the couch, barely moving–“drool time” I call it.
Now I will say also, “yin time.” And it is gloriously restorative. I love your yin image of the ocean floor–still, quiet, heavy. Yet as I write this a candle twinkles beside me.
Best wishes to you both and I do hope to see you before long.
Carol
Susan Steinberg says
Thank you, Caroline. Your images are gorgeous–and the invitation to sit and notice and experience the balance that’s present around is just what I needed!
It sounds like the peace and stillness of the Holy One has found you and truly settled it. May it be so.