As a practitioner of Chinese Medicine, licensed acupuncturist, I have the opportunity to work with people every day, teaching them about health and wellness. I have learned that one can not achieve health and wellness without attention to balance. Dedicating oneself to running a business in balance takes commitment to maintaining equilibrium in your own personal life. After all, it starts with YOU!
Chinese medicine often promotes the idea of living in balance, but what does this really mean?? To start with, there is a natural flux of movement that takes place with all of life. There are moments of rest, and times of activity. There are cycles in life that contract, asking us to go inward and there are cycles that expand, calling us to be more active in the world. All periods are equally valuable.
Decades of your life are separated into either yin or yang decades and each individual year has a particular influence for you and your life. The theme of Yang decades is on action, career, and overall movement. More of the learning that takes place is out in the world. In contrast, Yin decades are a time when you are asked to move inward. It’s a time to do more self analysis, meditation, and inner work. Certain years are suppose to be filled with challenge, hard work, and building while others are more for relaxing, taking a break, and indulging.
The course of expansion and contraction that takes place over the course of one’s life is considered to be a natural flow. All cycles hold tremendous promise for growth and self-discovery, just in different ways. Having awareness about whether or not you are in a yin or yang decade can help you to feel more confident and therefore more likely to ease into going with the flow. Knowing the theme of the year can actually help you to stay in better balance. You might not resist the hard work of building a business if you knew that you were in a year set up to support you for precisely that! Or you might relax easier into a year if you had the understanding that it was a time of “being” instead of doing. The idea is to be able to move gracefully through each time period, honoring the influence of the particular year and/or decade without resistance.
In this world of duality, yin and yang is manifest in all that we encounter. But let us remind ourselves that there is always a bit of yin in the yang and the presence of yang within the yin, like we see in the Taiji (you know...the black and white symbol that we all see so often). It is a reminder not to be too frustrated when things aren't going your way, there is a bit of grace that exits. And don't be too happy when things are wonderful, because therein lies challenge. The Taiji is always moving, constantly changing. After all, the reversal is the movement of the Tao.
And what if it wasn't this way? Wouldn't our lives become a bit mundane and boring? OK, I know some of you are thinking...I could use some boring right now! The wisdom lies in knowing that when you are on the bottom you most definitely will rise to the top and when you are on top you most certainly will experience downfall. Life is not a continued upward climb, it's an ebb and flow. The key, move WITH the ebb and flow. How you do this is by cultivating acceptance. If we acknowledge that all we have is this moment, it is easier to accept what is right in front of us. You can observe the madness, the chaos, and the pain, acknowledge your feeling in the moment, and then accept it. With acceptance comes letting go, and with letting go arrives peace. It is the practice of acceptance that we must cultivate first, then the letting go just comes naturally. What remains is a state of tranquility.
This state of peace is what we are after. We are happy and healthy! Acupuncture is a tool that can be used to regain balance in one’s life. Many people come to me for acupuncture in order to relieve stress. They leave feeling more relaxed and at ease in their bodies. This is in part due to the balancing effect that acupuncture has on your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. It’s a quick way to retrain the body’s response to stress so that you can begin to live a healthier more balance life.