Treating One Side by Drawing on the Other

🔊An earlier lesson in this unit explained that yin and yang are never completely pure — each contains a trace of the other, even at their most opposed. "Treat yang by drawing on yin, treat yin by drawing on yang" is the treatment principle built directly on top of that fact: because a deficiency in one side can be supported by way of the other, correcting a yang problem doesn't always mean adding yang directly, and correcting a yin problem doesn't always mean adding yin directly.

🔊The reasoning follows from the same mutual-rooting relationship covered elsewhere in this unit: yang is traditionally described as needing a yin foundation to rest on, the way a flame needs fuel to keep burning, and yin needs yang's warmth to keep from turning stagnant, the way water needs some warmth to keep from freezing solid. Under this view, a yang deficiency isn't always best addressed by only supplying more yang directly; sometimes strengthening the underlying yin foundation gives yang something firmer to draw on, indirectly restoring it.

🔊This is one more example of a pattern this course keeps returning to: a symptom's location and its actual source aren't always the same place. Just as an earlier lesson on the five elements described treating a weak element by strengthening the one that feeds it, this principle applies the same indirect logic to yin and yang themselves — treating a visible shortfall on one side by strengthening its less visible counterpart, rather than only adding more of whatever seems to be missing.