Yin and yang

The two opposing and complementary forces in Chinese thought.

In Chinese thought yin and yang are two opposing and at the same time complementary forces that together keep everything in motion. Yin stands for the dark, cool, quiet, feminine, receptive and inward. Yang stands for the light, warm, active, masculine, giving and outward. Originally the words referred to the shady side and the sunny side of a hill.

The well-known symbol, the taiji tu, shows a circle with a black and a white half flowing into each other, with in each half a dot of the other colour. That expresses the core: neither exists without the other, they flow into each other, and within the one there is always a seed of the other. Day becomes night and night becomes day; winter already carries spring within it.

Thinking in yin and yang runs through the whole of Chinese culture: the philosophy of Taoism and the Book of Changes, traditional medicine, feng shui, cooking and martial arts. Health and harmony there mean not a victory of one over the other, but balance.

In dream interpretation that image helps to read a dream as an expression of balance or imbalance. A dream full of fire, heat, noise and haste can be read as too much yang: overload, anger, too little rest. A dream full of cold, darkness, water and standstill as too much yin: gloom, withdrawal or fatigue. Traditional Chinese medicine also uses dreams this way, as an indication of what is out of balance in the body, although that is no substitute for a doctor.

On Dreamkin the readings according to Zhou Gong use yin and yang as one of the ways to look at a dream.