Yin and Yang

In Chinese philosophy, and in the whole Eastern cosmology, nature is a living organism that breathes two essential winds: one that expands and another one that inspires, and they are dominated by the yin and yang. In them, almost all the phenomena of the natural world found an explanation in them.

The core of this concept is that all things are in constant motion and change, that is, nothing is fixed and immutable. The idea of the yin and yang is fundamental in feng shui, which is the idea of opposite without opposition. They complement each other and need mutually to exist. The constant changes in the yin-yang interaction give rise to an endless variety of life patterns. For instance, just to mention a few because the list is too long: Yin is the north, the earth, the feminine, the dark, the cold, bellow, the passive, the soft, the fall, the spirit, the negative, the night, wet, the low, the moon, the powerful. Yang is the south, the sky, the masculine, the light, the heat, above, the active, the hard, the summer, the matter, positive, the day, dry, high, the sun, the weak.

On other hand, it has been defined by Western contemporary science that all energy vibrates, and matter is a form of that energy to a certain frequency, being our physical senses they ones that capture and interpret it as such.

Based on these facts, described more than 20 centuries ago by eastern cultures, everything is energy in motion, the visible reality is made up of flux and reflux of energies, radiations and pulsing fields that move life and make material and immaterial (such as thinking) possible. Everything visible, including human beings, is energy in constant motion and transformation.

Those pulsing fields have two fundamental poles that on one hand transform matter into energy, and on the other one produce the transformation of energy into matter. This is the basic pulsation of our reality. Without getting deeper into scientific details, we can conclude that this bipolarity was known by Eastern spiritual traditions, especially by Taoism and Buddhism, and is expressed in the concept of non permanence, in the understanding that life is continuously transforming itself in death and vice versa. That this hollowness becomes a phenomenon and phenomena become hollow. This double polarity is called by Taoists yin and yang. 

In practice, the ancient masters and the wise of different cultures, used mountains, stones, riverbeds, and plants as natural barriers for protection against the violent forces of the environment, to handle the damage caused by dangerous weather events, and keep the enemy or predatory animals away. Taoists took advantage of that knowledge when using stones and plants in gardens as resources or symbols to balance or neutralize excessive flows of yin energy, providing protection and harmony to the environment. That was the starting point. From that moment on, connoisseurs and specialists would go deeper into the yin/yang effect in the human being, the handling of diseases and as healing resources, as well as to achieve harmony and wellbeing in the homes and other buildings made by men, neutralizing or eliminating every element of negative energy. In Feng Shui, the yin and yang, along with other related teachings, enlightened the long road ahead that started in the East and reached the West in our days, enriching natural spaces and the lives of the human beings all the way long.