Balancing the Yin and Yang

An imperative for those seeking a sustainable, healthy future

Yin is the soft, receptive, open, passive energy.

Yang is focused, directive, fast, hard, aggressive energy.

Both are essential, neither is right or wrong. While it is easy to have this conversation collapse into simple gender issues of male and female, it is important to acknowledge the masculine and feminine that resides in all of us, whether we are men or women. We also have systems, structures and places that are more yin or yang. (New York, Yang; Hawaii, Yin, for example)

Our current world is about achievement, constant growth, success at all cost, focus, ambition, drive, action, making money....

Question? If this balance stays as it is right now, with the scale tipped well and truly to the yang energy side, will there be any change at all around how we care for the environment, the future, our health, and our general life balance? I ask you to truly stand in this question, whether you are male or female.

The balance of yin and yang has been out for over 2000 years, with the feminine energy marginalised, extremely undervalued, discarded. How do we know this? The work of women, raising children, nurturing homes, caring for the sick and elderly, caring for men, teaching.. is not at all recognised in our measures of gross domestic product, neither is a value metric given to this type of work. We see much more value in someone making a billion dollars from fancy financial engineering that does not contribute any real value to the world (money making money from money), than from a person who works long and hard to raise a healthy child. Riane Eisler has written on this subject extensively, and provides significant research on the subject of caring economies.

If we want to see the kind of change in the world that will ensure the healthy survival of our children, then we need to balance the yin and yang energy. We need to consciously choose to bring in more yin. Not too much, but enough to honour the harmony that allows Universe and nature to thrive. This is not a wish, this is an imperative. And indeed, I would suggest that it is also a yearning. Even the hardest driven yang person, if they pause for just a nano second, may recognise that in the depths of their being, they have a longing for stillness. For not doing. For not carrying. For not driving. For allowing their constantly active mind to turn to mush. And indeed when the yang personality does this, they often do it through self medication...alcohol, sex, TV, drugs...because the non-doing world is so terrifying in its unknown, uncomfortable qualities, and a fear that to even step into it for that nano second will be like falling into an eternal abyss.

I propose that unless we bring more yin into the world as a conscious focus, then all the systems that are currently in breakdown will continue on their downward trajectory, and the entire system will collapse. I also propose that until we include an intention of restoring some balance of the yin and yang, than any attempt to care for the environment, create different platforms of economy that are not so heavily skewed to making the rich richer, or to really embrace a sustainable world, will never really take root.

By bringing more yin into our work and lives, the focus will natural shift. The DNA of positive deviance embraces this kind of balance, for positive deviants seek not just action, but reflection. They are willing to sit still in the question seeking insight, to hold the whole before dividing it into parts. (In a future article I will write about ways that businesses can do bring more yin energy into the mix.)

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