Balance

I don’t know about you but this year Christmas and the New Year completely exhausted me!  Don’t get me wrong, I had the best time celebrating with family and friends; having cousins staying for sleep overs, family and friends visiting, chatting till the wee small hours, trip to the panto, spoilt rotten having 2 lovely big days out for Christmas and Boxing day surrounded by almost 30 of the clan both days, all with my littlest having her 6th birthday party thrown in for good measure, but as we’ve reached the ‘back to work/school’ time… I feel like I need a week off to recover!

I find when asking people about their Christmas you either get one of two responses, either something along the lines of, “it was very quiet” or “it went in a blink, we were so busy!”

It got me thinking about balance and looking at my Christmas ‘break’ in terms of balance.

I’m sure you’ve all heard of yin and yang and would recognise the symbol used to represent it.  In the Collins dictionary it is explained as being,

“two complementary principles of Chinese philosophy: Yin is negative, dark, and feminine, Yang positive, bright, and masculine. Their interaction is thought to maintain the harmony of the universe and to influence everything within it”

Yin and Yang symbolise the fact that there’s a universal balance between all opposites; small and big, male and female, dark and light, growth and decay, and so on. 

The actual word yin means ‘shady side’ and Yang means ‘sunny side’.

Basically the yin represents all that is quiet and restful, think of hibernation stage and the yang is loud and full of movement… like the party stage.

Everything in Chinese Medicine is all about balance and living in harmony.  And upon reflection I completely understand why I feel so tired and why I’m yearning for the more yin side of life to take over for a while. I am totally ‘yanged’ out!

So moral of the story is, when you know it’s going to be a crazy few weeks, make a conscious decision to plan in a few ‘lazy’ days, acknowledge the rest being just as important as the party and enjoy both in equal parts.  Well that’s my plan for next year anyway…. Here’s hoping!

Sarah x