yin and yang

Meaning of yin and yang: Yin and yang describe paired opposing forces in traditional Chinese thought, a framework still used to describe balance and imbalance in traditional Chinese medicine.

Definition of yin and yang

Yin and yang are a pair of complementary opposites in traditional Chinese philosophy, used to describe how contrasting qualities, such as cold and hot, rest and activity, or darkness and light, exist together and continually shift in relation to one another rather than remaining fixed or separate.

In traditional Chinese medicine, the concepts of yin and yang are applied to the body and its functions, with health generally described as a state in which yin and yang remain in a workable balance, and illness described in terms of one quality becoming excessive or deficient relative to the other. A practitioner working within this framework may describe a symptom pattern as reflecting excess yang or insufficient yin, or the reverse, and select treatment intended to help restore balance between the two.

This framework developed separately from, and describes the body differently than, the anatomical and physiological model used in conventional biomedicine, and its concepts are not typically expressed in the same terms used in mainstream scientific medicine.