Yang and Yin Symbols

Yang and yin are a fundamental part of my Bagua practice. Bruce has said that you can’t really understand the trigrams without understanding the tai chi space they come out of.

I thought I’d tie the actual yang/yin symbols to this space as well as show a possible interpretation of these symbols in the context of the single and double palm changes.

So, I’m proposing that the yang symbol, ⚊, represents one side of the yin symbol, ⚋. You could say that the yang line is a single thing and the yin symbol represents two things. But, it isn’t just any two things. It is a pair of complimentary opposites; left/right, up/down, in/out, etc.

So, when we practice the single palm change we are perform one side at a time, ⚊. Left. Right. Up, then down. Even when teaching the Water palm change, Bruce started with the first part making a down, then the second part making an up. The water palm isn’t up or down. It is the both simultaneously occurring, but few people can really pay attention to both. Our practice is like this. You start with what is possible and easy. You do one thing, then another, then another. At some point (after a lot of practice) they both begin to occur at the same time, ⚋.

The symbol, ⚋, is both sides happening at once and includes the emptiness or space that both opposites come out of.

So the “single palm methodology” is one palm at a time or more generally one thing at a time. The double palm change methodology is both sides interacting; the left side interacting with the right side, each creating the other.

The expansiveness of the heaven palm is one side. You can pay attention to the expansion in any direction. It is an up. It is a down. It is also a out. It is also in. The expansion can be omnidirectional, but it is the pure expansion.

The earth palm is its opposite. It is binding. It is condensing.

Now mix those energies in particular ways and you get the energies that the other trigrams represent. Wind has to have an expansion and a condensing. One interpretation might be to create the expansion from a condensation in a particular body part like the lower tan tien. You might experience this when you push up from the ground, but to be Bagua the energy has to be created in the central channel.

⚊
⚋