Chinese medicine has a diagnostic pattern known as “husband/wife imbalance,” a rather severe disturbance where the creative, expansive, life giving forces within have been surpassed by the contracting, catabolic energies. Acupuncture treatment involves helping the individual restore equilibrium, and return to a state of homeostasis. Sometimes life challenges our normal patterns of creation and destruction. At times the forward trajectory that we have been traveling can no longer remain unchecked. Our procreative energies are not meant to move ever forward until death. Human beings are in a constant state of breakdown and catabolism as well. Our forward moving energies can become exhausted from chronic stress, moving us toward a more dense or compressed state of energy, where we are no longer in procreative mode. We must let something die.
At birth we were endowed not only with an abundance of “source qi”, we were also granted the seed of our original nature. Throughout life, we forget our true nature by moving toward worldly goals and achievements, and away from our original nature. We exchange worldly experience and a false sense of self for our true face. When we become locked into a fear based state of separation and lose nature’s intended destiny for us, we pave the way for separation of yin and yang energies within.
At certain times in our life we are granted turning points, where we are provided an opportunity to turn within, and restore our original nature. Rarely are these turning points happy times. They usually appear in the wake of a deep inner or outer challenge – a chronic illness, loss of outward identity, divorce, infertility… One now has the opportunity to wake up to the memory of their lost original nature, or their true path will remain hidden, unfulfilled, and yin and yang will continue to separate toward disease and death.
A further exacerbation of this imbalance can be found in relationship. Oftentimes the expansive male energies have been suppressed by the needs of the couple for a child. The wife occupies a place of control, and the relationship itself is no longer one of spontaneous love and creative expansion; it has become heavy, toxic, and unfulfilling. This dynamic of control will need to be interrupted or the marriage is doomed. The yin/yang equilibrium must be restored.
When a woman with a husband/wife imbalance is trying to conceive, she will be unable. Balance must be restored by turning inward; paradoxically away from the outward pursuit of a child. She must restore herself first, and this is often the last thing she feels capable of doing. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to turn inward when it seems like the only way to survive is to have a child. She must stop the heavy, toxic, stressful patterns. She must move inward, see herself and her life as it is, and reintegrate these distorted energies through loving self-acceptance, and returning to her original source. The disintegration of the old allows a creative reversal, and a new emergent pattern of creation can be restored.