Yang, Yin, Death

I was recently going over a herbal formula I am playing around with (have been for awhile) and I noticed I have a lot of herbs that Nourish or increase Yang energy. Now seeing as how this is supposed to be a tonic to help with over-training and exhaustion I didn't think anything of it. However I now see (with a little help from a friend *cough*plumdragon*cough*) that perhaps I am using to powerful of herbs. My internal Martial arts instructor once told me that Excessive Yang leads to Yin, excessive Yin leads to death. So my question is this. If you take a herbal tonic that increases your Yang energy and your not exhausted or training extremely hard at that time, is the tonic acutally going to do you more harm than good, throw your body out of balance, or is it alright seeing as how it is a tonic.

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The more we sweat in peace, the less we bleed in war. Therefore make your exercises bloodless battles, so that your battles are bloody exercises.

That can be a bit of a complicated question. Generally, deficiencies of qi or yang signify a decline in some form of function physically and deficiencies of yin will signify a shortage of substance, bodily fluids, etc. The yang is more related to the physical activity while the yin might be important for helping the healing of injuries.

Yang and yin are dependent on one another for creation, and therefore it is important that a well balanced tonic use both yang and yin herbs. Furthermore, yang tonic herbs are generally warming and more drying in nature than the more sticky, heavy, greasy yin tonic herbs. If yang herbs are prescribed in too much volume or very powerful yang tonic herbs are used, it can damage the yin and cause excessive heat.

Theres a lot more to say on the topic, but the bottom line is that unless there is some type of..."malady", unless you are training hard, feel tired, are a certain age, etc etc, there isnt really a necessary reason to take much tonic. If you feel fine and arent working too hard, but want to supplement with a tonic, keep it light. For example *dont* use Lu Rong or Hai Ma, keep it simple maybe with some yang tonic seeds, maybe Du Zhong; skip the Gui Ban, and use something like raspberries; with qi tonics, dont use ginseng, consider something like codonoptis which has a much smoother effect.

Hope that helps. =)

As far as excessive yin leading to death and all that, again its complicated.
Yin collapse (a state of very deficient yin) at its very extreme can cause death. Collapse of Yang at its very extreme can cause separation of yin and yang and cause death.
Excessive yang can cause a state of yin deficiency which can cause other problems. Bottom line again, these are serious problems and you are not likely to run into them with simple tonics, but moreso with overall lifestyle. Keep the recipes simple until there is a need to do otherwise and you will be fine.

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