a reflection: the orbit of yin & yang
on moving between stillness and motion
“Think of your day in terms of sun (yang) and moon (yin),” my therapist said. I nodded, but the sentence stayed with me long after our session ended.
I’ve always struggled with balance. The sun means movement, doing, energy, turning outward. The moon means rest, softness, turning inward. There’s often a quiet pull between my mind and body - my mind pushing forward, my body quietly pulling back. I don’t always know which one is telling the truth.
I find it difficult to embody both. It doesn’t feel like a conscious choice - more like conditioning. I default to one or the other: yin or yang. Rarely somewhere in between.
When I’m in motion, I forget to rest. But, when I’m resting, it doesn’t always feel like relief. Sometimes, it means sitting with doubt, with guilt, with the discomfort that comes from slowing down. I’ve been in a long phase of yin (moon) - not by choice, but by necessity. Too much sun dried the soil beneath me - all heat and light, bright and relentless, until stillness was the only place anything could begin to root again. I’ve had to re-learn how to bring yang energy back into my life - gently, carefully - without fearing that reaching outward will send me collapsing inward again.
It’s not balance; it’s seasons out of sync - spring arriving too soon, frost still in the ground. I overextend, then collapse. Stillness becomes a kind of hiding. And motion becomes the only way to keep from cracking.
What I’m learning slowly is the importance of and. Yin and yang. Stillness and motion. Moon and sun. There’s duality. Nature shows us this: the tide withdraws before it returns, trees shed everything before they bloom, even the moon disappears before becoming whole again. There isn’t one right way to exist. Part of finding balance is learning to recognise which part of you needs tending, when, and how.
We all have an inner compass. Mine feels quiet, inconsistent, easily thrown off course. Sometimes it doesn’t send signals at all. Sometimes, by the time I hear it, I’ve already gone too far. But balance asks us to notice. It asks us to be intentional. It asks us to unlearn the pressure to move fast, to do more, to always be seen - and instead, to listen. Our body is always speaking. The question is: are we still enough to hear what it’s saying?
I’ve been learning how to integrate the two, in a way that works for me. What balance looks like (and what it costs) isn’t the same for everyone. Some of us burn fast and bright, then disappear into silence. Some of us need more yin (moon) than most people can understand. Some of us need less light, fewer voices, slower mornings. Some of us need to retreat.
This means asking myself, again and again: What do I need right now? And being okay when I don’t have an answer right away. Sometimes, it looks like choosing rest, even when I want to keep going. Sometimes, it means looking inward when the world is looking the other way.
I used to think rest was the absence of doing. But now I wonder if rest is a kind of doing all on its own - like winter, like the tide, like the moon pulling back before it shines again. It’s the refusal to push when you’re already past the edge. It’s letting yourself be. It’s giving yourself permission. It’s grace. It’s learning not just when to rest, but how - and trusting yourself. Not all of us bloom at the same pace. Some of us need longer winters. Rest is an act of reclamation. It means I’m finding my way home - slowly, quietly, in the rhythm I was always meant to follow.
I keep returning to this question of balance - not to answer it, but to meet it again and again, each time with a different version of myself.
Some days I get it wrong. Some days I forget to ask. Some days I remember - just in time. The sun sets, and the moon rises - not in opposition, but in rhythm. ike yin and yang, they don’t compete. My body, too, has its own orbit. Its own rhythm. And maybe balance isn’t something to master, but something to move with. A way back to myself, when the world has pulled me too far in one direction.
this is just what I needed to read, beautifully put.
beautifully written ❤️