Yin and Yang and the Healing Power of Hygge
How to stay balanced and grounded in a hyped up world
In a world that feels like it’s going 10,000 miles a minute, seemingly on a trail of environmental destruction, with wars raging and the threat to democracy growing, what does it take to find a way forward to something sane, healing, and empowering?
The happiest people on the planet, in the Nordic countries of Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, know.
They call it hygge, a a Danish term defined as “a quality of coziness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being.” Hygge has been called “a practical way of creating sanctuary in the middle of very real life,” and “taking pleasure in the presence of gentle, soothing things.”
The season of hygge is winter, when there is less light and people in cold climates tend to hunker down.
The Finns, Danes, Icelanders, Norwegians, and Swedes innately know this. It’s part of their culture. It’s about appreciating the smaller things in life, because to the Scandinavians, all the big things in life—such as free university education, social security, universal healthcare, extensive public transportation, paid family leave, six weeks vacation time a year, and more—are part of their strong social safety net, leaving them free to focus on what brings them a better quality of life.
Or as one Danish writer says, “we are aware of the decoupling between wealth and wellbeing.”
Granted, not all of us are fortunate to live a Nordic, hygge life, but wherever you are, there is still much to learn about how you can be healthier, happier, saner, and less caught up in the ways of a hyped up world.
In Chinese philosophy, the winter is the yin time, the time of quietude and nurturance of the soul, and for deep rooted healing to take place. Winter’s opposite, the summer, is the yang time, a time of kinetic energy, when we are busy doing things and going places, enjoying the hustle and bustle of the long days of light.
Each season has its place, which is why in Chinese Medicine it is known that when we live in harmony with the seasons, we become more grounded, balanced, centered, and healthy.
Yet, this is the conundrum: our hyped up world has too many demands to allow us to settle into the nurturing that winter, the yin time and hygge time, brings forth. Instead, there is no rest for the weary; it’s go, go, go, nonstop.
This frenetic energy, all ratcheted and hyped up and never resting or letting go, creates a world that appears to have gone bonkers.
Wars rage over hundreds of years of grievances, imperialistic fantasies, definitions of deities, and the desire to capture another nation’s natural resources.
Environmental destruction is driven by insatiable greed—the profits that come from capturing and manipulating natural resources for corporate benefit—and this greed is rooted in the lust for the entitlement and power that the accumulation of wealth brings.
In a sane world, nations at war with one another would stop and realize: is death and destruction worth it? In a sane world, corporate raping and pillaging of the earth’s resources for profit’s sake would slow down, as the corporations would come to realize that they need to balance the extraction of fossil fuels with what is best for the planet. And in a sane world, the naked pursuit of money would come with a rejoinder that wealth can never buy you happiness, health, or love.
But sadly, we live in a world out of balance, one that is truly not sane. Sure, there are pockets of sanity—witness the hygge philosophy of the Nordic peoples, or the understanding inherent within Chinese philosophy of yin and yang and living in harmony with the seasons—but instead we carry on nonstop all year—winter, spring, summer, and fall.
Everything is about the hype, making it hard for people to slow down. Get up, get to work, work all day, come home, make and eat dinner, watch a little TV, go to sleep, and then, lather, rinse, and repeat.
Maybe there’s a little gym time in there, or a yoga class, or socializing. But that’s what you squeeze in when there’s an opening in the busy schedule.
In Chinese Medicine understanding, this pace of life burns out the yin. The yin—the nurturer, the regenerator, the recharger—loses its ability to heal the body when it’s at its lowest ebb. If you don’t cultivate the yin, you end up burning it out; when that occurs, serious physical and emotional issues arise.
Everyone wants to be yang, on the go, active, busy, driving 100 miles an hour on the freeway of life, without a thought of cultivating the yin, the rested spirit that brings forth a renewed life and a refreshed mind and body.
And this drives our hyped up world. Everyone has the fast answers, but no one wants to take the time to introspect and mull over the questions, in order to think about what the long term ramifications are of a hyped up world.
Paul Simon, in his song “Learn How to Fall,” summed it up perfectly:
“Oh and it's the same old story
Ever since the world began
Everybody got the runs for glory
Nobody stop and scrutinize the plan
Nobody stop and scrutinize the plan”
When Hamas committed their horrifying act of terror in early October in Israel, the Israeli government was faced with a few choices: seek retribution against Hamas and with it, the Palestinians, by attacking the Gaza region where Hamas resides—this is the solution for a hyped up, yang world—or go within, introspect, and think, is there a better way? This would be the introspective, yin approach.
We know the answer to what Israel chose. And with their decision, they fulfilled the prophecy of Gandhi, who said, “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”
We’re going blind.
We can’t keep at this pace. It doesn’t work for the mind and body of the individual, nor for the mind and body of society and planet.
We’re on this mindless path of endless growth, a runaway locomotive that is out of control. We try to find sanity through various approaches—meditating, yoga, healthy eating, acupuncture, massage, being in nature, etc.—but all the good that does comes undone when we get sucked back into the vortex of a hyped up world.
You can try to get off the merry go round, and for some people they manage to do so. In doing so, you have to go in the exact opposite direction of society. But most people don’t, and can’t. Instead they Band-aid their way forward, trying to find a path that allows them to keep their head above water.
It’s a stressful existence in the world, always having to make sure you have enough money coming in from a job, in order to pay the bills—that’s another aspect of this hyped up world. Who has the time to envision what a sane existence and sane world would look like, when you're too busy slaving away at a job?
Buckminster Fuller, the famed architect and proponent of human design, once stated that the world was ruled by what he called “the nonsense of making a living.” He believed that “We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living…The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.”
Now that would be radical. It would be a world populated by artists and creatives, and of people who pursued their passions.
I don’t think waging war on people, or the planet, or the unadulterated pursuit of money, is the calling of artists, creatives, and people who pursue their passions. No, people in that demographic go to the beat of a different drummer, or at least different that the drumbeat of a hyped up world.
No, the people wreaking havoc on the world have succumbed to the madness of a hyped world, having burned out their yin as they become driven by hate, greed, and fear. There is nothing left that can temper them and cause them to stop and hold back from their darkest impulses. They are consumed with rage, with a fire that can’t be extinguished.
And this fire is currently burning the world.
You know it, because you can feel the instability of the world right now in your soul, it’s a feeling of an endless cycle of bombardment.
We need to find the joy in the small things in life, to embrace the spirit of hygge, and to emphasize the nourishment of the yin.
Endless growth is a cancer, nor is it implicit in nature: just as a garden grows in the warm weather, by the time the frost comes, the garden withers and goes quiet, luxuriating in the rhythms of hygge.
Nature is in full harmony with the seasons. Humans aren’t. We don’t know when to retreat, to go inward, to cool our jets and replenish the soul.
This is the lesson we so desperately need to realize. And we don’t have to reinvent the wheel to do so. It’s hiding in plain sight, in the realm of hygge and the teachings of yin and yang.
In addition, a life lived in harmony with the seasons creates a centered mind, and a centered mind leads to more clear-eyed thinking, allowing a person to see multiple perspectives of a situation.
This mindset bodes well for an individual’s well being, and also for the well being of a society. A society that sees multiple perspectives of a situation looks for solutions in which all stakeholders can find satisfaction, with the most important goal in all solutions being the best interests of the common good.
This approach to living, both for the individual and for society’s pursuit of the common good, is the way to create a peaceful, compassionate, and sustainable society and world.
The good news is that more people are clamoring for this, and it’s the way of hygge and the art of yin and yang that can help point the way.