Developing the Yin part of the body will visibly change the body in certain ways. This series of blog entries is devoted to providing examples of those characteristic visible changes to the body.
The example picture for this blog entry shows a man carrying another man on his back while wading through a flood with protective clothing on.
Which of the men would you expect to be the one with the developed Yin part of the body?
Since development of the Yin part of the body is associated with strength, it seems most likely the man carrying another man on his back is the one with strong Yin.
That is the correct choice. The man carrying the other man on his back is the man with strong Yin.
So what visible bodily change identifies the walking man as having strong Yin?
Perhaps the most common change that developing the Yin part of the body will produce is an enlarged stomach. There is no doubt at all that the walking man has a very large stomach.
The width of the stomach is highlighted in this picture,
and the height of the stomach is highlighted in this picture.
The strong Yin development of the walking man also affects the appearance of his head. The walking man’s head is mostly erect and aligned on his body.
The man being carried would be described as a man with relatively weak Yin development.
The two main observations that conclusion is based on are the fact that his head is not aligned with his body,
and the way his right arm is hanging out to the side of his body.
While it is true the man is extending his arm out for balance, the exact way the arm looks and it’s exact relationship to the body indicate the Yin part of his body is either not fully developed, or has been altered or damaged in some way so it does not behave normally.
A corroborating observation for that claim is the more exposed bald area on the left side of the head of the man being carried,
which coincidentally is where the end of the right arm is located.
There is another more subtle observation that confirms the man being carried has relatively weak Yin compared to the strong Yin of the walking man.
The Yin part of the body is associated with the “internal” part of the body. If you look closely you can see that the eyes of the walking man are rotated to look at the camera.
He can only do that because he has a strong Yin part of the body. The strong internal part of his body rotates his eyes within their sockets to focus on an area of interest.
The head of the man being carried is rotated so it almost faces the camera,
which forces him to move his eyes all the way over to the left side of the eye socket so they can look straight ahead.
The phenomenon of the head rotating one way while the eyes rotate a different way is another one of the signs of weak Yin development, or some alteration or damage to the Yin part of the body.