Yin-Yang pathology and the Eight Principles

Know by heart

• Four imbalances. Excess of Yang: Full-Heat, clear Heat. Excess of Yin: Full-Cold, expel Cold. Deficiency of Yin: Empty-Heat, nourish Yin and clear Empty-Heat. Deficiency of Yang: Empty-Cold, tonify and warm Yang; mnemonic: above the line, take away; below the line, top up; too little Yin feels warm, too little Yang feels cold.
• Deficiency and Excess. a balance of power between zheng qi (your own resistance and capacity to recover) and xie qi (what makes you ill); Excess: xie qi present and the zheng qi fights back; Deficiency: the zheng qi falls short, with no xie qi; mixed picture: both; mnemonic: a city with its own army; an invader inside is Excess, an army too weak is Deficiency.
• Full- versus Empty-Heat. tongue red with coating versus red without; pulse full and rapid versus thin and rapid; clear Heat versus nourish Yin; mnemonic: coating on, invader in; coating gone, Yin gone.
• Picture of Empty-Heat. chronic; warm in the Yin hours (late afternoon and night); only the cheeks red; night sweating; hot palms and soles; dry mouth at night; mnemonic: the edges glow after sunset.
• Eight Principles, four questions. where: Exterior or Interior; what kind: Cold or Heat; who wins: Deficiency or Excess; which pole: Yin or Yang; Interior, Cold and Deficiency are the Yin side, Exterior, Heat and Excess the Yang side; mnemonic: four Ws: Where, What kind, Who wins, Which pole.
• Tongue and pulse per question. Exterior: floating pulse, tongue still normal; Interior: deep pulse, tongue colour changes; Heat: red tongue, rapid pulse; Cold: pale tongue or white coating, slow pulse; Excess: thick coating, forceful pulse; Deficiency: thin or no coating, weak pulse.
• Three combinations. Interior-Deficiency-Heat (Kidney-Yin deficiency), Interior-Excess-Heat (Liver-Fire), Exterior-Excess-Cold (Wind-Cold).

The rest of this lesson is reference.