chūn xià yǎng yáng, qiū dōng yǎng yīn
Reviewed · 2026-09
At a glance
The line that set the pattern for seasonal therapy, and one of the most argued-over sentences in the corpus. Read simply, it says: work with the season’s own movement instead of against it.
Taken at face value the instruction looks backwards — why nourish yang when yang is already abundant? That is precisely why the line has attracted so much commentary. The plainest reading is the one the chapter supports: follow the movement of the season rather than counteracting it, and the year’s growth and storage will take care of themselves.
What matters for a reader is the grammar. 以從其根 — by following the root. The season is the root; the regimen is what follows from it.
Passages where the term does real work, with the original, pinyin and English on the same line.
Every rendering below is a decision about which reader is being addressed. There is no neutral option.
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Reading path
This term belongs to Foundations — the five core concepts, in the order the Suwen introduces them.