THE ALCHEMYCAL PAGES

CONSTITUTIONAL DIAGNOSIS.

The meaning of the term constitution in macrobiotic terms is the body type we develop as a result of time spent in our mother's womb and the first seven years of childhood. Our constitution, unlike our condition, is relatively fixed and cannot be altered, thus if we are born with a congenital condition, we cannot heal it through dietary changes.

The question I am going to deal with here is how to know what type of constitution we have, more yin or more yang, as this is significant in terms of setting up a macrobiotic dietary practice which will be balanced for us. The major constitutional feature of the human being is our sex, male or female. In terms of yin and yang the male is outwardly more yang than the female, whereas the female is more yang inwardly than the male.

When we approach the problem of determining our constitution we look at several facial and body features in terms of yin and yang which we use as a checklist as in the following table:

#	FEATURE	YIN	YANG
1	Height	Taller	Shorter
2	Face Shape	Rounder, elongated	More square, narrow
3	Eyebrows	Slanted down and outward from the center of face	Slanted down and inward toward the nose
4	Eyes	Wide apart	Close set
5		More surface set	Deep set
6	Nose	Long	Short
7		Downturned	Upturned
8		Prominent	Flat
9	Mouth	Wide	Narrow
10	Teeth	Large and more spaced	Narrow and closer together
11		More slanted outwardly	More slanted inwardly
12	Chin	Narrow and pointed	More square
13		No cleft	Presence of cleft
14	Palm/Hand Proportion	Shorter palm, longer fingers	Longer palm, shorter fingers
15	Thumb position palm of hand fully extended	Thumb points away from face	Thumb curls back toward face
16	Fingers	Long, elegant, narrow	Shorter, squarer
17	Nails	Long and narrow	Short and square
18	Torso/Limbs Proportion	Shorter torso/longer limbs	Longer torso/shorter limbs
19	Feet	Long, broad	Shorter and more narrow

To determine whether we have a more yin or more yang constitution we simply check all our features on this list and total up the yin column against the yang column. There will always be in every individual an excess of either yin or yang features according to this list. So, having determined for ourselves whether our constitution is more yin or more yang, how does this effect our way of eating?

We know we have to eat in a balanced way. If we have a more yin constitution, then we eat more toward yang, and if we have a more yang constitution we eat more yin. However, when we factor in our condition we can therefore have four possible scenarios:

	Constitution	Condition
1	Yin	Yin
2	Yin	Yang
3	Yang	Yang
4	Yang	Yin

The problem, as you can readily acknowledge, is that if we have a more yang constitution we need to eat toward a more yin dietary intake but if we have a more yin condition we need to eat the opposite, a more yang dietary intake. So, how do we go about solving the need to eat in a more yin and a more yang way at the same time?

The way we do this is to look at the make-up of a macrobiotic dietary program in terms of yin and yang. As I have pointed out in the General Dietary Recommendations the macrobiotic way of eating consists of Whole Grains as Primary Food and Vegetables as Secondary Food. Now, whole grains are more yang than vegetables. Since whole grains are the foundation of the way of eating, we eat more grains relative to vegetables if we have a more yin constitution and if we have a more yang constitution we eat less grains and more vegetables.

When we want to determine how to eat for our condition we use the vegetables by noting that in the categorization I use in the General Dietary Recommendations that Roots and Ground Vegetables category is more yang than the Leafy Greens category. Thus if we have a more yin condition we eat more vegetables from the roots and ground vegetables category and less from the leafy greens. Whereas if we have a more yang condition we eat more leafy greens and less root and ground vegetables.

After you have used the Facial Diagnosis page to determine your condition and the Constitutional checklist above to determine your constitution, you can use the following table as a guideline for setting up your daily eating habits:

	WHOLE GRAINS	VEGETABLES
YANG Constitution YIN Condition	35-40%	50-55%
		ROOTS/GROUND	LEAFY GREENS
		1/2	1/2
YIN Constitution YANG Condition	45-55%	35-40%
		ROOTS/GROUND	LEAFY GREENS
		1/2	1/2
YANG Constitution YANG Condition	35-40%	50-55%
		ROOTS/GROUND	LEAFY GREENS
		1/3	2/3
YIN Constitution YINCondition	45-55%	35-40%
		ROOTS/GROUND	LEAFY GREENS
		2/3	1/3

These numbers are only to be used as guidelines, keeping in mind that you will be eating one bowl of miso soup daily and the vegetables you use in the soup do NOT figure into the above and you will be eating beans occasionally AND that you will be making adjustments according to the weather and climatic changes that occur in your locality of habitation.

kaareb@mac.com