Assessing Health Issues Using BaZi

Health is wealth, they say. And we really do tend to commonly forget this adage. Besides the pain or suffering, without good physical, mental and emotional health, we aren't able to enjoy any aspects in our material life!

With this in mind, this week I'll let to talk a bit on BaZi and health - more so on overall concepts and application. However, first a quick recap - we all know that each body part can be represented by a Heavenly Stem or Earthly Branch.

For example, Jia can represent the gall bladder and Yi, the liver. Ding represents the eyes while Bing, the shoulder. Wu is the back while Ji is the stomach. Geng, on the other hand, are the large intestines and Xin, female genitalia. Ren and Gui can represent the "water" organs such as the kidneys and bladder (for further details, you can refer to many of the books and materials produced by the Academy).

One basic way of relating body parts to the elements and branches is simply to remember that fire rises to the top while water sinks to the bottom. That's why the "fire" parts tend to be on the upper body and vice-versa for the "water" parts!

While teaching a recent class, I reminded the students that while the BaZi chart can represent and foretell one's personality, issues and highlights, only the key issues and representations are present in the chart. After all, the static BaZi chart can only fit 4 stems and 4 branches; similarly, you simply can't fit all body parts into the chart!

As such, what's in the chart usually represent potential issues relating to the parts present in the chart. However, we can also check what element is severely weak or missing as these too may point to potential problems in the physical body (correspondingly, the parts represented by other stems, branches and elements not included you can safely assume are generally ok).

Examine the overall balance. Is there an element that's particularly strong? If so, that may point to a problematic area such as when that element is suddenly weakened in a particular Luck Pillar, for example. In addition, too strong an element will also "attack" the element it controls - so the body part associated with the attacked element may suffer.

To further assess health aspects, layer on the stem and branch relationships such as clashes, harm and destructions. Check to see how and importantly, v*when* these relationships occur. Keep in mind that the dynamic aspects of BaZi (what's stems or branches have made an appearance in the Luck and Annual Pillars, for example) will play a key part as well.


Toh Kong Eu
MA Instructor