Your Face Suddenly Turns Black and Vanishes When You Turn Around: Illness or Disaster? — Doctor Ni Haixia on Illness Colors and Disaster Colors, and the Three Powers of Heaven, Earth and Humanity

What patients search for: what does a black or green face mean / does a face suddenly turning black foretell disaster / can sleeping position help determine a baby’s gender / do couples’ constant quarrels relate to which room they sleep in / do the positions of the kitchen and toilet affect health / what does ‘knowing astronomy above, geography below, and human affairs in between’ mean

Corresponding themes (medical terms): illness color vs. disaster color · the five colors and their organs (green, red, yellow, white, black) · the Three Powers: heaven’s mandate, earth’s fortune, human medicine · the positioning of images · reading qi and color · Di Tian Tai and Tian Di Pi · the Tian Yi

Opening: Continuing from last time — let’s first settle the matter of ‘boys and girls’

The previous lecture explained that sleeping in the right direction can bring a boy or a girl. Doctor Ni Haixia says that once the principle is clear, the marvel of its application lies in your own grasp. If you are married but simply do not want children, you do not have to suffer the misery of contraception:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: Vasectomies and tubal ligations are wrong — what was naturally open you deliberately block up. Adjust the position of the bedroom instead, and you won’t need contraception and you won’t conceive. On the mainland there are even people brewing thirty-odd herbs into a wine tonic for both husband and wife to drink together, so they don’t even need to argue. The classical formulas can make a woman pregnant too, and Chinese medical treatment can bring pregnancy — boys or girls, you can learn all of it.

He gives an example: some couples end up with daughters every time. Why? Because their bedroom leans south and they have no room facing north at all — everything is yin, so naturally daughters are born; if they slept entirely toward the north, the children would be boys. One man desperately wanted a son to carry on the family name, and after frantic effort his wife gave birth to seven daughters in a row.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: Whether you have a boy or a girl depends on the room — you change your position. If a man’s destiny includes both sons and daughters, then naturally, when the time for a son arrives, he happens to move into a house and occupies the boy’s position; or he goes back to his parents’ or in-laws’ home, the position shifts, and a boy is born. Boy or girl — it is decided at the moment of conception!

The Three Powers: heaven is destiny, earth is fortune, man is medicine — three shares of the pie, and two beat one

So what is the point of learning all this? Doctor Ni Haixia turns the discussion to the core of the Huang Di Nei Jing:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: We know astronomy above, geography below, and human affairs in between. Heaven, earth and man — these are the Three Powers. Take heaven as destiny and geography as fortune. Destiny is fixed by heaven, but fortune is in my own hands — I can choose not to sleep in the northwest; I can sleep in the south. Fortune is in my grasp, and I do as I please!

Destiny takes one third, fortune (geography) takes one third, and the remaining third is human effort. How do destiny and fortune combine?

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: Say destiny has decided a man can never have a daughter — we fight destiny with fortune and let him have a daughter. If destiny denies him a son, we move him to the northwest corner, to the north, and let him have a boy. Once human effort steps in, medicine claims another third. Geography’s third plus human effort’s third makes two thirds — and two thirds beats destiny’s one third!

So if you possess excellent medical skill and also understand how to adjust the geography of a home, when the great limit (the end of the life span) arrives, you can break through the mortal limit. This is why the Yellow Emperor said ‘know astronomy above, geography below, and human affairs in between’ — this way of medicine can be passed down through the ages.

Why Western medicine cannot break through destiny, but Chinese medicine can

At this point Doctor Ni Haixia turns sharp. In clinical practice today, when a fortune-teller says a person’s great limit has come and disaster is upon him, he runs to Western medicine —

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: Western medicine says: sorry, Chinese medicine is the supplement, we are the main treatment — send him to the hospital. They cut him open, kill him, and he dies. Look at today: everyone whose destiny is fulfilled dies — all of them, in Western medicine. Western medicine has no way to break through destiny at all — it operates entirely within destiny; those fated to die, die.

When a Chinese physician (a classical formula practitioner) steps in, it is different: first, he changes the layout of the home, emotional balance is restored, and the worry, brooding, sorrow and fear are gone — the household has few anxieties left, and they dissolve; second, when he acts, he moves the person to a position that extends life and nourishes health — heaven and earth nourish him, and medicines nourish him too; he gathers the qi of the earth. Medical skill exceeds the mandate of heaven. This is how we dissolve the disasters of illness.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: Western medicine pours so much money in and still works entirely within destiny — those fated to die simply cannot break through the barrier of destiny. And beyond illness there are calamities — hit by a car, burned in a fire, drowned, suffocated — a whole host of disasters.

The physician’s highest level: none of the patient’s questions can be answered by a formula

The focus of this lecture moves from ‘illness’ to ‘disaster.’ Doctor Ni Haixia says that when you are a doctor, patients come to you not only with physiological questions but with psychological ones:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: You have liver disease. Liver disease injures the liver, so you should avoid frequent anger — every outburst harms your liver. Medication can fix your liver, but the emotion is still there; the environment has not changed, so you keep getting angry. I can help you — and he begins searching for what in the home makes this person angry. At a glance: the positions are all wrong! When you tell him ‘your positions are wrong, the fault is yours,’ he thinks it over and agrees: I never imagined the fault was mine! And at that moment he lets go.

The result? Two hours later his appetite opens wide and he starts eating — ‘it’s all my fault.’ Once he finds the solution, he is suddenly enlightened, and the qi of pent-up emotion disperses. Only then do you begin treating him.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: A physician has to reach this stage. Otherwise how can you write a prescription? The questions he raises — none of them can be cured by a formula. My daughter likes to wear skirts or trousers — how do you prescribe for that? There are strong yang-tonifying herbs, but she shows no sign of illness, her yang qi is not deficient — why would you give all that yang medicine? Extreme yang gives birth to yin; eat it and she’ll feel colder. Not good!

So what to do? You must harness the power of heaven and earth — medicines are, after all, products of heaven and earth. We eat rice because rice follows the characteristics of the four seasons; we too must use the characteristics of the four seasons to return a person to his proper position. Once he is repositioned, the phenomenon of ‘the lower offending the upper’ disappears.

The positioning of images: the kitchen is a knife, the toilet governs quarrels, the living room is the guest

Next he explains the ‘images’ (xiang) of the I Ching. Doctor Ni Haixia says, you have seen the Ling Gui Ba Fa (Eight Methods of the Spirit Turtle) — that is positioning by ‘numbers’: Kan 1, Kun 2, Zhen 3, Xun 4, Zhong 5, Qian 6, Dui 7, Gen 8, Li 9 — matched up, that is the positioning of numbers. Today he teaches positioning by ‘images’ — referring to the parts of a house:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: What we call the ‘palace’ (gong) is the bedroom — the place where a person sleeps. Then there is the toilet and the kitchen. The toilet is a place of filth, so it governs quarrels, lawsuits and official entanglements. The kitchen carries the knife-image, so it governs the body’s illness disasters — a piece of meat laid on a chopping board and sliced by the knife is exactly the image of a person lying on an operating table and sliced by the scalpel! That is the analogy of images.

And the living room? ‘No guest’ — it is like the guest. A house has four corners: if the northwest corner is the living room, whose position is that?

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: The northwest is Qian, the father’s position. If the northwest corner is the living room, the father of that household will be away from home all year round, spending very little time at home — explained by the image: the father has become a guest, coming back to stay for a while. So many men who do business away from home and seldom return naturally end up buying a house whose northwest corner is the living room, and they move right in — it’s very amusing!

Conversely, if the southwest corner is the kitchen — the southwest is Kun, the mother’s position. With the kitchen there, the mother’s health suffers; when the mother’s body breaks down, if destiny also says so and the geography also says so, problems pile up. Change the geography, add medical skill, and they vanish.

Illness color: dark and lusterless — that is illness

From the house we return to the face. The entire Huang Di Nei Jing speaks of the colors of illness:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: The colors of illness are green, red, yellow, white and black — green, red, yellow, white, black. When we see an illness color, it is very dark and without luster. Put simply: when you see a face turn black, it is an illness color only if it is dark and lusterless; red means dull red, green means dull green, yellow means dull yellow.

What color is easy to treat? Bright, vivid color.

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: If the whole body or face shows vivid, bright colors, that illness is very easy to treat — bright colors all sit in the fu organs, that is, in our digestive system; only deep colors have entered the zang organs. Seeing a green face, we know the liver is in trouble. We begin treatment. If green turns to red and red turns to yellow, the patient is getting better — it proves your prescription is excellent. But if you treat him and the color goes from green to black to white, you have treated him to death.

So Chinese medicine says ‘favorable colors are auspicious, adverse colors are ominous’ — this is clearest when treatment begins: how do you know whether the patient is improving or worsening? One look tells you. That is the illness color.

Disaster color: in the blur of that one turn

After illness colors, there is another kind of color, completely different from the illness color — Doctor Ni Haixia calls it the disaster color (zhai se):

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: Besides illness colors, we humans also have disaster colors. Because disaster colors exist, we die. Life and death are fundamentally a perception, a single thought — whether he listens to your viewpoint and walks left or walks right, life and death hang on one idea! The disaster color is seen differently from the illness color — never confuse them. If it is clearly a disaster color and you tell him it is an illness color, the medical Way cannot be transmitted — the Yellow Emperor passed on only what is correct, from beginning to end!

An illness color stays fixed within; a disaster color appears in motion, in a blur:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: For example, a person sits before you chatting, perfectly fine. When he stands up to turn and leave, in that instant you see his face suddenly darken into a patch of black — and when he turns back, it is gone. Appearing suddenly in a blur — that is a disaster color! It shows most clearly at the place of turning, and at the doorway when he looks back over his shoulder.

So Doctor Ni Haixia teaches: once you have practiced this, tell your children and family — when going out, stop at the door, turn and look back at me, then you may leave. The family does not know why and thinks you are crazy; but at least your intention is good, everyone obediently listens, and rushes off to grab the right positions.

The bank manager of the Tamsui golf course: a green face, and a week later his neck snapped on the tee box

A person can be alive and well, never sick a day — and still show a disaster color. Not being ill does not mean you cannot die: people die in car crashes; some are struck and their heads are smashed to pieces, their heads gone. That happens too:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: Once there was a bank manager who played golf at the Tamsui golf course every weekend. A week before it happened, people saw his face turn green — a flash of green, and no one knew what to make of it. Then one morning early he went to tee off, and the moment he finished his drive, his neck snapped on the spot — he died right there on the tee box! This happened because no one knew beforehand how to dodge misfortune.

So he teaches how to read the color of a disaster: the man stands up and turns to go out, and you see his face is red —

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: Red and yellow indicate fire disaster — matching perfectly the illness colors of our organs: red-yellow is fire, is heat — scalded to death, burned to death. Green-black means sudden calamity — possibly a fatal car crash, possibly walking down the street and being caught in a gang shooting or hit by a shell — just very unlucky. White means violent death — white governs cold and chill; after the killing, the corpse is dumped into the water. White means murder. But be careful not to misread: the lungs’ white is the flesh under the eyebrows turning white; a face that is deathly white all over, white for an instant — that is a disaster color, and that one is done for!

The shades matter: the red of a disaster color is definitely not the dull red of an illness color — it is bright red, a brilliance you cannot imagine, the blood-red of firelight; the green is a glowing green, a streak of green, and by the time he looks back it may be gone. If you visit a household and both grandmother and granddaughter show red —

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: You know this family will have a fire, and those two will not escape it — hold that thought immediately. Can it be avoided? Of course it can, but the price is too high. Sometimes people come to you at night: ‘Hey, we didn’t collect our person — it’s all your doing! We came to fetch him and he’s gone — did you miscalculate the time?’ Go check — it has been rewritten. Who rewrote it? You! So keep out of such matters — just play dumb. And do not be afraid; be fearless — because when you encounter it, it is karma, it is fate.

Practicing the art of reading qi and color: from candlelight to total darkness, and Doctor Ni Haixia’s shortcut

A disaster color sounds miraculous — how do you train to see it? Doctor Ni Haixia first explains the traditional method passed down from antiquity:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: Reading qi and color is said to be the highest form of physiognomy — reading blind people, reading ears, reading facial features, those are all forms, without spirit. Reading qi is the spirit. When you practice, at first you see all colors — green, red, yellow, blue, indigo, violet. Go to the night market and buy a sewing kit — it contains threads of every color. Pull out seven fine threads, turn off the lights, light a candle, and slowly lower the flame until it is the size of an incense stick. In a dark room, with a single small candle, look at green, red, yellow, white and black — you cannot make a mistake. Practice for a while and the candle is still too bright, so switch to a thin incense stick. At the final stage there is no light at all, and you can still see — when you reach that stage and walk out, you see people completely clearly!

But the ancient method has its dangers, Doctor Ni Haixia warns: you seal the windows tight, forgetting someone is still inside bathing — the oxygen runs out and someone faints to death in there. No need for such trouble today — draw the blackout curtains completely and slowly dim the lamp; that works too. Still, the students complain:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: Teacher, this is really troublesome, we still have to practice. I’d rather just recite the Huang Di Nei Jing! After practicing, my eyes are exhausted — prolonged gazing injures the blood, and injures the liver. Is there another way? There is! When you look at someone with a steady, direct gaze in ordinary times, you can only see illness colors, never disaster colors. A disaster color is always seen in a blur of a moment — for example, while you chat, the instant he stands up and turns to leave; or when he walks to the door, turns and looks back at you, at that turn of the head. When the lighting shifts, in that flash you will see it. It appears in an instant — you don’t need to train at all!

Life and death hang on a single thought: why persuasion is so hard

But even when you see a disaster color and go tell him, he may not listen — because life and death hang on a single thought; he does not trust you and suspects you have some agenda. From here Doctor Ni Haixia pulls out an ancient saying about how hard persuasion is:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: Everyone knows Han Feizi stuttered, but his writing was superb. He wrote ‘Shuo Nan’ — it does not mean that speaking is hard; it means persuading people is hard! The other person must come to you on his own initiative — please, please — you test him a few times, and only then will he listen to you. That is why Zhuge Liang stayed hidden, waiting for Liu Bei’s three visits to the thatched cottage — see whether your sincerity is real; otherwise making you listen to me is very hard, and I must gauge your integrity. If you truly listen to me, my ability is in fact higher than yours — I have no objection to being your deputy; I will serve to the last!

Trust makes people give their lives for you. But talent is ‘easy to enter, hard to leave’ — hard to recruit, and once you want to drive him away, everywhere he goes everyone wants him. So choose people carefully in the future:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: Don’t marry a mediocrity — thirteen jobs in twelve months; such a person is a headless fly, doesn’t know what he wants, completely useless. And don’t marry a petty man — you date a few months, decide it’s not right, and want to part; he starts blocking you at the door, at your home, harassing you by phone, calling in the middle of the night, even weeping before your parents — ‘I love your daughter, I will marry no one else’ — that is a petty man! Marry a gentleman.

The secret of conjugal harmony: Di Tian Tai, or Tian Di Pi?

From disaster colors we circle back to the house — couples’ quarrels are related to position. Doctor Ni Haixia says, is there some ‘marital bliss soup’ outside, where a couple drinks a bowl and all is well? No such medicine exists!

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: The man has his role, the woman her place, and husband and wife respect each other like guests. If the wife occupies the husband’s position — the wife is Kun on the outside and Qian within — that is earth above heaven. If the wife lives in the northwest corner, it forms the hexagram Di Tian Tai (Earth over Heaven), and husband and wife will be harmonious — an extremely auspicious hexagram. One day they reverse it, and the husband moves into the wife’s position — the husband is heaven, dwelling in the wife’s place; heaven and earth are inverted, and that becomes Tian Di Pi (Heaven over Earth, the Blockage hexagram): the wife at home becomes fierce. Six yang and six yin are already here; now you add in, stacking yin upon yin, with two more yin below — three yin against one yang. You are absolutely no match!

When a couple lives in the northwest corner, the wife’s temperament is stronger than the husband’s; and if the northwest corner is also the living room, the husband will certainly not stay home — unbearable, he’d rather drink outside and come home at midnight, only to have his wife find fault!

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: We never said: brew a soup, the wife comes home and drinks it and becomes gentle; nor that the husband drinks it and from then on loves staying home. No such medicine exists! This is the principle of heaven and earth — the superior manifests, the inferior is hidden; we must position ourselves accordingly, and extend the principle by analogy.

The Tian Yi: a physician takes up residence in a household

Doctor Ni Haixia says, what you are learning now — and later we will introduce the Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing, the Shang Han Lun and the Jin Gui Yao Lue — medical skill brings you to one stage. But knowing how to cure illness is not enough:

💬 Note from Doctor Ni Haixia: You see this person’s face is black — a disaster color, right? And the northwest corner is the kitchen — oh dear, change it quickly. Once the geography is changed, we watch for which day of the month this event was going to happen. A physician settles into a household and resolves the external disasters coming in, the personality problems arising inside, and the illnesses of the body — all of them. This we define as the Tian Yi (the Complete Physician)! I hope each of you can attain the Tian Yi; everyone can. This teaching must not be spread carelessly — we transmit it only to those worthy of it.

If you only become a classical formula practitioner and resolve people’s illnesses — at most you cure the madman who ‘climbs high and sings, casts off his clothes and walks’ and bring his spirit back — but you cannot change the marital problem. So if the medical Way is to be transmitted, it must be transmitted complete.

Closing: next class — how to calculate the day a disaster arrives

With this the lecture ends, and Doctor Ni Haixia previews: next time we will speak of ‘disaster’ and teach you how to calculate on which day, at which hour, it will happen. He says, once you see a disaster color, it will manifest within two weeks — before two weeks it is not visible; it may happen two days later, or exactly two weeks, different for each person. How to calculate it? That is a whole system of learning — not difficult, quite simple, and next class will tell you.

Before the break, he points the way: return to our five-element division and position the twelve double-hours on the five elements — the yin and mao hours belong to Wood, si and wu to Fire, shen and you to Metal, chen, xu, chou and wei to Earth… and as he talks, he laughs at himself: oh dear, sorry, sorry, I made a mistake! — next class, we’ll continue the calculation.

Compiled from Doctor Ni Haixia’s Ren Ji (Human Records) lecture series on the Huang Di Nei Jing (Seventy-Seventh Lecture)