How to Fix Sub-Health? Dayou Hexagram Nine in the Fourth Place: The More You Tonic, the Weaker You Get—Root Cause in 3 Words

How to regulate suboptimal health? It’s a question many people are asking these days.

Have you ever had this feeling—something just feels off with your body. You say you’re sick, but hospital tests turn up no major issues. You say you’re fine, but you’re always tired, can’t seem to get enough sleep, lack energy, and have a poor appetite. When people ask how you’re feeling, all you can say is, “Meh, sub-healthy, I guess.”

Then you start to panic.

Suboptimal health can’t be ignored—you need to fix it. So you buy all kinds of health supplements, steep various wellness teas, and try every sort of physical therapy and massage. Whatever people recommend on Moments, you buy; whatever wellness trend goes viral on Xiaohongshu, you follow.

You’ve spent a lot of money and a lot of time. But what’s the result? You don’t seem to feel much better, and sometimes you feel even worse. You’re totally confused: what’s going wrong? I’m doing all this self-care, so why is my body still out of whack?

The Nine in the Fourth Place (九四) line of the Possession in Great Measure (火天大有) Hexagram speaks exactly to this truth: 「匪其彭，无咎。」

匪其彭: Don’t Compete to Be the Most Intense

The Nine in the Fourth Place is the fourth line of the Possession in Great Measure Hexagram. Its position is quite interesting—it sits right below the Six in the Fifth Place (六五), the ruling line of the hexagram, and right next to the Nine in the Third Place (九三), a strong Yang Line. It holds a high status and has no lack of strength, but how does it act?

It doesn’t show off.

“匪其彭” — “peng” means grand, ostentatious, or inflated. “Fei qi peng” means don’t be overly grand, don’t be flashy, don’t compete with others to see who’s more intense. The Nine in the Fourth Place clearly has strength, but it chooses to hold back, to scale back, to humble itself on its own accord.

That’s why it “无咎” — no blame: it stays safe, it doesn’t make mistakes.

Applied to physical health, this principle hits so close to home. When many people notice suboptimal health symptoms, what’s their first reaction? To tonify. Tonify nutrition, tonify qi and blood, tonify the kidneys, liver, spleen and stomach—tonify whatever feels deficient. And tonifying isn’t enough; they have to exercise too: fitness, running, yoga, Pilates—they throw everything they can at it.

The more you want your body to get better, the more you push it around.

And the result? The more you push, the more run-down you feel.

Why? Because you’re chasing “peng” — you want your body to be more vigorous, stronger, more perfect all the time. You compare your energy, your figure, your self-discipline to others. You’ve turned health into a competition, and you always want to win.

But health isn’t a competition.

Health is balance, it’s what’s right for you, it’s not pushing yourself to the brink. The more you chase constant improvement, the more likely you are to overstep; the more you overstep, the more your body will act up.

Wen Laoshi once said: The body is just like a person—if you push it too hard, it will rebel.

You stuff it full of tonics every day, and it can’t digest them; you force it to exercise nonstop, and it can’t rest; you’re constantly anxious about whether you’re healthy enough, and it can’t relax. How could it not have problems?

明辨晳也: Wellness Starts With Getting the Direction Right

The Xiang Commentary (象传) says: 「匪其彭，无咎，明辨晳也。」

“Ming bian xi ye” means you have to see things clearly and think them through. More isn’t always better—what’s appropriate is best. If you’re heading in the wrong direction, the harder you try, the worse things get.

Many people end up more run-down the more they “do wellness” — not because they’re not doing enough, but because they’re doing too much, and doing it in the wrong direction.

What does “wrong direction” mean?

For example, if you already tend to run “hot” (have excess internal heat), eating ginseng and deer antler every day will only make you more dry and irritated, right? If you already sleep poorly, drinking strong tea and coffee every day to stay awake will only wear you out more from staying up late, right? If you’re already under a lot of stress, piling on a bunch of wellness tasks that make you even more tired is just adding insult to injury, right?

You think you’re taking care of your health, but you’re actually just tormenting your body.

Another meaning of “fei qi peng” is: don’t always think about adding more. When it comes to health, subtraction often works better than addition.

Subtract what?

First, subtract late nights. Don’t drink wellness tea while staying up until 2 or 3 a.m.—it’s useless. Going to bed early is better than any tonic you can take.

Next, subtract anxiety. Stop searching every symptom online to see if you have some terrible disease; stop being paranoid every time you feel a little off. Anxiety itself harms the body. The more anxious you are, the more run-down you feel; the more run-down you feel, the more anxious you get—it’s a vicious cycle.

Then, subtract random eating and random tonifying. Supplements aren’t better the more you take, and wellness teas aren’t for everyone. Your body has its own rhythm—don’t throw random stuff at it. Cut out all those extra, useless, trend-bought products, and your body might just feel lighter on its own.

Put simply: if you stop tormenting it, your body will heal itself.

A Lot of Suboptimal Health Is Self-Inflicted

Let’s be honest: a lot of people’s suboptimal health these days isn’t real deficiency—it’s self-inflicted.

How do they do it to themselves?

Sitting all day at work, staying up half the night at home. Ordering takeout for every meal, heavy on salt and oil. Talking a big game about wellness, but can’t put down the phone. Thinking about exercising, but only going to the gym twice after buying a year-long membership.

Then what? Then the body starts having issues: tiredness, drowsiness, weakness, no energy. At that point, instead of fixing your bad habits, you think about tonifying. You figure if you eat some nice things and drink some wellness tea, you can make up for all the damage you’ve done.

Is that possible? No way.

Tonifying while you’re still damaging your body is like pouring water into a bucket that’s leaking. No matter how fast you pour, you can’t keep up with the leak.

What “fei qi peng” from the Nine in the Fourth Place of Possession in Great Measure means here is: stop thinking about how to make your body more “peng”, more grand, stronger. First, stop doing all the things that are draining you.

Stop staying up late, and your energy will naturally improve.

Stop eating junk, and your stomach will naturally feel better.

Stop being anxious, and your sleep will naturally be deeper.

Stop getting angry over every little thing, and your whole system will naturally feel more balanced.

Cut all that out, and your body will recover on its own.

True health isn’t about being more intense, stronger, or more perfect all the time. It’s about not overdoing it, not pushing to extremes, not showing off—just steady, ordinary, normal.

The more you chase perfect health, the more anxious you get; the more anxious you are, the worse your body feels. On the flip side, if you accept that you’re just a regular person, that having small minor issues is normal, that you should eat when you’re hungry and sleep when you’re tired, and stop tormenting yourself for no reason—your body will actually get better and better.

A Litmus Test: Are You Chasing “Better” Nonstop?

How do you tell if you’re overdoing your wellness routine?

Just one question: are you always chasing “better and stronger”?

You always feel like you’re not healthy enough, not strong enough, not thin enough, not energetic enough. You always think you need to tonify a little more, work out a little more, do a little more self-care. You’re never satisfied, always reaching for more.

If that’s you, chances are you’re already overdoing it.

Because health isn’t a metric you can keep pushing higher and higher forever. It’s a range—within that range, you’re healthy. If you force it to the absolute limit, you’re breaking the balance. And when balance breaks, problems arise.

匪其彭，无咎。

If you don’t chase “peng”, you won’t run into problems. Accept where you are right now, eat well, sleep well, don’t torment yourself for no reason—and you’ll be fine.

Some people say, “So I should just do nothing? Even if my body isn’t feeling well?”

It’s not about doing nothing—it’s about not messing around with it blindly.

What’s “messing around blindly”? Believing every trend you hear, buying into whatever someone says is good, trying this wellness method today and that supplement tomorrow, turning your body into a test lab. What’s “taking proper care of it”? Regular sleep schedule, balanced diet, moderate exercise, and a good mood. Just these four things—do them, and most suboptimal health issues will resolve.

It sounds simple, but it’s hard to do. But the hard part is sticking with it, not that it’s complicated.

Final Thoughts

Possession in Great Measure is a good hexagram—everyone wants to “have much”. But “having much” doesn’t mean more is better; it means what’s appropriate is better.

The position of the Nine in the Fourth Place tells us: once you reach a certain level, you have to know when to hold back. You have strength, but you don’t show it off; you have resources, but you don’t waste them; you have the means, but you don’t overdo it.

Health is the same way.

If your body is in a suboptimal state, don’t rush to tonify—first learn to subtract. Subtract late nights, subtract anxiety, subtract random eating and random tonifying, subtract the urge to compare how “healthy” you are to others.

A lot of the time, you’re not actually deficient—you’ve just been pushing yourself too hard. Cut out all the extra stuff, let your body rest, let it recover on its own.

匪其彭，无咎。

Don’t overdo it, and you’ll be fine.

That’s the health lesson from the Nine in the Fourth Place of the Possession in Great Measure Hexagram: the best form of self-care is subtractive self-care.