Fellowship Hexagram Nine in Fourth Place: Why Do You Feel Unwell All the Time? Stop Fighting It Head-On

Have you ever had this feeling—you’re not actually sick, but your whole body just feels off?

You wake up groggy in the morning, zone out at work all day, and can’t fall asleep when you flop into bed at night. Your digestion is on and off, your memory keeps getting worse, and you’re exhausted after even the slightest movement. When you go to the hospital for a checkup, all your test results come back normal. The doctor says there’s nothing seriously wrong with you—you’re just sub-healthy.

You panic. If I’m not sick, why do I feel so terrible?

Then you start going all out. You buy piles of health supplements, sign up for gym membership after gym membership, and try every kind of conditioning method under the sun. Sometimes it seems to help a little, but a few days later you’re right back where you started. The more anxious you get, the more chaotic things become—and the worse your body feels, trapping you in a vicious cycle.

What can you do?

The Nine in the Fourth Place of the Fellowship hexagram (天火同人) describes exactly this situation.

乘其墉，弗克攻，吉

The Line Text for Nine in the Fourth Place is: 「乘其墉，弗克攻，吉。」 (Chéng qí yōng, fú kè gōng, jí — Mounting the wall, yet not attacking; good fortune.)

Let’s break this down in plain terms. “Chéng qí yōng” means climbing up the city wall, standing on high ground so you can clearly see what’s going on inside. “Fú kè gōng” means not forcing an attack, not fighting head-on. “Jí” means auspicious, a good outcome.

What does it all mean together? It means you’ve already found where the problem lies, and you have the ability to fix it—but don’t rush in with brute force. First step back and get a clear view, observe carefully, and think things through before you act. A head-on attack will only cost you more and cause more damage; even if you “win,” it won’t be worth it.

Why can Nine in the Fourth Place pull this off? Because it’s a Yang Line in a Yin position—firm in essence, but handling things with a gentle approach. It’s different from Nine in the Third Place, which is in the inner trigram: reckless, eager to fight, and insists on going head-to-head. Nine in the Fourth Place has reached the outer trigram, standing higher and seeing farther. It understands what cost means, and what’s actually worth it.

When applied to physical conditioning, Nine in the Fourth Place boils down to one word: slow.

When a lot of people feel weak, sub-healthy, or constantly unwell, their first reaction is to “tonify” themselves. They go all in on supplements, shoving all kinds of tonics into their stomachs. Or they push themselves to the limit with exercise—gym sessions, running, weightlifting—they don’t stop until they’re completely worn out. What’s this called? This is “kè gōng” — attacking. You’re waging war on your own body, dead set on “beating” the illness, forcing yourself to get fit, trying to get results overnight.

And what happens? The more you tonify, the weaker you feel; the more you exercise, the worse you get; the more you “treat” yourself, the more out of whack you become.

Why? Because your approach is wrong, because you’re in too much of a hurry, because you’re using brute force.

Why More Tonics Make You Weaker

Wen Laoshi often says one thing: a deficient body cannot absorb tonics.

What does that mean? When your body is too weak, no matter how many good things you shove into it, it can’t absorb them. What happens when they can’t be absorbed? They turn into a burden, into waste, into the source of internal heat. It’s like pouring water into a leaky bucket—pouring as hard as you can does no good, all the water leaks out. You have to patch the leak first, then add water slowly.

A lot of people don’t get this. They think feeling weak means they aren’t taking enough tonics, so they just up the dosage. They keep adding more and more, and instead of getting better, they end up with other health problems from all the supplements.

It’s the same with sub-health. You stay up till midnight one day, then sleep all day the next; you pig out one day, then starve yourself to lose weight the next; you work out for three hours one day, then lie around for the next three. That’s not conditioning—that’s torturing your body. You’re yanking your body up and down, hot and cold. How can it possibly get better?

When Nine in the Fourth Place says “fú kè gōng” (not attacking), it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take care of yourself. It means don’t force it, don’t treat it recklessly, don’t use extreme methods.

Your body has its own rhythm. If you fight against it, it will fight back; if you go with its flow, it will gradually get better on its own.

It’s like stretching a rubber band: the harder you pull, the tighter it gets, and it might even snap. If you loosen up a little, it regains its elasticity.

Stressed-Out People Are Most Likely to Burn Out Their Bodies

There’s another situation: poor health caused by high stress.

This is the most regrettable kind. You know perfectly well it’s stress that’s making you feel bad, but you can’t help it—you can’t escape it. Work has to get done, money has to be earned, family has to be supported. The stress is just there. What can you do?

So you tough it out. You keep pushing, and your body starts to have problems—insomnia, headaches, stomach pain, heart palpitations, weakened immunity. You still ignore it, pop some pills to ease the symptoms, and keep pushing. In the end, small issues turn into big problems, and you can’t tough it out anymore even if you want to.

There’s a line in the Xiang Commentary for Nine in the Fourth Place: 「困而反则也」 (Kùn ér fǎn zé yě — When in difficulty, return to the fundamental principles.)

What does that mean? When you run into trouble, you have to step back and get back to the root of the problem. Treating a headache when your head hurts, or a stomachache when your stomach hurts—those are just band-aids. If the stress isn’t addressed, your body won’t get better.

But a lot of people say, “I can’t do anything about the stress. Am I supposed to quit my job?”

No one’s telling you to quit. “Fú kè gōng” (not attacking) doesn’t mean surrendering—it means changing your approach.

Don’t go head-to-head with stress. If you’re dead set on “beating” stress, forcing yourself to tough it out, trying to prove you’re fine—that’s “kè gōng” (attacking), and you’ll be the one who breaks in the end.

Try a different way of thinking: accept that stress exists, but don’t fight it. Rest when you need to rest, relax when you need to relax, talk to someone when you need to talk, find ways to decompress. When you stop toughing it out, your body’s stress response will actually ease up a lot.

It’s like fighting a war: you don’t always have to destroy the enemy. You can surround them without attacking, wait for them to retreat on their own, or find other ways to resolve the situation.

It’s the same with your body.

Three Steps to Conditioning Your Body

That said, how exactly should you deal with sub-health? Here’s a three-step approach, all drawn from this line of Nine in the Fourth Place.

Step one: first climb up the wall and take a look. What does that mean? First figure out why you’re sub-healthy.

Don’t jump straight into tonics, exercise, or treatments. Stop and think first—are you staying up too late? Is it from too much stress? Is it from irregular eating habits? Is it from sitting still for too long? Or some other reason?

Find the root cause first, then address it properly. If you can’t find the root cause, all your frantic efforts will be for nothing.

How do you find the root cause? The simplest way is to keep a diary. Write down for a whole week how many hours you sleep each day, what you eat, whether you exercise, how your mood is, and how your body feels. After a week, you’ll be able to see the pattern yourself.

Step two: don’t attack head-on, take it slow. Even when you’ve found the root cause, don’t rush to fix everything all at once.

If you used to stay up till 1 or 2 a.m. every day, don’t expect to fall asleep at 10 p.m. on the first try. Start with 12:30 a.m., shift it to 12 a.m. after a few days, then to 11:30 p.m. a few days after that. Take it step by step, so your body has time to adjust.

This goes for diet, exercise, and mindset too. Sudden drastic changes won’t last more than a few days; gradual changes stick for the long haul.

That’s what “fú kè gōng” means: don’t use brute force, use smart effort; don’t rely on sudden bursts, rely on consistency.

Step three: when in difficulty, return to the fundamentals. What are the fundamentals? Sleep schedule, diet, exercise, and mindset—these four things.

A lot of people chase after trivial things and neglect the basics. They spend a fortune on supplements, gym memberships, and all kinds of folk remedies, but they still stay up late, eat whatever they want, and get angry over every little thing. Do you think that’s going to work?

Getting the basics right works better than any supplement. Keep a regular sleep schedule, eat light meals, move your body every day, and keep a calm mind. Try it—see if your sub-health doesn’t improve by more than half.

Wen Laoshi once said: the best medicine is your lifestyle.

If your lifestyle is unhealthy, no amount of medicine will help; if your lifestyle is healthy, a lot of illnesses will go away on their own.

Final Thoughts

The Fellowship hexagram (天火同人) is about finding like-minded people, about cooperation, about win-win outcomes.

Even though Nine in the Fourth Place is set in the context of war, its core idea is still about fellowship—can we avoid fighting? Can we talk it out? Can we find another way?

It’s the same with conditioning your body. You’re not waging war on illness—you’re cooperating with your body. You have to stand on the same side as your body, not against it, to truly get healthy.

乘其墉，弗克攻，吉。

Your body always feels off? Don’t fight it head-on. First climb up the wall and take a look, figure out where the problem is, then take it slow. There’s no need to rush, no need to panic.

Be a little kinder to your body, and it will be a little kinder to you. It’s that simple.