Yin or Yang, Left or Right??

In an attempt to lay to rest a recurring question on the positions of Yin and Yang in pulse diagnosis, and in human physiology as a whole, I would like to offer an excerpt from LiShiZhen's The Lakeside Master's Study of the Pulse.

《濒湖脉学》 李时珍
心肝居左，肺脾居右，肾与命门居两尺部。魂魄谷神，皆见寸口。左主司官，右主司府。左大顺男，右大顺女，本命扶命，男左女右。

Trans: The heart and liver reside on the left, the lungs and spleen reside on the right, the kidneys and mingmen at the chi position. The hun, po, gu(1), and shen are all present within the cunkou pulses. The left control the zang organs, and the right control the fu sacs. The left strongly follows the male, the right strongly follows the female, each supporting its own innate nature, the masculine on the left and feminine on the right.

(1)谷gu: literally means "the valley" and is commonly used in classical texts to allude to food stuffs and digested nutrients as processed by the stomach

Simply proceeding one step forward in the order of allegorical associations, we can clearly see the masculine, or Yang, element on the left side and the feminine, or Yin, on the right. This is in keeping with the general movements of the qi mechanism as presented in the NeiJing, for example， “肝生于左，肺藏于右。” ("The liver arises on the left and the lungs store on the right.") 《素问·刺禁论》. Here we see the active process of creation on the left and the more passive process of storing associated with the right.