山雷颐 · Yí
Hexagram 27 · Nourishment 颐
Hexagram 27, Yi, describes nourishment: an open mouth between mountain and thunder, asking what you feed yourself and others, and whether the source is sound.
- above
- ☶ 艮 Gèn · 山
- below
- ☳ 震 Zhèn · 雷
The Judgment
颐：贞吉。观颐，自求口实。Original text · 周易
Nourishment: staying true brings good fortune. Look at what is being nourished, and at how you seek your own sustenance.
The Image
山下有雷，颐，君子以慎言语，节饮食。Original text · 周易
Thunder stirs at the foot of the mountain: this is nourishment. The wise person is careful with words and measured in eating and drinking.
Meaning
The shape of Yi is a picture: two solid lines top and bottom, four broken lines between them, like a mouth held open. Below is Zhen, thunder, the urge to move; above is Gen, mountain, stillness that sets a limit. The trigrams together describe appetite governed by restraint. Nourishment here is broad. It includes food, but equally the information you take in, the company you keep, the words you release, and what you feed to the people who depend on you. The judgment turns the question inward: notice what you are nourishing, and notice how you go about getting your own sustenance.
In modern life the hexagram often lands on the quiet dysfunction of intake. Late-night scrolling that leaves you agitated, a job that pays but hollows you out, friendships that run on gossip. Someone drawing Yi during a low patch might do a simple audit: what did I consume this week, and what did it do to me? The image adds output to the picture. Careless words are a form of feeding others poorly. A manager who reads this before a difficult conversation might slow down and choose sentences that build rather than deplete the team.
To hold Yi's energy, aim for what supports rather than what stimulates. This is a maintenance hexagram, not a dramatic one; its timing is daily and repetitive. Fix the small habits of intake and speech before attempting anything grand. Ask of any plan whether it feeds you in a way you could sustain for a year. Watch also for dependence: relying on someone else to nourish you, or being the sole source for everyone else, both distort the mouth. Seek your own sustenance honestly, and let others learn to do the same.
Common questions
What does Hexagram 27 mean for love and relationships?
In love, Nourishment asks what the relationship feeds and what it drains. Does time with this person leave you steadier, or hungrier for something they never quite give? For couples, the hexagram points to the daily diet of small words and habits. Praise, attention and honest talk are food; sarcasm and neglect are not. It can also flag imbalance, where one partner does all the caretaking. If you are single, Yi suggests looking after your own wellbeing first, so that you enter a new connection from fullness rather than from need. Feed carefully; it shows.
What does Hexagram 27 mean for career and money?
For work, Yi is about sustainability rather than ambition. Which parts of your job actually nourish your skills and energy, and which merely consume them? The hexagram favours roles and routines you could keep up without burning out, and it advises care in professional speech: a careless remark can cost more than a missed deadline. Financially, it points to the basics of income and expense, the diet of money. Are you spending on things that sustain you or things that only stimulate? Build a budget that feeds long-term stability, and be wary of relying on a single source of support.
I drew Hexagram 27. Should I change my current lifestyle or routine?
Yi is a strong signal that the question of routine matters right now. Rather than a dramatic overhaul, the hexagram recommends examining intake first: what you eat, read, watch, and who you spend time with, then what you say and give out. Change the items that leave you depleted, keep the ones that quietly sustain you. The judgment's "staying true brings good fortune" suggests that consistency, not intensity, is the lever. So yes, adjust, but adjust in a direction you can maintain. If the proposed change is another burst of stimulation dressed up as self-care, it is not the answer.
How to work with this hexagram
- Audit what you consumed this week and how it left you feeling.
- Choose words that build rather than deplete the people around you.
- Prefer habits you could sustain for a year over fixes that impress for a day.
Have a question of your own?
Cast a Cyber Hexagram — quantum randomness meets the 64 hexagrams — and get an AI-guided reading in minutes.
Cast a hexagram for your question