10 tips to achieving balance.
Seek more balance. Find balance in life. The work-life balance.
We are bombarded with these messages. Everyone is looking for it, it seems, some with better success than others. But just when we let out a cautious sigh and acknowledge that we have found it, something always tends to happen to send us off our feet in turmoil, distress and ultimately out of balance.
Yoga is all about finding balance, we are told time after time.
But observing ourselves in the postures and in our breathing, we start to notice the same thing. Balance is hard to achieve and depends on many factors. Have I slept enough, have I eaten too much or too little, even what surface I am practicing on. Are there any distractions around me, is my nose blocked, do I have pain.. Our ability to stay centred in the same posture will be different from day to day, even from one hour to the next.
And what’s more, even if we are stable and easy in the posture, if we breathe smoothly and effortlessly, we are not still, immobile. The foot that supports us in the Tree pose is quivering, adjusting as our whole body slightly undulates, fluctuates. A tiny bit with each inbreath or outbreath, with each small change in the way we relate to the earth. The feet in our best of headstands are like the flame of a candle, amplifying the almost invisible movement in our forearms and shoulders as we navigate our balancing act second after second.
“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you need to keep moving”, said Albert Einstein.
That’s why I think even the phrasing “finding balance” is already misleading, a recipe for failure. Balancing is not a static state, it is not something that you find and live happily ever after. It’s a constant recalibration, making small or sometimes dramatic moves to avoid the fall, to keep standing, going, riding forward.
So I am wondering, can we celebrate looking for balance as a success already not as a starting point to something more important and eternal? Can we redefine being in balance as being equipped with strength and resilience, clarity of mind and ability to keep breathing to perform the necessary moves at the times they are called for. Wouldn’t that be more than enough?
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