Balance

Like a bird on a wire

Balance is a word that I can connect to physically. I know what it takes to be able to balance on a beam but not a flagpole, and depending on the day my balancing poses in yoga are either really solid or shaky. When my balancing poses are shaky I try and take some time to consider what may be happening in my mind that’s pulling me out of the pose.

An elusive concept

I can even feel when I am out of balance in my life. But what the word really means in a holistic sense is still pretty elusive to me. I strive to learn more about it and try to embody it. I take note of others who are good at it and attempt to emulate them. However, it is a concept that changes and has different meaning to every single person. Balance in one person’s life can be chaos in another’s. To each his own; literally.

The necessity of finding it for ourselves

Perhaps this is why I have such a hard time pinning it down for myself. Yet I feel that as the global community gets larger and the world smaller and the inputs greater and the time out lesser, we are spinning out of control as a species (does anyone hear that song from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that Gene Wilder sings as he takes his unsuspecting golden ticket winners into the tunnel?). We need to get a handle on ourselves and find out what it means for us to be in balance. Then we must do it for ourselves. Only after that can we hope to bring the world back into balance.

Some sage words, not my own

I feel like I can’t offer many sage words on this subject since I do not feel as if I create much of it for myself. I am a girl prone to extremism, one-track, single focused until it’s done and no room for anything else. But I want to change this for myself and I recognize the absolute importance of it. So I am offering someone else’s sage words on the subject of balance. Debra Rubin has written a beautiful little piece on it for the Yoga Journal online. Read it here.

Then maybe we can all feel like the bird above, balancing effortlessly on a branch high above the ground.