Seeking balance
MINDFUL MOMENTS # 145
90% of the time, when I see my acupuncturist, I tell him I’m looking for balance. I’m looking for emotional stability and a calmness away from the fluctuations of life.
When I fell off my bike, I lost my balance. We can always choose to seek the silver lining out from behind the cloud, and I decided that perhaps this was just the universe’s/God’s/[insert other intangible culprit] way of teaching me about balance.
Is being balanced always a good thing?
Sometimes, I find myself far too balanced when it comes to making decisions; I’d really rather the scale tipped more obviously in one direction than the other.
I have long since forgotten where I read this quote, but I’ve carried the piece of paper (see above) I wrote it down on around in my possessions for years: “Sometimes to lose your balance in love means living a balanced life”. (A quick Google tells me this is from Eat, Pray, Love. Ah, the inimitable Elizabeth Gilbert.)
When we fall out of balance, we learn a lot. In yoga, we learn the moment our ego kicks in and gets grumpy and embarrassed; we learn to laugh about it instead. As children, we fall over all the time, even the name ‘toddlers’ connotes a clumsy, ineffectual and often humorous toppling.
When considering balance, we are considering opposites. We’re searching for this middle point on the box plot, as if we were capable of just experiencing the ‘median’ emotion. But we are constantly oscillating and reassessing. Our cells do this all the time, dropping positive or negative charges to maintain a constant equilibrium across a cell membrane.
I would argue that the beauty of being human is found in this constant dynamism. When we sit in stillness, we are never completely still. Our breath moves us, and this constant movement is what it is to be alive.
Mindful moment: I think what we are searching for is, in fact, not complete balance between two polar opposites, but an equilibrium between the two. The scales are constantly tipping. But the wonder of the awareness that is born from reflection, meditation (and, dare I say it, yoga) is that we all have within us the potential to keep coming back to centre. And sometimes, as in love, it’s okay to linger a little longer before coming back.
YOGA
Mindful Movement
Join us every Saturday from 11am-12.15 at the Cornerstone Community Centre in Hove for an all-levels vinyasa yoga flow class, meditation and mindfulness (mats provided or bring your own). £6 per class or £24 for 5.
Upcoming classes: January 27th; February 3rd, 10th.
Please note: I am then away travelling through to the end of March (lucky me, I know!).
Classes will resume April 6th.
REFLECT
What was the most interesting part of your day?
This is a question a friend and I asked each other yesterday. It was a good question, because ‘interesting’ isn’t the same as ‘best’. When we look back over the day, we can’t help but wander past those bits that were great or funny or moving, on our way to finding ‘interesting’. This sort of question helps us to notice the good bits and acknowledge what we enjoyed and we find that gratitude follows naturally on from that. When something piques our interest, we are extending a little part of ourselves outwards, perhaps considering things we hadn’t thought of before or to look at things a little differently.
Mindful moment: What was the most interesting part of your day yesterday? Or, if you’re reading this in the evening, today? What did you learn? Those stops along the way; the replaying of the nice moments, those have value, too. We learn what matters to us, we learn what we like and what makes our days feel special and worthwhile.
Have we met?
Welcome to the Community.
I'm Laura, a yoga teacher and NHS doctor. With this weekly newsletter I aim to help you incorporate mindful moments into your week. I want you to feel inspired, empowered and creative. I promise to always be authentic; to only include content that speaks to me and which, therefore, I hope will do the same for you.
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