Balance is precarious.....

.....so be careful what you hold on to

Recently I noticed the precarious nature of balance. It went something like this…..

“Everything is perfect.
In this moment, I feel good.
I am content.
I don’t need anything.
All is well.
Life is good” 😊

“Hang on!
Don’t move.
Stay just as you are.
Don’t disrupt this feeling.
Just keep relaxing.
Argh, it’s going.
I’m losing it
Now it’s gone” ☹

Photo by Cindy Tang on Unsplash

When I say balance, I mean that sense of equilibrium that brings with it relaxation in the shoulders, a loosening in the belly and the jaw, a deep breath or sigh and a general feeling of wellbeing. It is the most wonderful of experiences and brings with it a flood of hormones and neurotransmitters which reset the nervous system and calm the mind.

It’s something I have written about for many years inspired by a daily practice of noticing when I get out of balance and finding my way back again. Mindfulness and meditation have been trusty companions with me on this journey. I have talked with clients about finding equilibrium and an inner sense of balance for a decade or more and it seems to have been helpful to then, I know it has for me.

And then today that all began to shift.

Ironically, the shift in awareness knocked me off balance! I got to see with clarity what I hadn’t noticed before…..

Balance is precarious.

By its very nature it is a dynamic experience. Even when standing still there are micro movements happening in the body to enable us to stay upright. We have moments when we feel perfectly aligned, stable, strong and grounded and then we begin to feel ourselves wobble, our muscles twitch, our legs shake and we find ourselves having to make adjustments to counter balance the effects and stay upright.

What I noticed today is that whilst sitting feeling at peace, content and really enjoying the sense of all being well, there was a subtle but powerful sense of “I don’t want to lose this feeling”. As soon as that sense came into my awareness (and it was really subtle, not an obvious discernable, thought) the balance shifted and my body began to react. I went from feeling relaxed and open to tight and constricted as if I was bracing myself for a fall and I realized that I was holding on so tightly to a desire to maintain the pleasant feelings that I was actually closing myself off from them. I got so distracted by the thought of not feeling this way that the feelings I wanted to keep began to desert me.

It is counter intuitive that holding on to something would make it disappear but that is what appears to happen.

Balance is precarious.

This awareness has got me wondering where else this effect is playing out in my life. Where else am I holding on, grasping, tensing around an experience for fear of it changing? Where else do I find myself in the perfect state of balance and flow only to disrupt it with thoughts of not wanting it to change?

I can see it in relationships with others, in my relationship with my body and in my business with clients. In each of these areas of life I have seen balance as the goal, as the state to get to and from which I will feel good and therefore show up for others in the best possible way. That has served me well for many, many years. However, I see now (with this fresh awareness) that whilst it has been in service of me feeling good, it has not been in service of my ability to fully engage with life.

Life is also precarious and I am discovering that to fully engage with life it’s as important to be off-balance as it is to be in it. This speaks to something Buddhists call equanimity.

Photo by Samuel Austin on Unsplash

I remember learning about equanimity when I was studying for my Masters in Mindfulness. We spent a lot of time exploring aspects of Buddhism which influenced the secular practice of mindfulness and one of those aspects was equanimity. It has an important and unique position among the “Four Brahmaviharas” or “Divine Abidings” – mettā (loving-kindness), karuṇā (compassion), muditā (empathetic joy) and upekkhā (equanimity). The first 3 focus on engaging with others and the 4^th on how we relate to our experience. For me, this is one of the most useful and powerful aspects I learned and yet it appears that I had forgotten it!

The awareness that; in holding on to a desire for peace, calm and to feel good I was simultaneously resisting the inevitable feelings of disruption, discomfort or simply neutrality that would likely come at some point, was confusing yet also somehow not surprising. To acknowledge that there will be moments (perhaps many moments in succession) of joy, happiness and peace and that there will also be moments that feel less good seems to make sense.

It is the nature of life.

Life is made up of contrasting experiences.

No matter who we are, what we do, where we live, we all have this experience. Life feels great and then life feels not so great for any number of reasons. That is not news to you, I am sure. You will have had times in your life that took your feet from underneath you, when your world was shaken and when you didn’t know if or how you’d find your way back to feeling good again. What is becoming clearer to me is that this experience of contrast in our lives is something we can lean into rather than resist.

Resisting actually puts us in a state of imbalance. We tighten, we grasp on to anything that feels like a lifeline and we brace ourselves to weather the storm, hoping it will pass quickly and we will find our way back to balance again. But, what do they say about falling? Relax and roll with it. I’m not being flippant when I say that it really sounds like good advice! You’re more likely to sustain and injury if you try and stop yourself. So too with emotional experiences in life.

The beautiful thing about contrast is it is what brings colour to our lives. Without contrast we would not know what joy or love or freedom or peace or inspiration feels like. We also need to have experienced moments of sadness, disappointment, feeling trapped, bored or lost or to have come head-to-head with fear.

It’s in the contrast that we gain awareness.

Photo by Natalia Y. on Unsplash

Fear was driving my sense of needing to hold on to the good feelings I experienced today. Fear that if they went, I wouldn’t experience them again or that somehow I’d need to work hard to rediscover them. But that is not true. I know that is not how life works. Nothing is static, nothing stays the same and contrast is the way we get to know what we’d like to experience more of and, when we find ourselves there, we can rest with it for however long it is present knowing that, like an old friend, it may leave but it will return again.

So, I find myself with the wish that I can hold on more lightly to my experience. To allow it to flow and to simply enjoy the moments when they feel good rather than distracting myself with worry about what comes next. And that feels pretty good!