One of my favourite themes, and one I keep coming back to in classes is that of balance.
Physical balance is a skill and it’s an important one to keep practising, especially as we get older. We probably don’t walk along walls any more, or jump across gaps in the pavement, but maybe we can rediscover something of the curiosity we had as small children in our body’s capacity to stay upright in different/more challenging situations.
A simple balance is to stand on one leg - nothing fancy, just shift weight slowly onto one foot, giving it time to adjust, and then explore lifting the other foot. I sometimes suggest doing this while waiting for the kettle to boil. We don’t have to set special time aside, but to find small moments in the day when we can play with the body!
We actually do this, the standing on one leg, and shifting weight from foot to foot, every time we walk somewhere. If we slow our walking down a bit, we might notice the moment when we have just one foot on the ground. This is what enables us to propel ourselves forward in space.
Ordinarily, we don’t really pay our walking much attention, unless something has happened to make us feel unsteady. But in learning to walk as children, we discovered something really important: how to resolve the tension between stability and movement. Rolling around on the floor keeps us very stable, but it’s difficult to go far. Being able to stand on two feet gives us a lot more freedom, but it’s not very stable. So we had to learn to control this instability before we could explore all the choices and movement possibilities that come with being bipedal. And children express the joy of this freedom in their hops, skips and jumps - they love to move!
As adults, we have often retreated into a more sedentary experience of our bodies. So in our yoga practice we are often exploring ways of working with this seeming opposition between stability and fluidity, in order that we get better both at standing our ground and moving our bodies easily, in a variety of ways and from a variety of positions.
In our weekly meditations sessions we’ve been working with the theme of balance too, exploring pairs of opposites and how to unify them. We live in a world of duality, of night and day, you and me, right and wrong, peace and war, love and hate. Social media and our outlets for social discourse tend to polarise us, stopping us from finding common ground, or of even really hearing the other.
So in our practice of meditation we have been exploring how to bring these opposites into relationship and unify them. The breath is a wonderful medium for this: in it, and through it, we can experience the opposites directly, with its repeating cycle of ebb and flow, of coming and going, in and out, back and forth, expanding and contracting, arising and dissolving in an ever-available and direct experience of the coexistence of opposites.
In our own small ways, and in the face of what can seem like overwhelming suffering in the world, we can use our practice to contemplate paradox, bring about change, and engage with the process of living this life as best we can.
Breathing is the flow of the divine
Where the rhythms of life turn into each other -
The eternal exchange.
Pour one breath into the other,
Outbreath into the inbreath
Into the outbreath.
Awaken to equanimity
At peace in the play of opposites.
(from the Vigyana Bhairava Tantra, verse 41, translated by Lorin Roche)
I love your "subtle attention to" balance in your teaching Frankie and I often notice if I am less balanced in my mind whether greater attention to physical balance helps to recenter myself. It strikes me with the digital world influencing our humaness in a myriad of ways that is unsubtle and "black and white`' this subtle attention to the body and mind is even more vital. In gratitude to what you give through your teaching Frankie . Clare xx
Thank you Frankie, another beautifully written post to keep us conscious of balance in mind and body. I appreciate the reminder 🙏