DAY 365+65

the yearning for balance

I´ve started to take a fitness class a few months ago. It´s not the typical class because the teacher uses strategies from different disciplines. She always says that our power comes from within, from our ability to feel our body and adjust every part of it in order to achieve the right posture. She has taught us that posture gained without consciousness is not posture, is imposture

This is so near to my own approach to my practice that I sensed -since the first day- that this could be the class I was looking for. And I was not wrong. Now my corporal work is closer to the inner one, and this pleases me very much. Indeed, I have realized that it´s the same work, but this is another story

Yesterday morning, while I was training, I could feel for a moment the proper coordination of all my components. I was developing an equilibrium exercise (I was on tiptoes and I had lifted my arms and hands) when I felt that my thoughts, my emotions and my whole soul were contained between these two opposite sides of my body. Oh friends, it was such a wonderful sensation!, I was almost touching heaven

Back home, I became aware of how much I have changed my concept about balance throughout the latest years. As a perfectionist, I´ve been always concerned about do the right thing (in accordance to social parameters), so the pursuit of what I would define as correctness has been underneath most of my actions and decision making. I used to think that this would lead me to conquer some kind of emotional stability, calmness of mind or at least, certain harmony

I couldn´t be more mistaken: the more I looked for steadiness this way, the more unbalanced I felt inside. As a result, at some point of my way, I felt like if I was about to break down from moment to moment . My posture was indeed, imposture because I hadn´t awakened to the true nature of my life (of myself) and I was influenced by a false standard of excellence. The acknowledgement of this true undermined my belief in perfection and redrew my concept of balance

According to this reconsideration, balance wouldn´t come from a preconceived faultlessness which generates prejudices, labels, unattainable ideals and suffering. Balance only could come from cultivating authenticity and mindfulness. Therefore, it is something that must be created -once and again- depending on circumstances, something that demands flexibility, movement, change and must be based on the evidence of mutability

It is, in short, the art of creating healthy responses that can cancel out the influence of my fear of transience… of being defective and not deserving of approval or love

It is taking me time to accept this perspective. My residual perfectionism often insists on considering that I am living in a precarious equilibrium (because my behavior is not imperturbable and fixed, because I am not adapting myself to others expectations, because I look for my contradictions deliberately and enjoy uncertainty), but something inside me is starting to accept that this precariousness is better than previous rigidity and endless discontent

Something inside me is accepting that life is made of pure impermanence: this is its grace and its challenge


Cross-posted at Vision and Verb on Sunday. Many other women share their passion for creativity and words there, please visit us, it is a wonderful site

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