The Search for Balance

 The Instagram algorithm got me again.  This time, it wasn't clothing or a new running program that was guaranteed to shave minutes off my next marathon.  Nope.  This was all about balance, in the form of a funky and fun-looking balance board.  I watched numerous videos of people of all ages trying to remain stable on the precarious-looking rubber band that was attached to the board, all with the promise of various fitness benefits and improvements to be had by only spending minutes a day on this contraption.  Of course, I was curious.  I am wrapping up a university course on fitness and exercise programming at the moment, and we have talked about the importance of balance and mobility in an overall wellness routine, especially as one ages.  And well, this one is aging. Fortunately, before I was able to add anything to a cart, I remembered that this was not the first time I'd wandered down the path of balance in my fitness quest.  I pushed myself away from the computer screen and dug out a wobble disk that I had bought and had been holding onto for almost as long as my youngest child (who is now 18) has been in the world. It felt good to know that I had been holding onto the key to improving my balance this whole time, and now all I had to do was commit to a routine of working on it.

Standing on a hard disc of plastic that has a small semi-circle of plastic underneath it, trying to remain balanced is no joke.  The first few mornings were spent teeter-tottering back and forth wildly; too much pressure one way followed by too much the other. Sigh.  Finding balance was not going to be an easy task, and I was reminded of why this piece of equipment has been sitting unused for so many years.  As that thought crossed my mind, I had to laugh.  "Finding balance was not going to be an easy task", duh!  Hadn't I been trying to do that in other areas of my life for as long as I can remember?

And so it went, each morning I would take off my socks and step precariously onto the wobble disk, hoping that perhaps today was the day when I would find even the briefest moment of pause between swinging from one extreme to the other.  I tried clearing my mind, only looking at one, unmoving spot on the floor, engaging my core, holding my arms in front of me while keeping them somewhat relaxed...and sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn't.  The only thing that did seem to help was persistence and a desire to find that elusive pause of balance.  And then one morning, it happened.  I got onto the disk and started my usual checklist of engaging this, relaxing that, and suddenly I found myself balanced in the middle.  Holy crap! Then I promptly lost the moment and tilted quickly over to one side.  Instead of feeling disappointed at the moment passing, I felt excited and inspired.

All of the work I was doing was paying off, and if the outcome was even the smallest sensation of being at even keel, I would take it.  It made me think more about the other areas of my life where things are often unbalanced, and where I've tried to find a way to rein in the competing attention grabs and energy draws. What I came to realize, as I wobbled on my disk, was that balance is fleeting.  There really is no way to live life in a state of daily balance.  Instead, I think the more important goal is the intention of wanting to find an overall sense of give and take that feels good for us. This might mean that at certain times of the year, we are feeling pushed to check many things off a to-do list, and our foot feels firmly planted on the gas pedal for most of the day.  And that is okay for short periods, provided that we can find the opposite of that as well -- time when we can exhale and pump the brakes a bit, allowing ourselves and our bodies to rest and recuperate before the next upswing comes along.

This is the goal I am holding onto as I step onto my disk each morning.  Finding just a few more moments of stillness before the wobbles come in, knowing that this same intention for physical balance is the one that I am carrying forward into other aspects of my days. 


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