Balance

When you talk about balance with a yogi there are a variety of ways the conversation could go. You could end up talking about their favorite standing or arm balancing poses, about the muscles needed to achieve balance within a pose like headstand or you could talk about how to balance the different aspects of life: emotional, spiritual, physical, and mental are some of the big ones that come to mind.

Sometimes we end up trying so hard to fit everything in (because it really is all important) that we end up putting a lot of pressure on ourselves. This causes stress and we sometimes end up walking away from a practice because it just feels too big. When we are able to strike a balance with all of these parts of ourselves, we are much happier for it. When we set the intention to do something for our emotional, spiritual, mental and physical health each week we start to find the pockets of time needed to stay holistically healthy. Maybe you don’t have time to do a full work out every day, but there might be 15 minutes that you could do some light stretching and leave the full work out for a few times a week. Maybe you could fit in 5 minutes of meditation to address your connection to spirit. This isn’t a situation where ‘go big or go home’ applies. Look for the little bits of time where you can read something that’s mentally stimulating or send a text to your significant other with something other than a task to complete or just breathe. Don’t forget to look after yourself- when you take time out to address your own health you have much more to give others. Try not to think of it as being selfish, it truly isn’t- when we are nourished we can nourish others.

If you’ve never done this before, try filling out a balance wheel. The centre of the circle iszero on a scale and the outer edge is ten. Ten will represent the ideal amount of time or energy being spent on a particular piece based on your own needs, personality or experiences. On the circle, mark a dot indicating where on the scale from 1-10 each aspect lies. Do you get a perfect circle when you connect those dots? Probably not! And it’s not likely that it’ll ever be perfect, but if you’re way out of balance on one of the parts, try to think of some simple ways you can bring more balance to your life.