This post is part of a series celebrating the release of Building Balance in Your Body & Life, my new 30-lesson audio course on Insight Timer. Find the previous posts in the series (starting Mar 2, 2022) here. If the ideas here interest you, please join the course! Go to the Insight Timer web site to listen to the first lesson for free and to join us. Thank you for supporting your body your life and my work.
We have an equinox twice a year – spring and fall – when the tilt of the Earth’s axis and Earth’s orbit around the sun combine in such a way that the axis is inclined neither away from nor toward the sun. Since Earth never stops moving around the sun, the position of the sunrise and sunset – and the days of approximately equal sunlight and night – will change quickly. ~ Deborah Byrd, EarthSky.org Mar 20 2022
This year, the spring equinox was on Sunday, March 20 at 11:33am/Eastern Daylight Time.
Note how specific that is.
As soon as it happened, as soon as the Earth was balanced, tilted neither toward or away from the sun, it immediately went out of balance.
The Earth is “walking” around the sun. Each Earth Walking “step” takes 6 months. For one precious moment, on the equinox, the Earth is balanced — and then immediately it tips out again.
Just like human walking. Just like everything.
A teacher I admire, Helen Terry, calls walking “elegant falling.” Pay attention as you take a few steps and you’ll see what she means: when you are walking you are balanced for only a microsecond before you fall out of balance and catch yourself with the next step.
Balance isn’t static, stable, or permanent. Balance isn’t a place to get. Balance is something we do and like the seasons, it is constantly changing.
In practice, balance is mostly out of balance. Yet somehow we aren’t falling down all the time. We are constantly navigating the squeeze/relax, engage/let go of walking and moving and mostly, we don’t even think about it.
Improving balance invites us to pay more attention to the ever-shifting phenomenon of being in an upright body. The only way to build physical balance, is to take the body out of balance. Someone with “good balance” actually is just comfortable with and knows how to recover from being out of balance.
Think about any area of your life that requires your balance: work/personal, family/friends, self/others, activity/rest. In everything we do, we tilt – solstice-like – to one side, move through an equinox-like center, then tilt the other way.
If you feel out of balance, well, of course you do. It’s where we all are almost all of the time. It’s not a problem, it’s a chance to play and practice. Just like the Earth taking its slow measured steps, we can adjust and tilt the other way and let the sun shine on the place that was dark before.
The Wonder of Walking section of the Building Balance in Your Body & Life course offers exercises and inquiry into both our physical and mental/emotional lives. This week, notice the sensations of both balance and imbalance and play with being ok with both. And join the Building Balance course. for more ways to feel the balance in your body and your life.