If you've been reading my musings lately you can see I'm preoccupied with balance. As a person embodied through dance and other somatic (body) practices I've learned a lot about it, including that we can't be in balance all of the time. It's only when we fall off our balance that there is movement in our lives. So why is it that every time we're out of balance, we become disappointed in ourselves and see it as a failure?
I had an epiphany years ago when studying dance history that the pioneers of Modern Dance, looking for ways of moving beyond the upright, European aristocratic model of ballet, turned to the
natural functioning of the body for inspiration. Doris Humphrey and Martha Graham both explored the fundamental importance of tension and relaxation in the body, and used it as the foundation of their own systems of movement principles. Graham focused on the breath cycle in contraction and release; that we naturally contract the muscles on the exhale and release on the inhale. Humphrey called her version of the contraction and release of muscles and of the breath cycle "fall and recovery".
The truth underlying these discoveries is that we are falling and recovering all of the time. What is more elemental in life than breathing? The fall of the breath to emptiness on the exhale, and then the necessity of the release to fill up again on the inhale. Also walking (and all movement) is a continuous sequence of falling forward to take a step and then recovering our balance before falling again into the next step. I loved this realization. That even in the most basic of our physical tasks we are continuously going from off balance to stability, from free-fall to equilibrium, from chaos to order- over and over again, falling and recovering.
Given that it is basic to the human experience for the body to fall and recover, I am interested to understand why in our mental and emotional lives we are so thrown-off by this cycle. The ebbs and flows, the crests and troughs. By all rights we should say to ourselves every time we feel off balance or lose our footing in some way, that this is just part of the natural rhythm of life and just now we will regain our stability. We should trust that, shouldn't we?
Going back to the natural order of the cosmos, the yin and the yang, isn't one a necessary counterpoint to the other? After all, what would light be without dark (we would certainly have no art or nature)? Or up without down? Or Spring without Winter? And yet we expect to be happy all of the time. Contrast is the basis of some of our most profoundly transcendent experiences. Like the strength and solidity of a majestic mountain against an open, ever-changing, ungraspable sky. Or the ritual celebrations of light at the darkest time of year. The poignancy and possibility of the birth of a grand/child juxtaposed with the death of aging grand/parents.
So how do we make our peace with these inevitable rhythms of life, ever falling and recovering? Once again I refer to Strong and Fearless by Phil Nuernberger who writes about self-acceptance. That just as we accept the cycles and rhythms of nature and of our bodies, so too we can accept all facets of ourselves. "True self-acceptance allows us to look at all aspects of ourselves and to recognize their fundamental unity. It is the recognition that mistakes and failures are opportunities for learning and growth, not whipping-posts for self-punishment. It is also the recognition that one's intrinsic value is never altered by petty, or even great, stupidities" (Nuernberger).
This doesn't mean we give up our goals and stop striving to become our best selves. But when we falter or are less than our expectations of ourselves, that we choose a response of loving compassion and humor as we would with a child who makes a mistake or does something unexpected. As a matter of fact, it is our humanity that endears us to each other. Think of all of the great comedians who poke fun at their own imperfections and those of other people and society. If we are able to laugh at satire, so too we can take delight in our own humanity. I have a running joke with one of my best friends that I am the dumbest smart person I know because of my bad sense of direction, the utterly stupid things I say sometimes or the obvious stuff I overlook. But I've grown to love those aspects of myself and marvel whenever they appear. Just another aspect of the wonderfully complex person I am. Not perfect, but consummately interesting to myself.
Once again, I've learned from my bodymind that falling and recovering is part of the natural balance of things. That the life-sustaining breath cycle and the forward-propelling motion of walking teach us great lessons. Take a moment to feel the rise and the fall of the breath and as you engage in your next movement, feel the way the body falls forward and then recovers its balance, organically, without ceremony. Allow these to serve as an important metaphor that we will and should accept and embrace these natural rhythms of our humanity. And as you move through your day and your week, find loving kindness and delight in the little (and big) ways we fall and recover all of the time. And as always, Mind Your Body.
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