Finding and Keeping Our Balance

I have always been drawn to questions about balance. Perhaps it’s the Libra in me. Or maybe it’s just the way all beings require a point of balance to stay connected to what we need – light, water, both roots and room to grow, ballast in a storm.

In the electoral storms of the past few months in the United States, it has been challenging for many of us to find and keep our balance. I’m not talking about balanced news, which is sometimes attempted by stacking both sides of the partisan scales with heavy stones of judgement that lock us up in stand-still defiance. No. I mean the kind of balance that our lives depend on – a moving balance more akin to dancing than it is to a precarious stacking of fears and grudges.

What helps you find and keep your moving balance in troubling times? What practices, communities, relationships, symbols and places help you stay connected to the energy, the roots and the hope that feed and restore your body, mind and spirit when life is out of balance? Maybe it’s a walk in nature; a habit of prayer or meditation; a conversation with a friend, near or far; a favorite piece of music or poetry that calms your fears, a soothing scent or food, or even a favorite sweater or a touchstone in your pocket or your hand. Have you been staying in touch with what helps you keep your balance in these teetering times?

When I travel, I am much more dedicated to my Tai Chi practice than when I’m home because I know I need it. At home I am more easily connected to what feeds and steadies me. When I’m away, I need to more actively cultivate that connection. So I’ve done Tai Chi in China and in Spain, in Nicaragua and on the shores of both the Atlantic and the Pacific here in the U.S. and a lot of places in between. And wherever I pause to do this meditation of movement, I restore my connection to both earth and sky in a way that reminds me how large home can be. How my balance is not dependent on being in a specific posture or place as much as it is about remembering the place that each of us has on the ground of all Being. How balance for any of us in any circumstances is not about staying put or holding still but more about letting ourselves lean and move and grow toward what sustains us.

In these final days and hours of a difficult election season and in the challenging times ahead, may we each reach toward the connections that will help us find and keep our balance, remembering our belonging to one another and our place on the vast and sacred ground of all Being.