Balance is not a place where we come to stillness.

Rather, it is a dynamic play of opposites moving towards a center point, which we call “the midline.”

It’s about making adjustments when we are falling too far in one direction to help bring us back toward some middle ground.

Over time, I find that if I listen, those fluctuations become smaller and smaller, and just a minor adjustment will bring me back on track. It wasn’t always that way for me.

When I was a little girl, I was generally pretty shy and quiet. My inner world was full of magic, wonder and rich emotion. I loved to play in the woods up at our summer lake house and get lost in the imaginative world. In many ways, my life seemed very dreamlike, and I was so sensitive I felt everything.

This inner world of mine became a blessing and a curse, and may have been why I was so shy. The outer world was not so comfortable for me, and I learned how to shut down emotions and feelings because they were too much for me to handle—I didn’t have the right tools.

As I grew older, I could feel the pressures of society pulling me into the outer world. Fitting in became more important than being myself, so I learned how to betray my true self.

When I became an adult and reunited with myself through yoga, I became aware of how I was misusing my ability to feel so much. Yoga helped me move this energy through my body and process it through my subtle body by listening to my breath, witnessing emotion as pure energy and feeling the fluid, flow of movement through my body to bring me back home again.

I am still learning that the many flavors of emotion color who I am are beautiful and how to navigate these inner landscapes that bring me back to my source.

As a yogini who is passionate about restoring balance of the feminine on this planet, I am committed to honoring the inner as much as we do the outer. I see how as a culture we are addicted to overactivity, overconsumption and competition. We are taught not to connect to the source of nature and bliss and at a cultural level it’s leading to illness, depression, insomnia and so much more.

Let’s face it, our world is completely out of balance and we desperately need to make some serious adjustments if we want to survive as a species. The good news is, this is a personal choice, and each of us can make it.

Even in Boulder, I meet a lot of people who are seeking some state of perfection by trying to eat all the right foods, do yoga excessively, maintain a successful career and be super mom and partner all at once.

What I see is we are running ourselves into a state of exhaustion through this striving for the illusion of a perfect outer life. If we are willing to come home and honor our inner lives more, there is an inexhaustible resource available to us.

I believe by initiating and choosing a daily practice of self-care, connecting with the beauty of nature and accessing a source of energy from within, we can begin to move towards rebalancing our own lives so we can contribute to the restoration of balance on the planet.

 

 

 

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Editor: Emily Bartran

Photo: James Jordan/Flickr