Balance

There is a beautiful yoga pose called bakasana - or crow. It's a floating pose with the weight of the body poised onto the back of the arms.

Have you ever looked at a spinning top and noticed the center? No movement. While the rest of the top blurs around furiously, the center is actually still. That is the feeling that bakasana invokes.

Tiny adjustments forward, back, side to side, until only the breath flows in long, slow inhales and exhales. The world fades and there is...

Calm

Rest

Non-efforting
Balance

But yoga is not meant to happen in a vacuum, it is meant to be lived. Everything that happens on my yoga mat can be applied elsewhere.

So what does bakasana look life in life? It looks exactly the same - balanced.

Exercise is important, but it cannot take the place of meditation
Meditation and scriptures are vitual, but they do not fuel my body as a proper diet does
A proper diet gives the body energy to move, but it cannot meet my social needs
My friends make me laugh and think, but they cannot take the place of exercise

And around and around it all goes.

It's like the top - all these aspects spin and spin, but my center - my soul - is still.

What happens when one feature is out of place? When I exercise too much, forget to meditate, deny the nutritional needs of my body, or ignore my friends? Not a single thing works well, the top of my life tilts, sways,  and eventually, everything crashes down leaving me wondering where I went wrong.

Nothing went 'wrong.' It's only my true self searching for that calmness and doing whatever it takes to get my attention. My body, my brain, my heart all crave the equilibrium that balance brings. That place where the heart abides, breathing and sharing the radiant prana of life.

There...right there, no effort, just floating, poised. Indeed.

Thoughts to take with me today: Let the world blur around furiously with its striving and yearning; let me love the stillness, the calm, and yes, the balance