Here we are starting a new year 2025 with another chance to reset, regroup, and recalibrate. Looking back is informative and explanatory but getting hooked there is not helpful, yet it often happens to all of us. In moving ahead with the knowledge of what WAS, we must balance it with what IS, and allow what WILL be to unfold, even in the midst of the challenges we face. One key to moving ahead is AWARENESS with self-compassion.
Balance can start with the physical – practice balancing in various ways to train your body. Not just standing on one foot but practice moving off centre, like sidestepping, backwards, diagonal, upside down. No wonder YOGA encourages so many different yoga poses and moving the body in all directions.
Balance includes the energetic – and that starts with the breath. Breathing in and out is automatic but when we pay more attention to the breath, we can explore its TENDENCIES (Do you hold your breath without realizing it? Do you breathe more through your mouth?) and its EFFECTS (What happens if you lengthen the exhale? What happens if you deepen the inhale? Where might you naturally hold your breath – top of the inhale? Bottom of the exhale? How does a deeper breath make you feel? How does a shallower breath make you feel?). So many things to observe with the breath!
Balance includes the mental – and possibly the hardest place of all within in which to create it. Balancing thoughts, feelings and emotions…one can say just let it all go…and one can get caught in the swirling of all of it…and one can be anywhere in between. Balancing what we have to DO to deal with life and with how to BE with life. The wisdom of YOGA has always offered an approach to keep coming back to balance in the mind through various ways – physical yoga postures, breath work, meditation. The approach varies at different stages of one’s life, different environments, different life experiences, different mindsets, etc. and doesn’t always “work” to the desires and expectations of ourselves and others (however, I choose to believe it does much of its work in the background). It is not a one-size-fits-all approach but meant to be a method unique to each person who choses to follow the path, and with different styles and paths to follow even within the YOGA approach, a person may wonder “which path is the right one for me?” A good starting place (like with any new endeavour) is to try it out and observe the effects, with the aim of cultivating more santosha and sattva (contentment and balance/lightness), sometimes feeling “something” instantly and other times experiencing more balance and lightness over time. The path of YOGA and of life is definitely not linear – oftentimes it is more like one step forward, two steps back, sideways, off the track, down a different road, backtracking, getting lost, feeling found and on the “right” track, etc. From my experience, it is more an ongoing work in progress!
Balance includes love and kindness, compassion (including self-compassion) and empathy…
Balance includes right speech, expression, saying or not saying…
Balance includes acceptance of what cannot be changed, letting go to allow and BE the change, and as the serenity prayer reminds us, “the wisdom to know the difference”…
If you want to explore balancing with me, check out my various options:
FREE yoga videos and guided audio meditations
And of course, there are many other options for YOGA out there, some for free and others for drop in. However one chooses to cultivate more balance in one’s life, I feel it is more necessary than ever to work on it, to be accountable for missteps and make amends, to observe and take note, to adjust and tweak and modify as required. Guidance may be needed initially but eventually, balance has to come from within.
Happy New Year to all of you and I am always grateful for those of you who support my work/play/life.
Namaste…
Yoga In My Backyard 