Written by: Cheryl Whitelaw, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
As we age, balance becomes an issue. Before we feel the impact of our aging process enough to be afraid of falling, balance tends to be more of a quality-of-life metric, our work-life balance.
Balance is a funny thing – we really only focus on it when we lose it.
How do you know you are balanced? When you fall, you protect yourself. There is no time to make a plan, you react; your reflexes take over. You stop losing your balance when you reach a more stable shape, like hands and knees on the ground. Or you can recover it, coming back to an upright position.
What do you imagine when you think about work-life balance?
I conjure a kind of image of me holding two scales – work on one side and life on the other. When I am balanced, I stand tall, holding each side of my personal scale easily and well. When I am unbalanced, I am distorted as the work side, or the life side gets heavier, harder to hold. When one side stays heavy, it feels harder for me to find a position that feels right, harder to restore myself to an upright position, slower to recover. Even a binge night on the couch or a weekend of relaxation doesn’t restore my uprightness.
I think that using balance as a way to measure the quality of our lives is a trap; one we will never escape.
What’s wrong with balance?
With this kind of image, we blame ourselves for falling out of balance as if we should be a better scale to we would not feel out of balance. It is a poor use of our attention. We focus on what we did wrong, making a mental inventory of what we did or should have done to be more balanced. We make our falling out of balance experience about performance only. Did I stay in balance, or did I lose it? How do I avoid losing my balance? When we focus on performance, we don’t learn about balance; we strive not to lose it.
The path to improve balance, if life is taking you to (or past) your edge, is to consciously lose it.
Surfers know this path to finding their balance – riding a wave, their balance is constantly changing until they run out of waves to balance on. Their balancing apprenticeship includes falling, over and over. And in those falls, they learn, both from their movement and from their environment. How to stand and shift their weight on the board. The feel of the shape and the momentum of the wave as it forms and dissipates. The fine line between riding inside or outside of their balance zone.
The push hands practice in Tai Chi is a testing ground to cultivate balance. Two people stand, connected through their hands and forearms and move together, seeking both to retain their balance and to disrupt their partner’s balance.
This practice can be only about performance – who succeeds in disrupting the other person the most.
But to cultivate resilience in balance, practitioners must consciously fall out of balance so they can learn about what conditions create balance and what leads to losing balance.
How far can you go before you lose balance? Do you know? What tells you that you are getting close to losing it?
Does a physical sense of balance have anything to do with a quality of balance in your life?
Learning from your failure to keep your balance lets you find the place of up-rightness within you, the place where it feels like it is possible to move freely, this way or that way without cost, without fear, without resorting to some kind of reflex to keep you safe. This place of balance within is created when you repeatedly practice being curious at the edge of your personal limit.
On a recent hiking trip, I fell on the trail. I was walking up a gentle incline, stepping on roots and rocks. And stepped into a shallow hole that sent me forward. I fell and I didn’t lose myself in the falling. Even in the second, it took to lose my balance, I asked myself, “Can I recover my balance?” The answer was no. So rather than bracing, I expanded out and forward. Other than losing a little skin on one knee, this complete failure of balance had no other consequences. I fell and I was consciously resilient. I relied on my trained reflexes, training in aikido and Tai Chi, to fall, without losing myself. This is a life metric of balance that works for me.
Thinking of balance as a static form, something I have or I don’t is not helpful because that is not actually how we do balance. Balance is dynamic; when I sit or walk or bend over, my base of support is constantly changing. I need to stay open to the information from my environment to balance as I move. Moving to and beyond the edge of my balance expands my capacity to regain my balance or to lose it, without losing myself. So, I think of balance as a verb to learn from, not a noun that is held and lost.
To reverse the impact of aging whether we are 65, 45 or younger, we need to practice staying in the flow of our balance so the fear of poor performance doesn’t lead us to shrink away from our personal edges. Lead us to live a smaller life. When balance is about learning, resilience and includes falling, at any age, if you happen to fall, you can stay whole and go with the wave as it rolls through. To embrace balance as resilience rather than the absence of falling.
Last year I taught a series on learning to fall well. One of my clients, an older woman with a lively spark in her eye who keeps active, called me after being in the class for several weeks. She told me, “Cheryl, I fell.” I held my breath, concerned about her. She continued, “No Cheryl, it’s ok – I fell lightly!”
Cheryl Whitelaw, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Cheryl is a leader in using movement to improve brain and body performance, reversing the impacts of aging. As a child, Cheryl asked, “If we can do war, how do we do peace?” Her lifelong exploration of that question led her into embedding transformative learning technologies into adult education, coaching, inclusion, and diversity training and supporting people to recover their personal sense of wellness and wholeness after injury and trauma. A devoted practitioner of aikido, Tai Chi, and Feldenkrais, she is committed to her personal evolutionary path to integrate body, mind, and spirit in service of peace in the world. She has coached individuals in private, public, non-profit organizations, unions, and utility companies from over 12 countries around the world. She is a published author in the field of diversity and inclusion and is well regarded for her blog on how our movement can help us create a more potent and peaceful self in the world. Her mission: Move more; react less, and live more fully with no regrets.
